Category: Japan things!

Thought I’d try out my Photoshop “skills” (as if I had any!) to see if I could take a photo from my set of Otakon pics and try to simulate the “tilt-shift” effect.  True tilt-shift involves a fancy $1000 lens, but since I’m not going to have one of those in the near (or even distant) future, this should be the next best (cheapest!) thing.

This should be a small image, clicking on it should bring up the full-sized one, if this works right.

So cool!  Umeji Narisawa of Sendai, Japan, 99 years young, plays her favorite videogame, “Bomberman”, like she has every day for 26 years!  In Japanese, videogames are called “famicon” (ファミコン), which is Japanese shorthand for “family computer”, because it’s the computer that the rest of the family plays with, as opposed to the all-business PC (personal computer, pasocon, パソコン).

Narisawa-sama first started playing the game after she saw her grandchildren having so much fun, so she tried it herself.  Now, she plays about two hours every day, and she says it keeps her mind sharp and her fingers nimble enough to be able to thread a needle (see the video link, don’t worry about not understanding the Japanese, just watch the faces and hear the audience reaction).  She has played so much, she can easily beat the game, getting to level 50 sometimes twice a day.

Now, if you do the math, she’s 99 now, and she started playing 26 years ago, so that means she was 73 when she started!  She’s proof that you don’t have to stop trying new things, just because you think you’re “too old.”  It’s just a state of mind, and if you keep a young mind, you won’t really get old!

Here’s the video:

bombergran [jprobe] by peakfloods