maaru | Disturbing Anime and Passport Shenanigans

I've just finished watching the entirety of Ayakashi Samurai Horror tales, and will probably start watching Mononoke for the trippy colorful vertigo-inducing WTF. I liked Sakurai's role here though.

Also am about to finish Aoi Bungaku, which is a very pretty series that came from classic literature pieces (was pleasantly surprised to remember that Hashire Melos! and The Spider's Thread were stories read out loud to us by our Japanese sensei some years back). What's cool though is that they got Takeshi Obata, Kubo Taito and Konomi (that Prince of Tennis dude) to design the characters. Though I got a lot of hilarity when I realized that Kubo designed the crazier story arcs. @___@ Nothing like a feudal era musical gore fest with iPods. Yes.

And I just peeked at the beginning of another horror series and, hello dismembered girls in boxes. I'm really in a morbid mood tonight.

Last friday, I finally got my clearance for my passport renewal, though there was some insanity near the Agency Director's because of my last name. I was wondering why it took a while for the guard to call me up from the queue, but, when my turn came, he called out my name in this horribly embarrassed, horrified and choked voice:

Guard: M*******! Is there anyone here with that name!
Me: Oooh! Me! Me!
Guard: Are you for real? You're not shittin' me, are you?
Me: eh?
Guard: That's my name too! WTF, we have the same surname!
Me: Whut, there's nothing wrong with that. You must be from L****e if you have that surname.
Guard: u_u Well, yes. But.
Me: My grandfather was from there!

Then I got ushered in to talk to the clerks about my clearance, but at the end of it, the clerk leaned forward and whispered,

Clerk: Did the guard take a while to call you here?
Me: uhm, yeah.
Clerk: All the guards here call each other by their surnames, he really thought we were playing a prank on him!
Me: I see.
Clerk: Yeah, we had to force him, "Just call it out and someone will answer!" and he wouldn't believe us.

So apparently, my surname is unique enough that the guard never expected to ever call someone else with the same name. The next time I came up in that queue, he resorted to walking up to me and saying, "YOU! You're finally cleared! *peers over my shoulder to look at my papers* Wow, it really IS your name!"

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Fandom was hilarious this weekend. But I couldn't participate because my sister is on vacation and playing MMORPG's with the internet access.
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Current Kanji count: 500. YES! 1/4 of the way there~