[GAME] Super Mario Galaxy 2

Buy Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Nintendo™ Wii) at Play-Asia.com

The most anticipated game for Wii this Spring, Super Mario Galaxy 2 had been released on May 23, 2010.

I was surprised it didn't have any special opening movie or some game demo showing if you let it idle at the main screen.
(then again, who would wait for that?)

If you didn't press A+B right away, you can try pressing only A or B Button for some special effect on the title.
(click to view full size picture)


Let's watch the video.

Once again, Princess Peach was kidnapped by The Monster.
With the help from the lumas, we landed at Yoshi's doorstep.
A sign in front ask us to go around the back.

Of course Yoshi means the tunnel!
Once you are on the other side, you see a 1UP mushroom inside a cage, go ahead and take it.
After you clear the dark side (grin), take a look at the sign next to the green tunnel.

It's a hint video!
(Normally I wouldn't watch tutorial video, don't think I need it.)
(But if you don't, you will miss the very first infinite 1UP + infinite coins + infinite Star Bits secret!)

To activate the infinite 1UP + Coins + Star Bits, you have to watch the hint video, after you finish, everything (both side) will regenerate including the 1UP mushroom inside the cage!

Each time you clear both side, you will get one 1UP mushroom, 18 coins, and about 52 Star Bits.
(If you always get Star Bits by defeating the monster, with the method in the hint video.)

I have only completed the first 2 part, "Sky Station" and "Yoshi Star".
According to the guide book, there are so many secret and/or hidden items, it will probably take kids a whole summer to play through this game.
(Which is exactly what parents want, 1 game, 1 summer, for around 60 dollars.)

[Restaurant] Ju Izakaya Japanese Restaurant

Ju Izakaya (japanese style pub) opened back in April, right at the same complex with J-Town, the Toronto North Japanese supermarket.


We start off with 5 different types of skewered chicken, (from top to bottom): Chicken leg meat, Leg meat with Japanese leek, Chicken liver, Chicken gizzard, and Chicken cartilage (soft bone from the breast).
All of them were seasoned with salt, in order to try out the taste of the meat.
The leeks were brunt quite bad, and the Chicken cartilage were also slightly brunt.
It was quite, including me and my friend, there were only 10 customer. That's why the food came real fast, it's nice and hot.


Took this picture with my old cell phone, so it's really fuzzy.
This is called Motsuni, which is a Pork intestine stew. Flavored with miso, the pork intestine along with sweet potato, burdock and Konjac (aka konnyaku) makes a great tasting stew.
We share this bowl, as the order was about 12 - 15 spoon full of ingredient, with a miso soup like broth.


The grilled beef tongue really surprises both of us.
As we were enjoying the flavorful Motsuni, the over-the-edge saltiness of the beef tongue really hits our tongue!
By adding the lemon juice to the tongue, our tongue only pick up the salty lemon taste.
Less salt would be great, as the beef tongue was quite a thick cut, if only it had some beef tongue taste to it.


Of course we are not nearly full with just that.
Second round we start off with a skewered leg meat with sauce (Tare). The Tare version was much better than the Shio version, mainly because of the sweetness of the sauce gives the meat a different flavor, and the sauce keeps the meat juicer than salt (the salt one was juicy too).


Also we tried the Chicken skin skewer and the Chicken meatball.
For the Chicken skin, we decided to have it with salt, as the sauce would probably made the skin soggy.
It was great, skin crispy and not dried out (served HOT of the grill), and the amount of salt was really nice, thumbs up!

Does anyone really eat meatball with salt only?
Chicken meatball with sauce on it was just ok, nothing special, except the price was higher than other skewers.


We started eating the Ochazuke (お茶漬け) without taking any pictures, so "borrow" the picture from Ju's website.
Three different toppings to choose from, Salmon, pickled plum and takowasa (たこわさ, pickled octopus).
My friend had the one with salmon, and I had takowasa.
I didn't try the salmon one, and because I mixed everything together, I can't really taste the takowasa by itself.
But the Ochazuke was really good, the broth really tasty, the rice are softer than you would have in a bowl of rice (probably soaked in alot of broth), the garnish on top (seaweed and arare あられ) was just like what you see on pictures, everything you expect in an Ochazuke.


We were full right after this. (perfect)

TOO BAD they don't have any beer yet! How come an Izakaya doesn't have any beer or sake?!
(I don't see any LLBO license application posted on the door, don't know what's going on.)

Price wise, real Japanese style of food in Toronto, I would say they are at mid-range? But without beer or sake (or a glass of calpis), I don't think I would visit in a few months.


Let's hope they get the license real soon, and apply the profit from the sales of beer & sake to lower the price of food, that would be great!

[Blog] New blog tools update

Added a few things to the blog.

First of all, the links for the older post are changed to something like this:

so visiter can see which page they are on, and how many pages in total.
since this is a javascript function, if you've those browser add-on to block javascript, you probably won't be able to see it.

Thanks to Blogger Plugins for the "numbered page navigation" code.

Next up are buttons for Twitter、Facebook 及 Google Buzz.

(I expected to see the same thing happen to every post, all links are ZERO.)
Haven't use Twitter for a while now, ever since I switched over to Plurk back in 2008.
I found that alot of people just join Twitter recently, and it would be a good way to promote this blog, so that's why I added it in.

I don't really use Facebook, because I don't play those flash games (not anymore), and I don't really update my personal info there. (If I really have time, probably should update this blog more often.)

But most people I know, they love to use Facebook and they are always on Facebook, that's why I added this button, to better serve the people who loves Facebook.

Google Buzz button, this is just for the sake of adding stuff. People I know don't rarely use Google Buzz, and some don't even have a G-mail account, (sigh) may be I will take it off when Google decided to shut down the Buzz service.

Again, Thanks to Blogger Plugins for Facebook share count button, Twitter retweet button (service provided by tweetmeme), and add Google Buzz button

Also added the Facebook Like Button, which shows up at the bottom of every post. I think it's just the same function as the button at the upper right hand corner of the post.
Just another way for all of the Facebook to use.

You guessed it! This code was from Blogger Plugins, on Facebook like / recommend button


I wanted to add the lightbox (picture viewing function) code into the blog, was reading the code from Blogger Plugins - light box image viewer, but somehow it doesn't quite work with my blog, as the lightbox will show the full size picture, which is way to big to fit on screen.

Then I found The Illuminated Path - Logan's Blog, and they have a code for blogger (blogspot), which they have restricted the lightbox size to 640px when showing the pictures, that's almost perfect...

But I will have to add the line rel="lightbox" to every picture manually, and it only works with pictures that has a direct link (like Picasa). Since my blog mainly uses pictures hosted on Flickr, if I have to made lightbox to show pictures from Flickr, I would be violating Flickr user agreement.

gotta find a better way to do this.
Found the original LightBox code, it include the automatic adjustment to pictures, along with some modification, can actually have lightbox to display a link-back to flickr.
Too bad it doesn't work on blogger (blogspot), tested everyone of it, I can't even see my blog (stuck at loading).


Right now have to settle with the slimbox w/ MooTools, and hope fully one day someone will find a way to get this to work with Blogger (blogspot).
Please click on the picture to view the larger picture.