Robot Claw

It’s January 1st, which means Fukubukuro! For the third year in a row we’re in Japan for new years and was the day to go and buy the ‘lucky bags’ and see if we actually get anything good inside.

This year we went a bit overboard, managing to buy eleven different bags in various shops around Akihabara. Let’s go through them one at a time!

The first bag (A) was purchased for ¥3000 (about $20) at a food/souvenir store in the Radiokaikan building. It was the biggest and most mysterious bag since the store doesn’t really sell otaku goods. Above you can see what it contained: a strange hybrid of kids items, household goods and stationary. I’ve never seen the shop sell anything like these things before, so I think they must have got a supplier for the bags.

As for the contents it was certainly generous, and the quality was more hit than miss, but ultimately very little of the contents interested us and we’d score the bag about 6/10.

That’s the insane cap you can see in the full content picture. I don’t think it’s designed for adults!

The next bag (J in the first pic of this post) contained 11 packs of card sleeves! That’s good value for the ¥2500 it cost, although the sleeves are essentially useless for me since there’s fewer than 100 of each and – more importantly – they are the smaller sized sleeved intended for Yugioh cards and will not fit mtg cards! This bag had a specific audience therefore, and it’s not me.

Next we opened the first of two bags specializing in gacha prizes (K in the photo). As you can see it contained 30 of them, and cost ¥2000.

The bag was true to its word with exactly 30 balls inside, and here they all are opened:

Overall this bag impressed! While there’s a few duds in the results, most of these are quality gacha prizes and some are good enough I would even have rolled for them myself! Thumbs up for this bag!

Next was a generic ‘anime character’ bag from Ami Ami in Radiokaikan (H in the pic). This was another ¥2500 bag and as promised contained a diverse range of items: a wall scroll, several acrylics, some mini photo cards and a keychain. There’s some quality here, including a few items from current shows, and it was absolutely worth the price. This one was fun to open.

Next we opened the first of the two prize figure bags (I in the photo). At ¥3300 this was the third priciest bag we had, although mysteriously neither of us could remember where or even when we’d bought it (although it certainly was today). None of the figures were boxed, but they were still sealed in their shipping bags so these weren’t second hand prizes. They’re all good, but the Miku and Witch are exceptionally good! This may have been the best of the bags we bought today.

Like a fool I neglected to photograph the contents of the next generic bag (B in the photo). This was another ¥3000 bag and claimed to have ‘over ¥10000 worth of anime goods’ on it.

This was a double lie, since the contents hardly summed to ¥10000 and since very few of them were anime related. Above I’m modeling one of two terrible shirts in the bag, and were it not for the inclusion of a single Dragon Quest phone strap I’d say every single item would have been baggage!

The most disappointing bag was the ¥5500 Ultraman themed bag I was conned into buying by a liar in a Radiokaikan used shop (D in the photo). Of the 18 items inside, only 5 were Ultraman related and the average quality was extremely low. One boxed toy was 17 years old! This wasn’t even close to worth ¥5500!

The second prize figure box (B in pic) was ¥3000 and obtained from the big Fukubukuro shop just outside Radiokaikan. This time the figures were boxed and essentially brand new, although we preferred the selection in the other. That said, another high quality bag for figure enthusiasts!

Time for another gacha prize bag (C in the pic), this time with fifty balled prizes in it! Quantity isn’t e everything though, since this was the lesser of the two gacha bags.

There were too many can badges, too many weird bug creatures, too many ropeways and too many roadside crossings! We’d been opening for hours and tore through this one like it wasn’t there 🙂

Next was another generic figure bag (E in pic) once again costing ¥3000 and obtained at Radiokaikan. They call this the bag, which is probably since they’ve been doing them forever and nothing at all to do with quality, since it was bad!!

The majority of the contents were from shows we’d never even heard of, much less seen, and many of the items were just ugly. We gleefully tossed them all into room trash ;

But not before I modeled the beautiful can badge almost as big as my face! Yes the laughter in the pic is genuine: more than anything else we had fun opening these bags and even if we don’t keep much of the contents memories have been made 🙂

Oh and the 11th bag (G in the photo)? That’s a cosmetics bag from Yodobashi, and at ¥10000 was the most expensive bag purchased today. KLS was very impressed with the contents and will certainly use them. A hit therefore, for the last bag of the evening.

Happy New Year incidentally. I hope you had as much fun today as we did!

That’s me on the way to the Ultraman Live Show we attended yesterday. I was excited, since we attended one last year and it was fantastic and my expectations were high!

That’s me posing outside the venue (the Prism Theatre at Tokyo Dome) with Ultraman Zero and Z. There were all sorts of banners and signs outside, and a fairly large crowd for a 10 am performance on New Year’s Eve. My excitement level rose.

Inside the venue there were many things to see, including kaiju suits and a large display of upcoming product releases. Lots of standees as well, and plenty of advertising for the upcoming movie.

That’s Dark Arc, from the upcoming film. You could buy advance tickets at the event, which came with an exclusive promo card for the Ultraman TCG. Even though I wouldn’t have been able to use the ticket, I was tempted to buy it just for the card 🙂

Even though we purchased out tickets only the day prior they were pretty good. This is a photo from my seat of a (cute) Pigmon, part of the warm up act that taught the audience the rules and how to interact with the show. At this point my excitement levels couldn’t have gotten higher!

And of course it was great! Photos are not permitted except at specific moments, so all of these come from the ‘post show’ portion where other Ultras made an appearance.

The main show was an Ultraman Arc story where he saved us all from evil robots created by Alien Mefilas, and there were cameos from Ultraman Blazar, Earth Garon and Sevenger. Dozens of kaiju made appearances, and the sound and light effects were top-notch. I loved it!

I said this last year but it beats repeating: it’s so unusual that the actors from the show are in these stage shows! The above is Yuki Totsuga, who plays Yuma (Arc’s host) in Arc, and we watch him every week on the show. This must be incredible for kids who are young enough to still think of him as the character.

Sho Kaneta, who plays Shu on the show, also appeared. He probably had an even bigger role than Yuma (who naturally left the stage when Arc himself was present), and it was very much like seeing the character live. That’s Ultraman Arc in the photo btw. Was he looking at me?

As I said it was wonderful, and I’m already looking forward to the next time I can see one. Afterward we visited the large and well-stocked shop (I didn’t buy much…) before heading to Tokyo station for lunch and a bit of shopping.

We had originally planned on going to Asakusa shrine to ring on the new year, but I was getting tired and feeling a little poorly so we went over earlier in the evening. I had some corn…

And a candy apple…

And bought an Ultraman Arc mask! It was cold and windy, so we bailed early to return to the hotel and watch idols on tv until we fell asleep.

Happy New Year!

That’s me eating an ‘American Dog’ purchased from 7-11 while standing across the street from Lawson (on the right) with Fuji in the background. Apparently a TikTok video made taking photos of Lawson with Fuji looming over it the thing to do, and there’s lines of Chinese tourists attempting just that. I snapped this one quickly as we strode past.

Our destination was a place called the ‘Nostalgic Toys Museum’ but was actually a showcase of a Japanese celebrity collector. While much of it were toys, there were other items as well including magazines, records and movie posters. Most of it was very old, but it was well presented and a fascinating (but small) museum.

The staircase art is handdrawn using markers directly onto the white wall by an artist named Nobumasa Takahashi. It may have been the best part of the entire museum!

Apparently it was done freehand without planning and took 1.5 years. It’s a massive piece that spans the entire staircase and you could spend hours examining the details.

The guy that owns the collection is currently an appraiser for Antiques Roadshow Japan, and is well-known for his collection of old tin toys. The bulk of the collection were examples of these, ranging from simple figurines to space toys and mechanical ones such as this infamous monkey.

The highlight for us was a case containing dozens of the worst Mickey Mouse stuffed toys we have ever seen. They were deformed and evil-looking and it’s hard to imagine any child being happy with them!

The description says these are known as ‘spider Mickeys’ by collectors (due to their spidery limbs) and were made by a British company in the mid 20th century. Apparently Walt Disney was so horrified by them he prevented them being exported and they are therefore very collectible today!

We laughed so hard at how awful these were that I almost coughed out a lung. Today’s blog title was my exclamation; it’s difficult to believe any factory could produce licensed toys of this low caliber today.

It was a good museum, although I think only truly nostalgia for the centenarians amongst us. For my toy nostalgia, I still prefer the retro shops in Akiba and Nakano!

Next we stopped at a small gemstone museum (both of these are right on the lakefront near our hotel) and looked at pretty rocks for a while.

They had a great collection and went into exhaustive detail about how the stones are formed, coloured and cut. I liked that most cases included an unfinished stone as well as cut versions.

That gigantic quartz crystal behind kls is real and weighs over a tonne! This part of Japan used to be famous for cut crystal and the museum had examples of tiny stones with elaborate scenes carved into them. Apparently they used to be popular in kimono sashes and hair clips, but the skills died out decades ago.

This afternoon will be more rest and relaxation and then an early start back to Tokyo tomorrow morning. The hot springs have worked and we’re both mostly better, and we’re also looking forward to the warmer weather back in the capital 🙂

There’s a ropeway right next to our hotel which leads to an ‘observatory’ with incredible views of Mount Fuji.

At 3776 m it’s far from the tallest mountain in the world, but it is Japan’s tallest, and its relative isolation coupled with its symmetry have rightly made it an icon of Japan. It’s always impressive seeing it from a distance, but the views we had today were breathtaking.

It was just below freezing when we went up and since we still have some cold symptoms we had to protect against breathing the freezing air. But the sky was clear and the views were tremendous, not just of Fuji but the lake as well. I’d say this observation area is a contender for one of the best in the world.

Actually climbing Fuji is a big task that requires careful preparation (an old Japanese saying says only wise men climb Fuji but only fools climb it more than once) and I’ll never do it, but I learned today that the first man who ever did apparently completed the task about 1500 years ago when he rode to the top ‘instantly’ on a horse! Since he was a prince, I’m guessing the accuracy of the tale may have elements of uncertainty to it 🙂

After we descended we took a short cruise on the lake to once again view Fuji, this time from the water. The lake is very still and the surface reflective, and apparently at certain times it can also be mirrorlike. Today was not one such time – not least because of the boat wake – but I did my best to capture a reflected image regardless.

The other mountains you see in the above photo are to the north/northwest of Fuji and are less than half of its height. They’re impressive as well, but given you can just turn around and see Fuji I suspect these guys get short shrift. The above photo by the way was taken from the viewing terrace on the roof of our hotel.

It was a relaxing day and we’re both feeling much better, and we’ll repeat this again tomorrow. The hot springs at this hotel are great, so I look forward to several more soaks before we depart.

That’s the night view of the lake from the front of our hotel. And yes, even with all the obvious light pollution it’s still dark enough here to clearly see stars!