Robot Claw

I love finding unusual and unexpected things in Japan, and this post shows off a few of them.

This model kit was extremely inexpensive (about $8) and the box is so lightweight I imagine the kit itself is tiny and has very few pieces. But look at it: a kappa! Of course I was going to buy this! And since it’s glow-in-the-dark, it won’t even matter if I don’t paint it. I’ll make this one day and blog it when I do.

In the game center post I did while I was in Japan I showed a photo of Friday The 13th metal rings in a gacha, and as weird as those were they were somewhat common and I saw them in many machines. One day, in a dingy alley in Akihabara, I found another metal ring gacha, only this time it was Star Wars. Here’s the five rings it contained:

This was the only one of these machines I encountered the entire trip, and when I found it there was only one single item remaining in the machine. Of course I bought it, and I think you can guess which one I wanted. Here’s what I got:

It seems the gods of luck were smiling on me that day 🙂

The above is a Magic The Gathering Japanese promo sticker from 2023. It seems these were randomly given to players who played in official events (in Japan) last year although even the official Hasbro announcement only lists 12 stickers (not including the capybara) but the store I purchased it from had many more. It’s a cute and unusual MtG mystery item!

I bought this book at a wonderful bookstore in Akiba, and it’s an encyclopedia of legendary and influential RPGs from the early days of computer games.

This is an incredible book, full of information and details about many games I hold dear, and I’ll be reading this one using my phone translator!

What I particularly love is that it includes many games we didn’t get in the west, such as Seal of Haja for the PC-88 (shown above). This book was also the first in a set of three, and I already regret not picking up the other two 🙂

Here’s another curiosity: a wafer biscuit with ‘chocolate sticker’ that expired 8 years ago and that I paid about $5 for. The packaging will suggest why I bought this, and if you need a further hint you can re-read this post from last year. Suffice to say this will be opened and have its own blog post soon enough…

And last but certainly not least, we have the above article of jewelry. At first it looks like a standard crucifix, but looking closer we see it is actually:

A crucified Ultraman! At first glance this may seem unforgivably blasphemous, but be mindful that this is from a different culture, and the Japanese idea of crucifixion (which was a common method of execution almost into the 20th century) isn’t as singular as it is in the west.

This piece of jewelry is actually in reference to a famous scene in episode 13 of Ultraman Ace, from 1972, where several Ultras were caught and crucified by an alien:

This had not been the first time crucifixion was shown in an Ultraman series, but to my knowledge it was the last. (As an aside you could probably write an academic paper on the use of crucifixion in many different tokusatsu shows up to and including Evangelion.)

A motley and weird collection of pickups then. Which of these would you have purchased?