BADGE DROP: New Badges and SWEET News!

My son left for sleep away camp yesterday. Luckily he left me his user name and password because he never would have forgiven me if he didn't get the chocolate. He worked hard to build up points in hopes of having enough, and he did!

now I have everything from this badge drop except for Geocatche and park badge....
Who noticed that the parks were mainly in the north?

@ yaldah: I didn't use the webpage for the first code. I searched and found it on Google.

I've noticed that sometimes the system needs the trigger of you scoring other points to award something like a new badge that you already have the points for, or one of the contributor badges, once they go live in the system, @vlong.

her comment is sorta related though...

Having some difficulty with the "My Neighbor Totoro" badge.

Careful study of the clue led me immediately to the conclusion that the key witness must be the next door neighbor of some Japanese chap by the name of Hiyao Miyazaki. Drat. Japan again. I don't know why more of these quests can't be closer to home. The Furstenberg Park quest was no problem at all, but flights to Japan are expensive. I rang up my travel agent, and asked her to put me on the first flight to Japan, preferably a flying boat this time. As usual, she claims there are no flying boats flying the Pacific anymore. Absurd. I tell her that I know she is lying, and that if I am killed when my airliner makes a forced landing in the Pacific it will be her fault. She asks me why I don't buy my tickets over the Internet like everyone else. Bah! Internet! That old myth surfaces again.

I start packing. Fedora and bullwhip, or pith helmet and elephant gun? I go for the fedora. But if I keep being sent to Japan, I'm going to have to invest in some proper oriental robes and grow a Fu Manchu mustache.

A long flight. Many passengers have little glowing boxes with buttons. I avert my eyes.

In Tokyo, I meet my first hitch. I go looking for a telephone directory so I can look up the address of this Miyazaki gentleman, but there don't seem to be any telephone directories. Glowing screens everywhere, but not a phone book in sight. Obviously someone has hidden them in hopes of thwarting my quest. Probably that darned Cherylo again, here ahead of me once more. I am reduced to asking random people on the street, in hopes that someone might speak English. "Excuse me, do you know Hiyao Miyazaki?" Miraculously, the first person I ask speaks English and seems to know the man. "Studio Ghibli" he says. "Koganei." Great! "Do you know where I can get a horse?" I ask him. Instead of answering he pulls one of those little glowing boxes out of his pocket and starts poking at it. My Golly! Even in Japan!

I start to leave, but he comes running after me, trying to thrust the glowing box in my face. I pull my hat over my eyes. "Mr Cowboy," he says, "this is where you can get a horse!" I ask where, and he gives me the address. I brought a map with me. It will be a long walk.

As I walk, people keep shouting "Indiana Jones" at me. I say, "No, Michigan!" to the first few, and then give it up, Indiana, Michigan, it's probably all the same to the Japanese.

Eventually, I get myself a horse and set out for Koganei. Policemen immediately try to stop me. This always happens. Luckily I have learned a trick for this. Once in London a constable who stopped me asked me where the film crew was. I had no idea what that meant, but I found that if I said they would be here momentarily, the constabulary would leave me alone. So I told the Japanese policeman that the film crew would be here momentarily and he let me go.

After just a few hours, I arrived at Studio Ghibli. By this time I was being followed by hundreds of people on bicycles. I tried to ignore them, but they were making the horse nervous. But I didn't need Studio Ghibli. I needed their next door neighbors, which turned out to be a noodle shop. I tied up my horse to a street sign, and went in. An elderly Asian man is there. Obviously a wise oriental sage. "Honorable sir, I need help finding soot sprites, or a youth book about them!" He suggests that I might want the people next door, but I say no. "Why do you want this?" he asks. "For the Ann Arbor District Library Summer Game" I say. "Ah," he says, "you buy some noodles, and I'll go into the back room and consult the iPad." I am momentarily confused, then I understand. "Oh, you mean the 'I Ching!'" "If you say so," he says. He disappears into the back room, and I eat noodles for a while. They are very good noodles.

After a while the ancient scholar comes out and says, "I have discovered your game code." And he gives it to me. Victory!

But when I come out, my nervous horse has made a very large mess on the sidewalk, and there are some very angry policemen who arrest me in spite of the fact that the film crew will arrive momentarily. Now I am being held in custody.

Could someone please help me by wiring me 5,000 yen for bail?

So I headed back to the noodle shop next to Studio Ghibli. The sage was still behind the counter, so I asked him if he had the art book. "If you buy more noodles," he says, "I'll do another search on the iPad for you."

"You mean 'I Ching'", I said. "I fear I have exhausted my funds. I can't afford to buy any more noodles."

"No noodles, no web search," says the sage.

"I'll trade you my fedora," I say.

"Out!" he says, pointing at the door.

Dejected, I slouch my way toward the door. And then I see something poking out of the trash can next to the door. Could it be? Yes! It's a art book! I grab it and run.

A block away, I sit down on a bench to examine my find. It's a rather torn up and a bit dirty, but as I thumb through it, I see that every page is covered with black and white art drawings, usually many drawings in little boxes on each page, with lots of Japanese writing mixed in. I look back at the brown cover. It has a picture of a little Japanese boy with big glasses and a lot of Japanese writing, but there is a little dot on the cover with the English words "Detective Conan" written in it.

This is always the hardest part for me, where I always seem to need to get help. The clue says I'm supposed to find my code in the book. But most books have thousands of words in them. How am I supposed to tell which are the game code? This book is worse than most. The words in it are all written in Japanese characters, but I know the code should use the English alphabet. I paged through the book more carefully, looking for something that well leap out at me as an obvious game code. And then I found it. A page is missing, torn completely out of the book! Mercy! The noodle shop sage must have given this book to some previous questor who had the price of a bowl of noodles. The questor found the page with the game code, tore it out, and threw the rest of the book in the trash. My copy was useless!

My despair knew no bounds. What could I do? I stared at the cover of the book, and an ideal crystallized in the right front hemisphere of my brain. Detective Conan! I must find this person. Surely he could tell me what was on the missing page!

But how am I to find him in this city without telephone directories? Once more I must trust to the kindness of strangers. I stopped a young man who was walking by. "Excuse me, can you help me?" I ask. "No English," he says. I show him the cover of the book. "Detective Conan," I say. "Ah," he says. "Detective Conan at Big Sight!"

I'm confused, but he grabs my map, unfolds it, and points to a spot by the bay. It is labeled "Big Sight Convention Center". "Thank you!" I say.

So I start walking. Too bad I lost my horse. It's a long walk, but eventually I arrive at a building like a mushroom made of triangles, and there is a big picture of the boy with the glasses on a sign hanging above the entrance way. The sign says "Case Closed 81 - Release Party," whatever that means. And there, standing in front is the very boy, the splitting image of the one on my art book. But then something strange happens. There is another one. And another. And another. At least half the people in the crowd are little boys with glasses, some bigger, some smaller, but all dressed alike with the same glasses as on the book. Very odd, but I only need one.

As I approach everyone starts shouting "Indiana Jones, Indian Jones" again. Some crowd around and want to stand next to me while friends flash lights at us from some of those awful glowing boxes.

I slip away and find a glasses boy, one almost man-sized, all alone. I tell him about the library quest and the game code, and the missing page, but he just starts playing with a glowing box. I leave him and ask another glasses boy. I think this one might really be a girl. She doesn't seem to speak English at all. But then the first glasses boy I talked to taps me on the shoulder and gives me the game code. I give him a big hug and thank him profusely. Another stage of my quest is behind me.

"Find a cat who makes tasty noodles," it said.

Well, that was a day wasted. Do you know how many cats there are in Tokyo? Well, I can tell you, if you put them in a kitchen, even with the pot already on the stove and already boiling, none of them, NONE OF THEM, make tasty noodles.

OK, one cat made noodles, but they were awful. Seriously, seriously undercooked.

Then I looked back at the clue again, and it says "Find a NOVEL ABOUT a cat who makes tasty noodles."

Dang. That's a whole lot easier. I gotta remember to read these clues more carefully.

Now what am I going to do with all these cats?

While I have no idea on what you mean by clue word, I know that the documentary is about someone named R**** C*****.
I don't think I can view the hints if I already got the code, if that's what you mean by clue word.

Thank you for the chocolate info!

Zekicmom, you also have my thanks for clearing up the chocolate stuff. I thought there was no code this year! :)

@yaldah - you obviously have the right name, so now just search it under the categories from the clue. For a singer /songwriter you would search the name under author and music. It won't be the first thing that pops up, but I believe it's in the first item of the group this person was in at one point. Hope that helps!