Category: Toys

Happy Life With Rilakkuma

June 7, 2013

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

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!

A Bridge Too Far

June 3, 2013

Predictably, we couldn’t sleep much our first night, and took advantage of this to plan a trip to the famous Tsujiki fish markets. We left the ryokan around 5:30 am and headed over…

…only to find it closed to tourists until 9 am! So, at about 6:30 am we were loose in a city that wouldn’t wake for about 3 hours 🙂

That was taken at a fox shrine near Tsujiki, as we debated our next move. Eventually we decided to stroll over to the imperial gardens before heading to another attraction around 9. The walking had begun!

Bernard’s camera is stupid-impressive, but also stupid-heavy! Here he is self-portraiting during a break we took after finding the imperial gardens closed! Asakusa here we come!

That’s a look back along Nakamise-dori from within the famous Senso-ji temple. It was about 11 am by now; the day had barely started yet we’d been gallivanting for hours already. Senso-ji was great though, with lots of people and the tourist shops selling everything a man could want…

Our first lunch (Burger King!) over, it was time for Odaiba. While no Alihabara or Nagano, it was here that Bernard would be introduced to the wonder of the Japanese arcade 🙂

This photo was taken while I was still in the late stages of shock after just coming across a Monster Hunter shop in Decks mall. Since I believe in supporting the economy, I made some modest purchases and was awarded with a special bag, Airu (the cat mascot) hat and even a sticker!

That’s a real scale Gundam outside Diver City mall at Odaiba. Note KLS for scale. This was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen!

It was about 2 pm when we found the first of 3 major arcades in Odaiba. Oodles would be spent UFO catching and redemption machining, and a great time was had by all! Among other things Bernard won himself an AKB48 mouse and mousepad set:

I won, from a single Y500 (~$5) credit, three super cute Airu’s from the same machine:

But alas, the wonderful Rilakkuma hand puppets were cursed with a ‘weak claw’ machine and were unwinnable:

We eventually left Odaiba around 6 pm, all in a state of advanced ruination. We’d been going strong for about 13 hours, and my pedometer registered over 40,000 steps. We had bags of loot and dying feet when we got back. Delirious, I even ate a convenience store hot dog for dinner…

…before collapsing – corpselike – onto the bed! What a first day 🙂

Robot Claw