Real Kato Blog: Christmas in January!

Well, not really. It's just that I'm finally getting around to blogging about some of the stuff I got for Christmas.

First item: Wii. Well, technically, this was a present from me to the boy, but really, it's a present for the whole family. And "whole family" definitely includes "me".

Among the pack of included games, bowling is definitely my favorite. The motion is natural, the physics are realistic, and it can easily be a social activity.

Golf is okay, but it seems unnecessarily difficult to control speed precisely, and there's no option to purposely draw or cut; it happens randomly if you overswing. You only have four clubs to choose from (driver, iron, wedge, putter), and there's only one course. Did they purposely cripple the game so as not to compete with the Tiger Woods golf game?

Boxing is meh. It lacks responsiveness; you throw a punch, and maybe the game responds a half-second later. If not for that, I think I'd enjoy it.

Tennis is pretty fun, a lot like Nintendo tennis of old, and a pretty good workout.

Finally, baseball is... well, it's baseball. I'm just not that into baseball, I guess.

We picked up a couple more games. We got Guitar Hero III, which is fantastic. Contrary to some published reports, it does help to have a little bit of musical ability... rhythm is important, as is manual dexterity. I can see how people who play real guitar would have a problem adjusting to the little fake guitar, though; you'd probably have better luck if you're a piano player, or an accordion player.

Rarely-documented effect of Guitar Hero III: because you spend most of the time watching notes scroll down at you, when you go back to looking at a static screen, you get the illusion that it's floating upward. Weird.

We also got Metroid Prime III, and it's also fantastic. It looks and feels a lot like "Halo", from the music to the aliens to the atmosphere. But the Wii-specific control motions are spectacular, and the puzzles are intricate and clever. The only downside I've found is that it's necessary to do a lot of backtracking; there are things you can't do until you've acquired such-and-such enhancement, so you have to remember spots where you skipped stuff, and come back to them later. If I were starting the game over, I would have made a game notebook detailing everything that I skipped.

Moving beyond the Wii, Amy's big purchase for me was a rice cooker. Can you believe that I'm a thirty-something Japanese guy and I haven't owned a rice cooker until now? I've always made rice in pots. It usually came out okay, but there was the occasional burned-rice incident to deal with. Well, not any more. Amy picked up this Zojirushi rice cooker, and true to the on-line reviews, it makes perfect rice every time.

Finally, I wanted to mention the cheese slicer that Amy bought me. It seems like such a little thing, but do you know how much cheese we eat in this household? We eat our weight in cheese every month or so. With a cheese slicer, we can turn a block of cheese into bite-sized tiny cheeses in 66% less time! How on earth did we survive without this thing?

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