Learn Japanese while playing a card game

Japanese: the Game

I've always been interested in learning Japanese.  I know a few people who are either taking classes or working on it themselves.  I may try this method.

I own a copy of the game Influent - Japanese language edition.  I have not tried it yet, but it also looks good.

Stock Car Racing in Nashville

Even though I grew up in a town with a small stock car track, and I've lived in New England where there are a few tracks, I had never gone to a stock car race before this weekend.

This past Saturday, my family and I went to the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway for a night of stock car racing.  Most of the races were about twenty five laps on the shorter inner track, but the last two races were on the main track.

The shorter races were way more exciting to me than the longer ones.  The cars had to slow down more around the corners and they jammed up more easily.  This lead to more crashes and drama on the track.

Here are some pictures and a video from the night.

Magic Origins Prerelease experience

We were in Nashville, TN, for Magic Origins Prerelease weekend, so we went to a noon event at The Game Cave in Hermitage, TN.

The Game Cave

Ian picked Black, and I took White.  He built a Green/Black deck, and I played Red/White aggro.  Here is a picture of our rares and mythics.  The foil Kytheon is probably the best card we pulled.

Foil Kytheon, foil on both sides

I love the flavor and design of Magic Origins.  They have done a great job of choosing the core Planeswalkers and have given them backgrounds that make you care about the characters.  Magic is one of Hasbro's most profitable brands, but they don't have character recognition like Star Wars or Pokemon.  Origins is the first attempt to make the characters brand names that will last, and not just something that goes away with the next set release.

We will probably draft this set a few times and I may buy a "repack" booster box for fun.

I also came up with a new way to play Magic (I'm sure it is not 100% original).
Basically play Magic like "Duel Masters" when you have no land for your decks.

1. Take all of your cards from prerelease and remove Rares and Mythics.
2. Split card pool into decks based on color.  Don't include land.
3. Play like normal, except you can play a card once per turn as a land instead of the actual card type.  This land produces one mana of the card color.