So Japan was a blast, I got my hands on a metric ton of goodies:

- "Monster Hunter Illustrations" book.

- The first three collected volumes of "Z Mazinger".

- Dragon Quest IX Game Guides (both of them).

- Two "Weekly Famitsu" with excellent art.

- Pixiv's 2009 book.

- A book called "Sai, the first step", which details how to get started with Paint Tool Sai.

On the toy front I was a little more restrained, but I still managed to find the Chogokin Getters (The set with all 3 of them) super cheap, and a few other things. Now I only need to buy Grendizer and Jeeg to have all of Go Nagai's seminal Super Robots. I can still hope for another trip to Japan, I guess

So far the books are keeping me very entertained as I try to understand how to use Sai, and how do the artists at Pixiv obtain such godly results with it. The fact that I can't read a word in Japanese will ensure I'm busy for a while.

I've also been playing with "Art School: First Semester" for DSiWare. It is an amazing painting tool, with certain advantages when compared to Colors! While some people don't see a benefit to buying the "Second Semester" because it has fewer lessons and the same tools, it also gives you another save slot for an additional project. So I went ahead and got it.

I'll be posting the stuff I paint with it here.