Remember the toy boat kit Florence gave me that I made a few months ago? Watch this:
I love that we confirmed the use of the styrofoam piece 🙂
Category: Toys
Happy Life With Rilakkuma
Firstly, Bernard is actively blogging the trip, so be sure to visit his blog as well.
Today we had plans for Skytree, but changed them due to potential rain to a day in Shibuya. The idea was low impact activities due to Bernard’s feet, but it seems – happily – he is on the mend 🙂
His friend in the above shot is the side of a print club photo machine. They promise the world now: despite how you look the machine will make beautiful photos of you. Hrm…
That’s the (terrifying) controls for the toilet in Tokyu Hands. The seat was heated and possibly slightly vibrating already, but I kept my hands far, far away from those buttons since I’m not yet at the level of using a robocrapper.
Lunch was Subway, but for second lunch, we had the limited time only Super Potato at McDonalds, which is the biggest serving of fries they have ever done:
It cost Y490 (about $5) and contains about three large fries. Between the three of us, we soon had it looking like this:
That’s 1,000,000 calories well spent I reckon!
We visited a few stores, bought a bunch of stuff, played some UFO catchers and had some laughs. Before we knew it 7 hours had passed! Our last stop for the day was this place…
OMG you can almost see the fries in my belly! The Kuma store was even crazier than you could imagine. Products for every aspect of your life were obtainable here and it was difficult to choose what to buy! For instance, while wearing your hat…
…you could clean the house…
…before having a snack…
…then making some labels…
…and possibly ending your day with a visit to a throne like the one described above 🙂
I’ll end today with some shots of my dessert. It’s a cream sponge cake purchased for a song from the convenience store, and it’s delicious!
Tomorrow we’re getting out of the city for a day trip. Oh, and we all kind of love Nameko the mushroom now 🙂
Let’s Talk Characters
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!