Robot Claw

I’m at the airport waiting to board. After a very long holiday I’m going home, which in many ways is always the best part.

I went a bit crazy with the blog this past month. I hope you enjoyed reading it all, and I apologize if some entries were too long.

According to my pedometer app, I took about 577,000 steps during this entire holiday, an average of about 18,000 a day. I’m surprised by that; I guess I’ve still got it in me!

But for this trip the last step has been made, the last rice ball eaten, the last crane game played, the last ¥ spent and the last postcard sent.

I’m sure I’ll be back one day 🙂

The last of this miniseries for this trip will deal with a few notable items I saw in the retro toy and game shops

Let’s begin with this box of E.T. trading cards. It’s not sealed, and it wasn’t clear how many packs were inside although since it was at Mandarake it was probably complete. I was tempted, but the price (about $125) was just too high. Should I have bought this?

Here’s a series of Star Wars shampoo bottles from the early 1980s! We all used to have some of these, but how many of us kept them! I was tempted by the R2 (about $30) but didn’t buy it. Should I have?

Keeping with Star Wars, how about this plastic ruler from the old Tokyo Disney Star Tours ride. I suspect this is unimaginably rare, but do collectors exist that would pay the ¥28000 (about $175)? Should I have?

You don’t see boxed AD&D figures (from the 80s) much, and even rarer are they in this good condition. It’s a pricey thing though, at about $95. Would you have bought it?

Here’s a true rarity for Japan: a boxed 1980s Doctor Who figure, and in spectacular condition as well. In another time with more luggage space I may have been tempted by the ¥8000 price (about $50) but not this time.

I’ll end with this UFO laserdisc set. I love this show and dearly want to rewatch it all, and why not on laserdisc? This had beautiful artwork but weighed an absolute tonne and was obviously out of the question as a purchase. But at only ¥80 (about fifty cents!) I was very, very, very tempted!

It wasn’t all resisting temptation. I did buy a few intriguing and dare I say ‘special’ items. After I return I’ll showcase a few in a post.

Game centers in Japan are where you go to play arcade games or win prizes from crane games. They’re also full of gacha machines that vend trinkets and little toys for anywhere from ¥100 and up. Depending on the size of the game center, they may contain other activities as well.

Retro arcade gaming seems to be picking up steam here, and in addition to the worlds best arcade (in my opinion), Hirose Entertainment Center (which I blogged about a lot last year), one of the big Akiba GiGo arcades has now converted one floor to retro machines.

Game centers are very popular in Japan, and the ones in Akiba are always flocked with locals and tourists alike. The biggest draw seems to be the crane games, and the contents change at a dizzying pace.

This machine with standing otters as a prize is in a game center in the station I walk past every day to and from the hotel. One day these otters turned up – they hadn’t been there the day before – and I watched a couple feed money into the machine trying to win one (they didn’t). The next day the machine contained new prizes, and I never saw the otters in any other machine. This has happened a lot just this past week alone, and the release calendar on one of the big Taito game centers shows they get new prizes an average of two per day.

The variety is as always mind-boggling, and it seems anything can end up in these machines. In addition to the vast quantity of anime merchandise including figurines, I saw bike pumps, freezer bags, toilet paper and the always popular food and snack items. Almost everything is licensed as well, and the licenses are as varied as the contents.

Winning is never easy, although more than once this trip I got (very!) lucky on my first coin. I tried to win the above figure and was unsuccessful, so I walked to a nearby reseller and bought her outright. Almost anything you see in machines can be bought from such places, who obtain them from people who win and then sell them for profit!

I love the crane games, and always look forward to seeing what’s in them and tossing a few ¥100 coins in to try my luck. I wish I’d had more luggage space this trip; I certainly would have played more!

Gachas continue their inexorable path to covering Japan, and even more so than cranes the trinkets in them can be just about anything. Want a minidisc keychains, a Jason ring, a voice-activated RPG-themed room alarms or a kpop ring with your favourite singers name on them? Just head to the nearest bank of gacha machines!

What about a drag queen acrylic standee? A mini model kit of a camping girl? A tiny model fishing rod? Or even a model ‘flat gacha’ machine? Once again they have you covered.

Some game centers include pachinko machines like this Godzilla one I played for about five minutes on just ¥100 (and I still don’t know what was happening). They have entire floors of medal based games and gambling games (like horse racing). They’ve got networked quiz games and racing games and all sorts of IC card based games. I’ve blogged about it all many times over the years, and I still wish the USA had such a robust system of high quality entertainment complexes like the Japanese game center.

It’s one of the many reasons I love visiting here. Every time I’m in Japan I spent hours in these places and I love to see how they change each trip. I’m happy that they seem to have weather covid and are booming again 🙂

I was about to say yesterday – my last full day here – was a lazy day in Akihabara but that’s absolutely not true! The day was nearly ten hours of shopping and gaming and dropping stuff off at the hotel for little breaks since it was so bloody hot!

It wasn’t quite Sunday busy, but Akiba was pretty crazy yesterday with both locals and tourists. I surmise this is because a lot of stuff is released on Friday and fans have to be there at the start. For example the station Atre mall started its new collaboration yesterday (Stein’s Gate), a new MtG set was released yesterday (Modern Horizons 3), Game centers had new Demon Slayer acrylics which caused long lines at the machines and a whole bunch of new Kuji lotteries began yesterday as well.

I spent some time exploring the original version of Akihabara: the postwar black market electrical town which still exists behind all the anime and game madness. It’s always puzzling how a shop dedicated to transformers can remain in business, but there it is next to others exclusively selling thins like capacitors or cables or unidentifiable components. The owners look as old as their stock, but above photo notwithstanding most of these stands seemed fairly popular with customers yesterday.

Of course I played loads of games, especially retro ones.

And it was time to throw away money into crane games as well, albeit ones with small prizes since luggage space is all but gone.

I think I’ve got a game center post to do. Look for that next.

I almost collapsed once or twice due to a mixture of exhaustion and the extreme heat and humidity. But as much as I wanted to rest in my room the call of Akiba just outside the window was impossible to ignore…

Last days of vacation are always a bit melancholy, but I had a fun one yesterday 🙂