Happy ME day!

Let me just interrupt your grand celebrations of ME day, commemorating my b--what? You aren't actually celebrating....

...well, ANYWAY...

This year for my birthday I picked up THIS:



It's the 5-disc set of the 10-hour-long Shogun miniseries from back in the '80s. I wanted to buy this when it came out four years ago, because I had just finished reading the original James Clavell novel (thanks, Scott!). However, at the time, the price was ¥14,490, or over $120. Insanity.

The MSRP is still ¥14,490, but one of the local electronics shops is having a months-long "I Love TV Life" sale, with almost all TV box sets from 10% to 40% off, and Shogun was one of the 40% off titles. (It was also the first time I'd seen it in a store in over three years.) As it turns out, I could have gotten it from Amazon.jp for 60% off, but I would have lost a bunch in credit card conversion fees.

When this show was first broadcast over 25 years ago, Mom & Dad wouldn't let me watch it for some odd reason. Most of the rest of America tuned in to it, though... I've only watched the first disc and a half so far, and I'm glad to see that the TV series corrected some of the more egregious goofs in the novel -- like an honorable samurai family named "Bunny", or a vassal spy of Toranaga named "Ugly". However there are still some pretty big screw ups included. The bit where Mariko explains how simple the Japanese language is is particularly cringeworthy. Telling different verb tenses using differences in inflection THAT DON'T ACTUALLY EXIST IN JAPANESE...