UART president Hirai-san was in town this week, and I went to visit Organic USA’s office w/ him today.

The problem was… I haven’t gone to their office for over three years. And neither has Hirai-san.

So we both thought their office was along Wilshire (near the pho place)… and we get to the building, and the parking attendant said “There’s no company by that name here.”

I was “I know it’s this building!”
So I called up our office to check w/ Broccoli USA staffer Ono.

He gave me a different street number, so we drove around the block, but didn’t find anything… so I called up Broccoli USA president Kaname to see if Organic had moved.

Yes… they’re now on Olympic.
And they moved 2 years ago.

Whoops.

Anyhoo, Kaname said “brown building” so I figured it’s the same building Gaga Communication was located in. And I was right.

And then, we spent 10 minutes walking down the hallway looking for the office suite. But dyslectic me… I heard 201, when it’s 210.

Whoops.

But we had a good meeting nevertheless.

Former Broccoli USA production assistant Krystal came by.
If you’ve read Broccoli Books & Synch-Point production blogs from several years back, Krystal was our production assistant for a long time while she studied 3D animation/graphics.

After she graduated, she’s been working on various projects… and she got to work on the graphics for the Harry Potter ride that’s going to open two years from now. She said she worked on the graphics for half the castle (she said a name, but I don’t read Harry Potter so I don’t recall).

How awesome is that? (Even though I don’t know what castle it is… *laugh*)

She’s currently working at an online game company that’s making a new game called TwinSkies. She said she’s mainly working on clothing & hair pieces that are interchangeable in the game.

And former Broccoli Books editor Samantha is also working there!
Apparently she started out as a writer, but they liked her art & she’s the main character designer there.

We’ve had a lot of aspiring artists work for us as part-time staff (like in retail), and I always didn’t know how to help them w/ their career paths. The only thing I could suggest was in animation, so it was good to know another potential career for those who like to draw.

Anyhoo, go check out the site.

Today I received a call from KCAL 9, a local TV station in Los Angeles.

They were looking for businesses they could feature in their TV program called Best Deals.

So I had to explain to them that we no longer have a retail store, nor do we offer services that would be beneficial to consumers since we’re a publisher.

I recommended he contact Anime Jungle, and the guy on the other end of the line told me that they had already emailed them the forms… so hopefully we’ll get to see Anime Jungle store manager Tetsu on local TV!

Bushi Road president Kidani-san is coming to LA in a few weeks, and he wanted to check out some card game stores in the Los Angeles area.

Since I’m not a card game player, I thought I’d ask for help here.

Are there any card game stores we should check out in the Los Angeles area?
Places with a lot of selection, or has dedicated dueling space would be ideal.

Name and/or location of the store would be helpful.

Today is Election Day.

I went to vote because I really wanted to vote “no” on Prop 8 (California).
I work w/ gay literature, and I wanted to show my support for gay marriage rights.

Anyway, I was talking about this w/ Broccoli USA president Kaname and he said there’s a petition going around Japan…

For the right to marry 2D characters.

So we were debating how that would work.
* If more than one person wants to marry a particular character, how do you determine who marries that character? Can a 2D character marry more than one human? Would that be polygamy?

* If you fall in love with another character, how do you go about divorcing the original 2D character?

And so forth.

Of course being the type who wants to make everything anime related into a money making scheme *laugh*, we started talking about selling the license to marry a 2D character. Or offering unofficial wedding ceremony services for the fan & the 2D character.

And this is how we waste 1 hour of our work day…

Go vote!

I recently got on Facebook, and all of my friends are addicted to the various games there.

All of us gave up beating freelancer Dee in Word Challenge, but we do compete on our weekly scores. Since those games are free, we are asked to watch a few seconds of their sponsors’ ads… and we started noticing the Naruto game ads on there.

I still tend to think anime is a niche market product, so it’s always amusing (delightful?) to see anime related ads in mainstream places.

It’s like the time we saw the One Piece Anime Expo poster in Hollywood & Highland (okay, maybe not quite…)

Freelancer S@ki messaged us that we missed We Cheer on Amazon for $28.

Apparently it was a Gold Box item yesterday… and we really wanted to get it because Voice Actor Stephanie Sheh said she was in it. Or we think this is the game… She said it was a cheerleading game.

Grr!

We usually have a friend who tells us about these types of deals, but I guess he missed it too. Too busy playing Soul Calibur on XBox 360, probably…

Now we’ll sulk as we buy it at Best Buy at full price, knowing we could have gotten it much much cheaper.

Hafu~