I'm living back in the US where I was born, though a completely different part of the country (mid-south). I was teaching at a couple high schools in Hyogo for three years. Before that I did a study abroad in Shiga, and then after that I did a summer teacher training program in Saitama.

Wow, thanks for this article. This was very nostalgic! I used to buy and eat these caramels all the time when I was living in Japan. I really miss a lot of things about my time there, not that what I have now isn't good... but it was sure different from where I live currently!

Working in law enforcement, it's a constant pet peeve of mine when people incorrectly use the term "rob." The whole "Please rob me" website makes no sense, because robbery involves the forceful taking or property from one's person. If a man sticks a gun to your head and tells you to hand over your wallet, that's…

You can use the DSFix mod. I play Dark Souls on the PC in full 1920x1080 (that's an internal rendering resolution of 1920x1080, too). It adds additional smoothing, background resolution, and background blur effect as well as optional SSAO.

The 500 hours I spent on Dark Souls is based on countless playthroughs with lots of PVP. To play the game from beginning to end, even for a newcomer, could be done in 20-30 hours easy even if you take your time and die a lot. I generally finish a playthrough now in about 12-14 hours or so depending on how much I do.

There are 12 games for the PS Vita?

I love this game and its developers. If you aren't playing Dark Souls, you really need to. I've put more than 500 hours into the three versions (PC, Xbox 360, PS3), and whether you prefer PVE or PVP, it's freakin' awesome.

I don't think so. It's a great idea to get games made that otherwise might not get funding. There are lots of awesome things we could have if it weren't for the lack of funding.

Consoles are not on their way out yet, but traditional consoles already died. The days of a console playing only hard media games is over. You don't just plug in a cartridge or pop in a disc and play a game — now you rent & watch watch videos, connect to YouTube, Facebook, Netflix, and more, store and listen to music,…

"I am sad to report that ... Mists of Pandaria doesn't particularly seem to offer anything new or special to entice the newbie player. "

You've got to be kidding me... the MMORPG market is heavily over-saturated. There are literally hundreds of MMORPGs to choose from, whether you want Free-to-Play, subscription-based, fantasy, modern setting, cartoony graphics, leading edge graphics, PVP focus, PVE focus, spaceships, soldiers, and on and on.

I'd like to point out that the sandwiches in the picture are not grilled cheese sandwiches.

What a great idea, let's invite a bunch of people we don't really know over to our house to see what we have in it and how it's set up, in case they or their thug buddies want to come back later and burglarize it.

I'm glad people are keeping track of this stuff, but as far as I can tell this is anonymous data collection. It's an aggregation of data taken impersonally as a whole, and thus is not tied to specifically people.

WoW takes criticism it doesn't deserve, and some it does. It's a great game, and the proof is in the hordes of people who continue to play it (get it? "hordes" ? hehe).

I hate to be negative all the time, but that statement is a little misleading.

Just look for the aliasing, and it's much easier to tell which one is HD — it doesn't have any real noticeable aliasing.

You are misrepresenting and misunderstanding. No one suggested pirating anything. We are merely saying that we use techniques to avoid ridiculous DRM in our LEGALLY PURCHASED GAMES.

I've been arguing this point for years, both with friends and on the internet. I am usually shot down as a "pirate" because I apparently don't love draconian DRM.

You can of course enjoy the better graphics offered by the more powerful PC hardware (versus the PS1). It *WILL* look better than the Ps1 with all of the settings maxed out, but it's not true HD graphics or anything. Just upscaled. Still, much better than the PS1. Aliasing was a major problem on the PS1 and Ps2 to…