I am full of manga goodness.

What I am not full of is money.

I rendered all my previous frugality for naught by spending one hundred dollars in more or less one fell swoop. You see, the madness of withdrawal is well and truly upon me. For the past two years it has been rare for me to go more than a couple days without playing at least a little Dance Dance Revolution. Here in Japan, where by all expectations I should be engaging in non-stop dance-a-liciousness, I have yet to even see a single machine. One of the other students, obviously suffering similar pangs, bought a playstation and DDR 5^th Mix, but only one pad. Obviously, the situation needed to be remedied. So I went to the local giant shopping complex, with the burning ambition to buy a second pad, as well as a copy of 5^th Mix to enjoy myself when I went home. As I was striding towards the game, my intent steely and unalterable, I saw a bookstore, as huge megaplexes are wont to have, and within was row after row of beautiful gleaming manga. I swear, I only intended to look, but titles caught my eyes, wonderful familiar titles, and before I knew it, I had accumulated thirty dollars worth of new manga (which is going to mean many long nights with my dictionaries to properly enjoy). For those wondering just what was so special as to complete bypass my usual stinginess it was: Hellsing vol 1-3, Trigun vol 1-2, Jungle no Hale Itsu Guu 1-2, and Read or Die 1-2. Please, feel perfectly free to feel jealous now (to those of you who those titles mean anything to anyway).

That, totaled with my beautiful video game purchases stripped me bare of the last of the money I changed when I arrived at the airport. At least it kept me out of the bar tonight. I really wish that I had a job, or won had the lottery, or had saved some rich old guy from choking on his mochi (guess the movie reference, win a prize), because the game store also stocked the light sensors for Para Para Paradise (the fact that I'd need a playstation 2 and the game itself to actually use them notwithstanding), a half dozen of the Super Robot Wars games, X-Boxes, Game Cubes... I really can't wait for the day when I am rich and can fully indulge my cravings for expensive electronic entertainments. I figure that I have another oh, three years to go before I get around to being rich (relatively) the hard way. As I plan it, next year I get into JET and return to Japan to teach, at which point I'll start towards making $30,000 a year after taxes. Given my general lifestyle, and including necessities, I can't imagine going through more than half of that in annually. So, I save for two years and **************BIG SECRET (nyah nyah)************ then I'm finally in the free and clear and can indulge in video games and comics to my heart's content. Truly a meticulously planned and flawless plan, ne?