Friday was a fun, but dead-frickin'-tiring day. This week has been, needless to say, draining, and all I wanted was to curl up in bed and go to sleep (or curl up in my seat in Calculus, as I was close to doing), but ... I went straight from school to visiting my Little Sister (in the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program, not a real imouto who I've been hiding or anything ^^;;) to a friend's house for a session of D&D. I think I've mentioned here how I've never role-played before (never even played an RPG O.o) and that I was a tad nervous ... but it was actually okay. My biggest worry was that it would be really complicated and that I'd have to keep dozens of rules and statistics in my head for every move, but it wasn't nearly so bad. Our DM was funny, which helped alleviate some of the tedium when we got lost and were going through room after room. Plus, we spent a few hours making characters for everyone, so by the end of that I was pretty relaxed. ^^; I'm a fighter, because they said it's the easiest to start with. I'm also human, because of the nifty goodies humans get, skill-wise, like the Weapon Focus I got for my longsword. Unfortunately, because of either my race or my class, I don't get that thing where you pick a favorite enemy or something that strengthens your attacks against them. So I can't tell anyone my weapon has a plus 2 against ogres. ^_~;;

Anime tonight was pretty good -- at least, after we were displaced from our usual theater by a Macintosh convention and got the projector set up. The first thing we watched was Hikaru no Go -- only one episode, though. The animation is good; I think the character designs are by the same people who did FushiYuu and AyaCere. I didn't catch that Kawakami Tomoko played Hikaru until I saw it in the credits ... and yikes. She also played Kris Kristopher in Battle Athletes, a.k.a. the girl who'd make a nice bishounen but is actually a very obvious and aggressive lesbian. XD;; I think the audience was sufficiently weirded out by that. It bothered me, though, that some of the girls kept saying how wrong and sick it was; it reminds me of what my friend said once, how there are girls who think gay guys are cool but gay girls are gross. I mean, if you're going to think Mahou Tsukai Tai! is funny, just relax and laugh a little at Battle Athletes. It's a show about a bunch of girls competing, which means friendships and rivalries and the occasional gay joke.

Speaking of gay jokes ... No, really, I'm kidding, I love Ryousuke. XD;; He's such a suave, refined flamer boy. I'll forgive him the random hair color change, even if he *did* look much better with black hair. T_T (Oh, Koyasu's competing closely with Seki for my favorite male seiyuu, argh ...) These episodes were really good (3-6 of Second Stage). Poor Takumi ... talking about his daisuki na Hachi-Roku, and saying he might be in love with Natsuki, and then, in his eyes, losing them both. Seeing a guy as laid back and laconic as him cry is just that much worse. ;_;

I think I see a little more what the whole escort girl (or whatever it's called) thing is about. I saw some of it in GALS!, and then in Kami-sama, and now in Initial D. It seemed really odd that girls seemed to fall so easily into it; it wasn't commonplace by any means, but it didn't seem nearly as major as it would here. This New York Times article about a famous red light district in Japan helped explain it a little. The process of recruiting girls was described; basically they're lured in first with the promise of being paid some money to visit a club, then more if they actually join. Most, if they stay, don't last past thirty; not because they leave voluntarily (a lot of them don't really want to, or if they do, can't save enough money to start a new life), but because they're replaced by younger recruits who are quite numerous. A group of underage girls outside a fast food place told the reporter that they couldn't wait until they were old enough to join the clubs; a lot of women think there's the possibility of glamour and celebrity in it. There's still something of a stigma in the practice (like the obvious problems in having relationships, as illustrated in IniD), but not like it is here. If anything, I'd say it was like drug use is here. Illegal, not mainstream, but still viewed as fun or exciting by some. Especially in the younger crowd. Which is how Masaki thought it would be a better idea to "escort" some creepy older guy and then sleep with another one instead of, say, ask her parents for money. ¬.¬

In art, we're doing a graffiti project in which we do either "writing" (when you have a message you want to get out) or "tagging" (which is just getting your name noticed). On a piece of posterboard, not a public space, obviously. _o_;; It's fun, because I've always found graffiti rather interesting (not *vandalism*, mind you, just the graffiti style ^^;;). But I wonder about trying to do some authentic graffiti-like writing with something like "P-chan." XD;;

Oh, Lili-chan, I saw some of the Victoria's Secret show, too ... Not too much, though; mostly the introduction with Rupert Everett (kyaa! *_*) and Andrea Bocelli's performance. I saw some of the "Super Model Millionaire," though, and ... I don't want to indulge in stereotypes, but some of it was pretty bad. Like the one girl who didn't know which sport (out of basketball, soccer, bowling, and some gag answer) didn't allow players to use their hands. O.o Riiiight.