I was recently shown this video on racism in Japan.

Now it would be extremely naive of me to argue that Japan has no racism. No matter where you go in this world you will always find people who hate you because of who you are regardless of whatever race, colour, hair, religion, shoes or glasses you currently own/are. However, this video has made me wonder a few things - mostly is it legal to place discriminatory regulations on a store's policy in Japan? Well according to Wikipedia Article 14 of the Constitution of Japan doesn't. They don't have specific hate crime laws, and so things like assault are treated as regular crimes.

However this isn't what my point is. My point is more to do with taking these signs out of context. On this surface these seem to be akin to the "No colours allowed" signs that were prominent around America pre-1960, however I noticed something. At 0:55 of the video there's a sign entirely in Japanese. The line the guy is pointing at begins with "Nihon-go". This literally translates as "Japanese language" but it essentially means to speak Japanese. I noticed this more and more with the other signs and it becomes more clear that this isn't anything against foreigners per se. It's against "Stupid Tourist Syndrome" where if you speak your native tongue slower, louder and stand closer to whom you are speaking then they should surely understand. This is more along the lines of an old Dead Ringers sketch where they interview Abu Hamza to represent the Muslim community and then Head Dragon of the KKK to represent the white community on the war in Iraq.

This makes a whole lot more sense seeing as I've been to 4 cities in Japan and didn't encounter any racism of that kind at all. In all honesty I've never seen such a collectively polite and curtious nation in my life. Within the next 5 years I shall be moving there to teach English as a foreign language. I cannot wait to go back.

Damn you, Steam! Damn you and your fantastic tempting deals! I've just purchased the id Super Pack (that is 22 games) for the measly sum of $41.11, or £23 in real money.

I didn't get it just because it was cheap either, most of these games I haven't had the chance to play before. Things like Quake II and Doom 3 have always been on my list of games to play, but with little chance to play them. This should be a fun weekend.

After much debate with myself over what I should do with my newly acquired free time and PS3 I decided to try out the Metal Gear Online aspect of Metal Gear Solid 4.

It's been 2 hours since I booted up the game and I've yet to fire a single round. First I had to download an update that took forever, then I had to go through a rediculous Konami ID and separate Game ID registration form. Now I'm creating my character who I'm already getting sick of looking at.

I suppose having a PSN ID was not enough.

I feel like bloggin my gaming habits. Dunno why.

So I rarely trade in anything. I wouldn't necessary cIass myself as a "collector" as I actually play the games I buy, instead of leaving them in their shrink wrapping, only get the Special Edition of things if it's A) not that much expensive then the regular edition, B) is asthetically pleasing and C) readily available. I have never waited for something overnight, ever. Anyway, back to trading in. It's not that I want to create this huge collection of games to show off in the nerd equivilant of shoving a sock down your trousers; it's just I know that I'll want to come back to that game at a much later date on one of my random cravings. At the moment I really miss this old PSone game Monster Rancher.

I play games for as long as I find them interesting. If I complete a game, that is merely coincidental. Unfortunately it is becoming more regular with recent games, where they end up shoving "filler" to stretch out a game. One that pops to mind was No More Heroes, with that utterly stupid job sections in between missions. So...I'm a paid assassin...who has to pay to take jobs in order to be paid? So I become really bored as the game feels less like fun and more like a chore. A break in this trend was Metal Gear Solid 4, but in my defense it took me by surprise as to how little of the game I actually got to play. In MGS4's defense it was the best movie I have ever played.

First person shooters are brilliant, and I am admittably quite good at them, but I hate the community surrounding it for the most part. Just because I killed you does not mean I'm "haxxors" and neither am I a homosexual (though how you make the connection between the two is beyond me). The greatest genre on the planet is a tie between JRPGs and Point & Click adventure games.

Anyway, I've run out of things to say about my gaming habits, so I'll just mention that the new DragonForce album is brilliant especially the "making of" documentary.

An annoying phrase my mum uses whenever I'm doing work.

Resit exams are over and I'm feeling quite relieved. My right hand isn't. I wrote 12 pages in 2 hours and still had some stuff left over to talk about so ended up putting them in bullet point form. Stupid exam invigulator (sp?) came up to me first, despite there being three people in front of me:

"Put your pen down."

"I'm mid sentence, just let me finish this."

"Put your pen down."

Arrogant tosser. Anyway, that's all done and dusted so alls that's left is the rest of summer. Maybe I'll go to the beach anime style...and freeze my nipples off at Blackpool.

Well not exactly but still. I have a resit exam for something I shouldn't really be resitting, I essentially failed because of missing a few assessed seminars and my technophobe tutor didn't check his email and marked me as absent aka zero. Before I ramble on even more I just dug out some extra notes on the Human Rights Act that my tutor wrote in the handbook.

I can't go into too much detail without boring the bejesus out of you, but basically it's worded differently to the lecture notes he's written in a way that contradict each other. Just imagine reading "I like toast" then "I don't like toast" but in many many more words.

Oh and my head of department still hasn't signed my module change form, so I'm in a state of limbo where I'm missing a subject and no-one will accept responsibility. I honestly think that the Law department don't want anyone to take the subject but because people have they're trying to ward off potential newcomers by being as awkward as humanly possible.

Okay, why? Was there any real need for this on ANY console? If I want to chat to someone, I'll use MSN, leave me be when I'm gaming. I know that the 360 has MSN built into it, but again there was no real need for it. The only reasoning behind this, as far as I can tell, is for the "because I can" factor. Much like people who stick Linux onto anything that has half a memory card.

So the Xbox has gone. Forever. Never to soil my gaming habits again. I traded it in at Gamestation with all my games for a nice cool £260, which is far more than what I imagined I'd get. I was very lucky and acquired a 60GB PS3, the ones that have (some) backwards compatibility and a card reader built in.

Apologese if the pic is too big, but you know what a PS3 looks like anyway. I was fiddling about with it before and I have to agree with what my mate said about his 60GB - "If this thing does a backflip I wouldn't be surprised". It's incredibly versatile and can do a lot more than what I bargained for. It's also a hell of a lot quieter than the 360 was.

EDIT: I forgot the games. I got Metal Gear Solid 4, Soul Caliber IV, Devil May Cry 4, Ratchet & Clank, Uncharted and Mass Effect for the PC.

And on a sidenote: I met this happy chappy today at a garden center.

He's scraggy, very old and very wise. He has seen more things than we can ever forget. I call him Muffles.

When boredom kicks in and I'm feeling quite self destructive, I hurt myself badly. Really badly.

I visit System Wars.

I swear to God, this is the place where grammar goes to die a horrific, painful death. I'll give you an example:

this is to all of u that say that i havenot played halo 3: I have i own all of the Halo games i own a 360 and a XBOX and the halo series is good but Smash bros is better.RandomToAvoidModding

I cannot stress enough that this isn't one of the worst comments I've read, but it is certainly one of the most recent.

The lack of punctuation (and not the good Yahtzee kind), capital letters and leaving out the Y and O off "you". It shouldn't annoy me but it does. Talking like that should only be reserved to situations where time is of the essense, such as instant messaging (AIM, MSN etc.) or online gaming. When you're in a forum with all the time in the world and a built in spellchecker, there is absolutely no excuse. Excuse for the fact that Gamespot's spellchecker considers "I'm" a spelling mistake. Don't know why that is. As well as "cIass" being a forbidden word. Odd. Sorry, I've lost my train of thought.

Tomorrow my 360 is going. I'm fed up of it. I'm fed up of trying to get to the second disc of Lost Odysee (that I've had since it came out) by skipping every bit of dialogue and keeping my fingers crossed I don't get the "Disc cannot be read" error. I'm fed up of how loud it is. I'm fed up that everytime the disc spins down it grinds up against something.

Tomorrow I shall be trading in my Xbox and 13 games for a brand spanking new PS3 and MGS4, Uncharted and if I have enough anything else that tickles my fancy. I am aware that the 80GB model is coming out soon, but I'm honestly not bothered about that. 40GB is plenty of space and if I need more I'd just get a cheap HDD and replace it manually.

If anyone has any PS3 recommendations then please feel free to comment.