Enter Your Spaceships

From Japan Today



MAEBASHI — An environment machinery maker has developed a robot that can be ridden and maneuvered like one in the animation series Mobile Suit Gundam, the company employee in charge of the development said Sunday.

The single-seat Land Walker robot, which is 3.4 meters high and weighs 1 ton, can be made to walk forward and backward or sideways at 1.5 kilometers per hour by operating four pedals, and to shoot sponge bullets from two air guns installed beside the cockpit, said Masaaki Nagumo of Sakakibara Kikai Co. based in the village of Shinto in Gunma Prefecture. Nagumo, 32, developed the product over two years almost all by himself as he wanted to develop a robot that could be driven and operated to move like Gundam. (Kyodo News)

Bookish Meme

As demanded by mumbojumble:

1) Total number of books I've owned?

Over the course of my life, enough to build a house out of. Hell, I gave up entire shopping bags full of books just moving back from Japan, and you know it's not easy building a library of English books in Japan.

2) The last book I bought?

Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi.

3) The last book I read?

I'm going to cheat and say instead the two I'm currently reading: Sex and Rockets and Hirohito and the Making of Japan.

4) Five books that mean a lot to me:

1. D'Aulaire's Norse Gods and Giants, soon to be reprinted for the first time in 19 years!
2. Demian by Herman Hesse
3. Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
4. The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas, and the reviewers are correct in pointing out the superiority of the unabridged version; my copy was printed in the early 20s and is a delight.
5. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami; of all of his incredible works, this one is the deepest, pardon the pun; worth building up to by reading other books of his first.

5) Name five people on your friends list who should do this meme:

tinymammoth, bookishfellow, hulkhero, jhonen_red, and narwhale. I've either never heard of or am not up to date with any of your reading habits, goshdarnit.