That’s a vintage Star Wars figure, carded, in fantastic condition for ‘only’ about $190 US dollars. If this had been R2D2 then I wouldn’t have hesitated to buy it for this price, which is much less than it would typically sell for in the west.
That’s a Five Star Stories model kit for ¥55,000, or about $350 US dollars. This is of course a professionally assembled and painted example, but if I were to buy the kit I’d hardly be able to make it much less paint it, and I’d be out $350!
This is one of the weird things about shopping the otaku shops here: the prices. Occasionally items that seem like they should be expensive aren’t at all, and then you see things you’d imagine were basically trash that are for sale at insane prices (such as a single Danganronpa trading card we saw today for ¥10,000).
After a quick trip to Shibuya to get KLS a new release cosmetic (which released today!) we returned to Akihabara for the usual hijinks, and were out after dark visiting the arcades and finishing our shopping.
It’s always a struggle of space and weight, shopping here, and yesterday I saw an item with a box larger than our suitcases and I actually spent some time theorizing how to buy it and get it home. Ultimately reason prevailed!
At the last minute I saw a wonderful Zoffy figure that I ‘needed’ but it was used and unboxed, so I began a mad scramble around Akiba once again to find a new version. While I would ultimately not succeed, it was during this adventure that I discovered an even better Zoffy figurine I hadn’t even known existed:
It’s big, and so is the box, but it’s now packed 🙂
Since we’re going home tomorrow this will be the last blog entry from this trip. I’m sure once we’ve had a chance to unpack and unwind I’ll post about some of my pickups, but for now I’ll sign off from this, my 16th visit to Japan!
