Nipponbashi and YakiNiku

(Austin)

April 23, 2016

    Elijah, Teresa and I decided to go to NipponBashi because Teresa had never gone before. Like us, Teresa also is a big anime/manga fan, so we really wanted to take her. We went and explored all of the stores in NipponBashi again with her and I spent waaaaaaaaay too much money on buttons and badges (I collect them).

    We went to a lot of shops, but specifically we went to a second hand figure store that had figures for really cheap. The entire time I have been in Japan I was debating whether or not to buy this Luffy figure that was painted to look as if it were in the comic. It had forced shading and I thought it was really cool. I decided to get it at the second hand shop because it was half the price of a brand new version. Now.. I wonder how I'll get it home.

    After coming out of one of the stores we found an anime cafe that was currently themed after the currently airing anime: Noragami Aragoto. Teresa is a very big fan of the show, as are Elijah and I, so we decided to go in. We wanted to get one of the themed drinks, but we were informed that we would also need to buy food and pay for a table. Elijah and I weren't wanting to spend that much money, and after an internal struggle with herself, Teresa decided to stay. So, while she enjoyed the anime cafe, we went to checkout other stores.

    Elijah and I decided to try and find the store that sold second-hand electronics since Teresa was looking to buy a PS Vita. During our search we found a store that had a huge PC setup with a special flight stick system for plane and helicopter simulators. It looks really cool, and I would love to use it, but I imagine it costs a small fortune considering how authentic it looked. I also really wanted the triple monitor setup they had.

    

    About the time that we found the second-hand PS Vitas we received a message from Teresa informing us that she was done, so we went back to the cafe to get her. The second hand shop was in the same direction as the way back to the station, so instead we went to the Animate that was near the cafe. I spent a lot of money on buttons in that store. After leaving Animate and stopping by the store to show Teresa the second-hand PS Vitas, we headed back to the station. It started to lightly rain on our way, so we had hurry.

    We took the train back to Hirakatashi where we met up with Yusaku, Georgia, Natsumi and Ryosuke to go to YakiNiku. Yaki Niku is a style of restaurant where you order raw, seasoned meats and cook them at your table. You usually then put the meat in an assortment of different sauces at the table. We had 7 different sauces to chose from. You can also order and cook vegetables as well. It was all-you-can-eat for 90 minutes. We had 7 people, but the table only sat 6, so we had to get creative with our organization of the table. The food was absolutely delicious and Elijah acted as our cook for the night. Yusaku ordered a few too many rice bowls for everyone, so he had to eat a lot of rice that night, even though we warned him..

    After we ate Yaki Niku, Yusaku, Georgia, Ryosuke, Natsumi and Elijah went to the Karaoke place that was upstairs in the same building and Rachel came and met me and we went to Kuzuha. Rachel and I had decided to go to a Net Cafe to watch movies all night. Neither of us had ever been before, so we were excited to go. We took the bus from Kuzuha station to my home, I dropped off my purchases from NipponBashi, and I grabbed my backpack with my laptop. We walked from my home to the Net Cafe which was about a 10-15 minute walk. The Net Cafe we went to is called Bb Cafe.

    We filled out the required forms and got a small room with a computer and a TV. The rooms weren't actually rooms, but a giant open room with little booths created by medium height walls. It gave enough privacy such that if someone was casually walking by, they wouldn't see you in your booth, but if they walked up to the walls they could see over them easily. It looked kinda like this:

Most likely this was to keep people from doing bad things of any nature in the rooms. Many people actually use the booths to sleep at night due to the fact that they are cheaper than most hotels and can be found everywhere, especially in larger cities. Our booth was similar to this: 

    We watched Big Hero 6, Idiocracy and a few other movies. We stopped and went to sleep at 4-5am because we were so tired. At about 9, we got up, checked out and walked back to my house. After seeing Rachel off at the bus stop I walked back home and crashed. It had been an extremely busy, but fun, day.  The following picture is all the buttons that I bought when we went to NipponBashi earlier that day.

Hokkaido Trip: Miku Snow Town

Day 3, Part 3

(Austin)

    We headed to the airport to fly back towards Osaka. We arrived with excess time so Elijah and Ryosuke went to look for souvenirs to buy burn I went to a special store at the top floor of the New Chitose airport: Miku Snow Town.

    Miku Snow Town is a store that specializes in the Snow Miku theme of Hatsune Miku. They have the store, which has a huge range of products, but they also have a small cafe and a Snow Miku museum. The level of dedication oh this "town" was actually quite impressive and enjoyable to see.

I purchased...way more than I want to admit, however I actually took no pictures of the inside of the store or cafe. My mistake. I bought a phone case for my sister, Emily, a lot of postcards, and many other collectible items. While doing this... I lost track of time..

    Elijah and Ryosuke started to blow up my phone with messages, requesting that I make my way back downstairs to the security line. I still hadn't gone into the museum yet, so I hurried into it and took all the pictures attached to this post. I was certainly pressing my luck. I hurried down stairs, through the massive crowd and made my way to the security line. The line was so long that we were afraid that we were going to miss our plane. They split the security line so that people who had flights leaving soon could get through sooner. After passing through security we ran to the gaye which was already boarding. Incredibly close

    We made it on the plane and settled in for the flight back to Osaka.

State of the Collection

(Austin)

    

    So, Mom and Emily came to Japan and brought an empty suitcase so I sent home the collection of stuff I've bought. I only took pictures of the posters and buttons. There were also some books, 3 mugs, and an some nendoroids that I sent home but they aren't shown here. 

(I wonder how many of you see this and think "what a waste of money" :p  )

Tokyo Trip: Akihabara

Day4, Part 1.

(Austin)

    So the fourth day, our last day, finally came. On this day we planned to do an all day shopping spree in Akihabara. Akihabara is the largest shopping area in the world for anime and manga goods. They also have a ton of arcades and other niche anime related things like maid-cafes. Sadly, I wasn't on my photo-taking-A-game, so I only have a few photos.

    In Akihabara the building were completely covered in all kinds of advertisements. There were advertisements for games, new anime that would be airing, manga sales, pictures of idol groups, band concert advertisements... so much. It was really cool to see all of it. I think anyone who likes anime and manga has dreamed of coming to Akihabara atleast once because of how much of a mecca it is for anime goods. I've seen the place so many times in movies and anime, so it was kinda surreal to finally be in the town myself.

    There are a lot of shops that specialize in selling anime figures. An anime figure is a small statue-like plastic figurine that depicts a character from an anime or manga. There also are figures for some very popular games. Often anime figures depict women due to the fact that a large percentage of the audience of anime that would actually buy figures are males. This however does not mean that there aren't any male figures. Popular games like Metal Gear Solid and movies like Ironman often have figures made of them in stunning detail.

Picture of Hatsune Miku dressed in Kimono, a traditional Japanese dress.

Captain Levi from the incredibly popular anime: Attack on Titan

    We basically window shopping for a few hours, buying a few badges here and there. I did buy a small figure in one shop though. It was super cheap compared to many of the other places I had gone. After wandering around for a while we saw a sign advertisement that had the name of our favorite poster shop on it. The poster shop that we would often go to in Nipponbashi in Osaka was only a branch shop. The actual shop was apparently here in Tokyo, right here in Akihabara! Our wallets knew what was coming as we rode the elevator to the top of the building and stepped out..

   The poster shop was probably twice as big as the one in Osaka in terms of the stock they had. There was so many nice posters and beautiful art. In the back of the shop hung the originals for all of the posts. They put on display the original, hand-painted art pieces that we created and used to make the posters in the front of the store. While the posters were 3000¥ (roughly $30) the original pieces were anywhere from 100,000¥ ($892) to 250,000¥ ($2232). Sooo expensive. After buying a few posters we left the shop satisfied but with much lighter wallets.

   As the day was starting to draw to a close we decided to grab a bento from the local convenience store: Family Mart. We bought our food and ate just outside the store. It was fun to eat and just watch all the different people walk by. Anime, manga, and consequently Akihabara is not just for young people; while people watching you'll notice people from roughly 8 years of age all the way up to 70-80. Sure, most people are children / young-adult age, but the other folks weren't rare either. Unlike cartoons in the US which are very clearly geared towards children, anime and manga have lots of different genres, all geared towards different tasted and ages. There isn't a stigma here for watching or reading them as there might be in the US if an adult stated that they enjoyed watching cartoons or actively debated the latest anime episode as if it were the latest episode of Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones.

   With our bellies full and hearts satisfied, we made our way towards to Tokyo airport.

The full collection of buttons that I bought in Tokyo