Evangelion

One of my favourite Sino Centre shops right now is directly opposite the escalator going down into the basement. It sells mostly Japanese CDs and DVDs and has a big display of anime and video game soundtracks, all at super cheap prices. Evangelion - The Birthday of Rei Ayanami is a CD I picked up there a few weeks ago and can't stop playing. I should say that I am not an anime fan, so it was news to me that this was actually the twelfth soundtrack album from the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime series (where have I been?). Since I have an interest in Asian artists who do English songs, the highlights for me are the two versions of Fly Me To The Moon. One has a cheesy Japanese English vocal by Rei's seiyu, Megumi Hayshibara, the other a cool jazz piano version by Kuriya Makoto. They have most of the other eleven albums too - one with five versions of Fly Me To The Moon!

Check the price first!

This is something I bought for Kaz at Sino Centre on Sunday. It's a 'Slim Airfoam Game Pouch' designed to stop the screen of his PSP from cracking when he throws his backpack on the ground at school. As the logo on the top left shows, it is (not) an official PSP product. But never mind, it works. There is basically no bargaining in Sino Centre. You either pay or you leave. So I paid my HK$78. A few shops down (which means around 10 steps away), it was on sale for HK$45. A few shops down from that, it was HK$38. Kaz says we were double-scammed. We also bought a copy of Every Extend Extra for HK$200 (not bad for a newish PSP game). Then he goes a few floors up and digs out a copy selling for HK$60.

Sino Centre

This is a blog about Hong Kong popular culture, so I'll start with my favourite mall for all things Hong Kong pop. This is Sino Centre, on Nathan Road between Yau Ma Tei and Mongkok, where we spent an hour or two earlier this Sunday lunchtime. Note that the photo is taken from outside on the opposite side of the road. If you take photos inside you are likely to come out without your camera, or maybe the hand that was holding it as well. It's that kind of mall. This is not a computer mall, by the way. There are six floors of tiny shops selling DVDs, CD's, figurines, video games, model cars, Japanese comics, and so on. I go for the specialist CD shops mostly - there are more than ten of them. I'll post up a few photos of things I have bought there, but for a taster, here is the blurb from the back of a HK$25 DVD of M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening on sale now...

"Everything happened very suddenly, without warning, without symptoms, spreading speed of more people is no way to beware of, almost suddenly, around the major cities in the United States every corner, everywhere filled with strange and frightening atmosphere of deaths. This is a staggering destructive power, and no signs of any reason to follow..... in the end result is what all this happened so rapidly? Complete destruction of human behaviour in the capacity-controlled? Humanity no longer has to avoid danger and harm of instinct, is no longer able to be aware of knife stabbed himself, the fire will be burned to death themselves, water and drown themselves. No ago, and no consequences , so happened, some people say that this is a terrorist attack, some people say is a failure caused by biological experiments, and some may say that this is a terrible than the devil also the weapons, or a kind of lost control of the virus. But even human Cai Butou its route of transmission - water? Or air?"