Category: Otaku

Shuwatch!

June 12, 2013

After yesterday’s exhaustion, today was a rest day. Which meant over 7 hours on my feet doing 22k steps 🙂

The location was Akihabara (again!):

Bernard stayed at the ryokan for resting, so it was just KLS and I. We had no real goal, and just perused the seemingly endless amount of otaku shops.

Here’s a creative display of new manga:

An area of merchandising that was nonexistent on our first trip a dozen years ago was food. It’s quite common now to see food merchandise for most series. Here’s a selection of monster hunter snack food items:

We also went to Yodibashi camera in Akiba, pretty much the most amazing store on Earth. Here is KLS perusing a $8500 4K TV:

And a charmingly marketed men’s razor:

Lunch was Italian. I had spaghetti and KLS a mushroom pizza. As we were waiting I checked my DS for street passes. It’s very easy to get them here on the subway. I’ve obtained 51 in just two trips out with the DS.

KLS headed back early and I hit the game shops and centers and failed to win anything great. I was pretty ruined when I got back. But not too ruined to be giddy with excitement when we discovered Ultraman on TV 🙂

Tomorrow we’re off to Kyoto for two days on the bullet train!

Let’s Talk Characters

June 6, 2013

Japan loves character goods, which are simply merchandise featuring a particular character. Often the characters exist solely to be merchandised; sometimes they originated elsewhere (comics or games usually).

The merchandising of popular characters is at an incredible level, with goods of all shapes and sizes to be found virtually anywhere.

Right now, it seems these are the most popular individual characters:

Rilakkuma

This guy has been around for 10 years now and rules the roost at the moment. Rilakkuma goods seem to be more common even than the venerable Hello Kitty (who I ignore in this article) and run the gamut of stationary, toys, clothes, food, electronics, kitchenware and just about everything else.

Here’s a photo of one single UFO Catcher machine stuffed with Kuma stuffed toys:

It was 4 years ago I was introduced to this guy via buying a pair of socks for SFL. And even then it was only because he is a bear. I’ve grown to like this character a lot 🙂

Nameko

He’s an ugly mushroom! He’s new, unusual, and riding a strong popularity wave. I hate him a bit, but Bernard has warmed to him. Right now his merchandise seems restricted to stationary and toys, but it is certainly abundant. I wonder if he will end up a fad?

Airou

This character is based on sentient cats from the Monster Hunter game series, which automatically earns points in my book. The fact he is cute and a cat only helps.

Although Airou doesn’t seem to have exploded beyond certain genre stores, there is an incredible variety of merchandise available and due to the success of the game the character is very well known. One of my favourite characters to be sure 🙂

In terms of series (as opposed to individual characters), there is no doing that One Piece rules the merchandise roost, with goods even more abundant than established lines such as Gundam or even Tsubaraya (Ultraman, Godzilla etc.). One Piece is the most successful manga series of all time, and undoubtedly the most merchandised!

Crossing Items Off My List

June 5, 2013

There is an origami ‘museum’ not too far from where we are staying. Naturally, since Bernard is an origamist, we visited yesterday.

The museum, which is in the building of a company that makes traditional washi paper, consists of a small gallery, an impressive store, the area where the paper is made and died, and rooms for instruction. It is all very impressive, and the staff were very friendly and helpful.

As we were leaving, a friendly old fellow intercepted us at the lift and told us he would give us a demonstration. This was none other than the chairman, and we were treated to a private demonstration of his skills (and his English!) for the next 20 minutes or so. It was wonderful!

If you’re ever in Japan, this place is worth a look.

The above is a random sketch in one of many sketchbooks in one of many arcades (‘game centers’) in Akihabara, where we spent the rest of the day. I didn’t take a great deal of photos throughout many hours of shopping, eating, UFO Catching and gaming, but I’m quite pleased to say many of the items on my shopping list were found in that several hour period. The rate at which my wallet bled cash was amazing!

Notable pickups included;
– The two DS Wizardry games that were never translated
– Musha Gundam 2
– Vast amounts of monster hunter figurines
– the new Yamashita art book
– certain souvenir items for friends that I was after

The latest and unquestionably greatest of the current crop of UFO figures is a magical girl Kirino from Ore no Imouto. Here’s a picture of an advert for it outside of one of the mega-arcades:

Bernard and I both won one 🙂

The monster hunter cat mascots (‘airou’) are a very big deal here, with vast amount of available merchandise. Twice now KLS has joked (?) about buying one of the big guys seen above!

Game Center highlights included the dozens of classic game posters on display at a Sega arcade, a punching game which nearly broke my hand, and Y200 for what seemed like an hour of darts 🙂

It was another very long and active day, and I fear Bernard may be at the apex of ruination. Even I am in an advanced state of decrepitude, and as I lay here early the next morning writing this the question of how to even rise from the futon is a challenging one!

But I’ll soldier on. As I always say on vacation, I can rest when I get home 😉

Robot Claw