Look at that sun! When I went to bed last night it was raining heavily and today I woke up to this. However all wasn’t perfect since it was a taxing 76% humidity (according to my phone) and even a short walk outside in the heat was sweaty.
It was another day of shopping for me. I’m front-loading the shopping since tomorrow I leave for ‘parts unknown’ for a week. Today I went to Nakano Broadway, one of my favourite shopping destinations in the world.
As usual I had as much fun perusing the stuff I didn’t buy – such as this Close Encounters action figure (from 1977!) – that I didn’t even know existed, or this nearly $4000 Gyaos toy (from Gamera) from the 1960s:
I bought many things – including a grail item or two – which I’ll blog when I get home, and overall it was a very successful shopping day. In fact both of these first two days of this Japan trip have, and I daresay if I was to go home now I’d return with a bounty comparable to entire previous trips to Japan 🙂
Maybe I’ve just reached maximum level as far as Japan shopping is concerned…
There’s a couple of arcades in Nakano mall, and one of them has a Gunpla recycling box in it. The idea is you put empty runners (the leftover frames when you build a model kit) in the box, and they are recycled by Bandai.
I’ve seen these for years and always wondered if people used them, but just after I took this photo an attendant came and emptied it, which I watched in fascination. She opened the box and pulled out a massive amount of empty runners, which she loaded into bags.
Look at it all! I wonder how much is Gundam and how much came from other model kits? I’m impressed (although not surprised considering Japan) that there didn’t seem to be any other waste in the box: people only used it for its intended purpose. It makes me wish I could recycle mine as well!
It was very humid when I left Nakano, and since I had a few mundane things to buy to prepare for my odyssey ‘up north’ I wandered around Ueno taking care of that. Crowds were thick and I definitely wasn’t the only one happy the rains were gone.
Tomorrow it’s time for the bullet train, which is always an adventure. Seven nights await in locations new to me. It’s going to be fun!