Petezah

Russell and I visited Shiro for lunch yesterday, and I just had to write a follow-up here since I mentioned the restaurant last week. Mainly, this is because the food was fantastic. I’m thinking this place is at least on my top five now.

For lunch, in addition to the main entrees, sushi selections, and so on, they serve an array of bentos with a variety of combinations in them, including various sashimi, tempura and other specialties of the restaurant. I had one with their own special marinated salmon, and vegetable and shrimp tempura. Miso soup was also served with the meal, and was very good as well. It made me happy, because I have a bit of a taste for it. The salmon was tasty, and the shrimp was the best I have ever tasted. That is to say, delicious, since I’m not normally much of a shrimp person. Anyway, if I can help it, we’ll be frequenting this place.

So, Guitar Hero 80’s is easily my favorite Guitar Hero now, I think. I picked it up today, since Best Buy had such a sweet pre-order deal on it. Ah, 80’s music—somehow so terrible and so fantastic at the same time. And for crying out loud, who did IGN get to write this review? Not somebody who grew up in the 80’s, that’s for sure. I mean, the track line-up on Guitar Hero 2 was pretty weak compared to the first game; but GH Encore’s list more than makes up for it, I think.

When I first got to Phoenix, I and some of my new coworkers went out for a bit of Teppanyaki at a place downtown by the office. It was more than tasty, but somehow, we never really got around to going there again. Then, maybe four or five months later, it was closed; and a couple months later than that, if we weren’t really convinced that it was closed, it was utterly demolished.

For a while we wondered if the owners moved it somewhere else, or if was just under renovations because of the recent upkeep in the Biltmore district. Today I happened across a little half-article tacked onto the end of another article in a rather perfunctory way. Essentially, the story is that Ayako of Tokyo had been there for twenty-five years, but was suffered recently at the hands of a rent-hike.

Shigehisa Ikematsu, the chef, then bought the restaurant in 2005, added his own touches, and renamed it Akita-ya. It closed last year for the same rent-hiking reasons. Apparently, the tasty Japanese restaurant wasn’t cool enough for the mall’s owners. Not to worry, Ikematsu-san apparently just opened a new restaurant north of us called Shiro. They don’t have Teppanyaki, but I don’t need that all the time anyway. We will definitely have to check this place out.

After reading many of the corporate reports and live blogs that are coming out of this year’s E3, I’ve only come away annoyed with the quality of the reporting; the overall attitude of the writing just bugs me. The way journos just like to gloss over stuff that doesn’t interest them is a major reason that it’s useful for developers to attend conferences like these. Reading much of this coverage, even from the indie or semi-indie places I get this information, just makes me feel like I’m not getting the picture I need. Last year, attending the conference, I ran into a ton of stuff that was extremely interesting, but that just wasn’t important enough for the press to cover.

Anyway, it’s one thing to miss details—because every person has their own point of view—but it’s quite another thing when I can read, in the subtext, that someone just couldn’t be bothered to write something down because it didn’t interest them. Now, notably, there were exceptions. Nintendo Gal is always a refreshing break from the norm. (Thanks Andrea, keep it up) I got some interesting information off of Gamespot today as well.

Hallelujah; finally we get information. And good news, no less: it’s coming out for the 360. Check it out. Apparently even more news is coming this week. Huzzah, E3 isn’t a total loss this year after all.