A few months back I sold my iPod Classic locally here in Zhengzhou. The guy who came to buy it was an audio nut too. While we did the deal we listened to each other’s earphones and talked a lot. I really liked his old jazz, and he preferred my Phonak vocal-focused pair. Somewhere in the conversation we got onto how people around us don’t get why we buy earphones. I said most people listen to my Audio-Technica im03 and ask why the hell this thing is so bad, the bass is completely gutless, and he said the same: for a lot of people, if the bass sounds good the earphone sounds good, which is exactly why that garbage Hi-PDA earphone got so many people saying it was great a while back. “Good listening habits matter. Bass isn’t everything.” I totally agreed with that line.

I used to be a kichiku fan too, way back… Don’t get the wrong idea, I don’t mean the Japanese kichiku, I’m a normal person, not a pervert. I mean the Chinese-internet redefined “kichiku,” basically those videos where people take footage and make it twitch and spasm. Around 2008 ACFUN was full of kichiku works, plenty of good stuff too, and I watched them happily. Then with the popularity of things like Yori and Chinese dubs, more and more “snark” comedy videos started popping up… Of course I enjoyed it at first, until… that kind of video filled the entire internet. Sorry, I’m the type who gets sick of infinitely repeated content easily. I got sick of this stuff too, I even started finding it boring. I started hating all those messing-around, no-seriousness things, started feeling they were pointless, like current domestic crosstalk, which lost its backbone and left only endless bickering.

People call audio mysticism “mysticism” because there’s so much about it that’s uncertain and unprovable. Headphone forums love using precise instruments to stay objective, to determine whether a pair of headphones is truly Hi-Fi — after all, Hi-Fi originally meant high fidelity. High fidelity means reproducing a song exactly as it was originally recorded… So an audio device that boosts the bass, boosts the treble, boosts this and that is, in theory, violating the original vision of Hi-Fi. On this point, the various instrument tests on headphone forums really aren’t wrong in their direction. But there’s this concept called “listening impression.” That’s where the mysticism begins. An earbud might have tremendous playback capability on an audio oscilloscope, but that doesn’t beat a bunch of people listening and saying it “sounds bad.” One sentence — “sounds bad” — can drag a high-end earbud through the mud.

I’ve always liked the girls that soft girls draw. Miyasaka Miyu (宮坂みゆ) is a soft girl, so I really like the girls she draws. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that logic. Only a girl knows what expressions and poses a real girl would actually have. Only a girl drawing girls can really capture their essence. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying that. So half a year ago, Izayoi no Fortuna (十六夜のフォルトゥーナ) already had me completely floored by Miyasaka Miyu’s art. Those soft, delicate girls hit my strike zone dead-on. You have to understand, I love small, slender girls the most—I just want to hold them and squish them…… So, hand on heart, I played Areas ～空に映すキミとのセカイ～ purely for the art. I’d already seen the reviews on Chuuni Space saying “good opening,” “the ending makes no sense,” and that it barely scraped a passing grade. But who cares? What kind of shit haven’t I eaten by now? However bad your story is, how bad can it really get? Can you do all-in insta-love? Can you do split personalities? Can you do forced harem? Can you do forced flexing? Can you do knockoff light novel? Can you do reincarnated saint? Can you do TowerDefense? Can you do Guo Jingming imitation? Can you do total meltdown? Or can you trick me into screwing boys? No way! I figured I’d already played through every possible way to eat shit — there’s no reason I’d find a brand-new way to eat shit! Shennong tastes a hundred shits, and I no longer fear death. Game Start！

Twin Paradox (双子座のパラドクス) is another Cotton Software title. Why’d I play it? Mostly because its predecessor, Sekai ga Owaru Basho to Birthday, left such a strong impression on me. So even though the character designs are still shit as always, I was willing to give it a go. No other reason — I just wanted to see a story that could stand shoulder to shoulder with Birthday. That’s all. But before I get into the game, I want to talk about something else: the science and pseudoscience elements in stories.

The internet situation at my workplace is pretty unusual… Theoretically speaking — I mean theoretically, according to the leadership management regulations — every internet user in the entire institution should be rate-limited, with video and downloads throttled, and stock trading and remote connections prohibited. Not even our department is exempt. Except most of those rules were written by me… so my own IP sits outside the rules. Yeah, that’s against the regulations, but I’m the type who doesn’t give a damn about the leadership, and a fair number of the institution’s higher-ups have their IPs in the unrestricted group too. But the other guys and girls in my department are total bootlickers. Every day they see the boss and look ready to kneel; the moment he’s gone they’re ready to tear him apart. One face in front, another behind. They want to secretly watch videos and trade stocks at work, but when I offered to move their IPs into the unrestricted group, they shook their heads and said they didn’t dare.

Getting a car is just the beginning… beginning of what? The beginning of buy, buy, buy! Because the Honda Vezel wasn’t easy to get and there weren’t many discounts, just being able to buy one with a small discount was already good enough. Can’t expect them to throw anything in, so I had to buy seat cushions and the rest myself. Good thing Taobao is pretty much universal—got all of that sorted fast. Of course, as a nerd who likes building computers, what I care about more is other stuff.

I bought a Cardboard a while back, but that was the first generation. And the first gen had plenty of rough edges—it didn’t fit big phones (even though my phone at the time was still a Sony Z1), and there were hardly any apps (aside from a few demos there was basically nothing to play). Then recently I stumbled on the fact that YouTube now has a proper 360° VR video channel, and that’s when it hit me: the second-gen version of that box from Google I/O was already dirt cheap on Taobao.

Only after learning Japanese did I realize how many Chinese words actually come from Japan. Setting aside stuff like 暴走 and 违和, 箱庭 is probably one of them. I run into 箱庭 all the time in anime lyrics — はこにわのせかい (箱庭の世界), that kind of thing. It’s not a hard word to figure out: a garden in a box, or a box garden. Describe it with a Western term and you get sandbox or sand table. There’s even a more Chinese-flavored word for it, like 盆景 (bonsai/penjing). The concept itself actually originated in the West; Japan just imported it and called it 箱庭. And honestly, I’m deeply grateful to whoever did that — that they didn’t write it as サンドボックス or some other mess already has me weeping tears of joy. Of course, the thing most closely tied to the word 箱庭 is 箱庭療法 (sandplay therapy). It’s a form of therapy related to psychological diagnosis: you give the patient a “box garden” and let them build their ideal little world, then infer their mental state from the elements in that world. Basically a fancy psychological test. So the first time I saw 箱庭ロジック (Hakoniwa Logic) and its detective/suspense branding, I figured there had to be more going on under the surface.

Not long after getting my license, people kept asking me: “When are you buying a car?” Honestly I’d never even thought about it. For one thing I know nothing about cars, and for another, every car I actually like the look of has a price tag that makes me want to kneel. Then my parents started asking too, and eventually came right out with “Tell me how much you’re short and I’ll cover it, just go buy a car already.” At that point I figured having a license and not buying a car was pretty pathetic, and I really didn’t want to spend my parents’ money on this anyway. So the goal became: “Buy a car I’m comfortable driving, within what I can afford on my own.” Which raises the question — what do I buy?