Category: Trip

I visited Nakano again yesterday, the holy land of retro shoppers. I go here every trip, and I find it’s still worth it even if these days I usually don’t find much I want to buy.

I very nearly bought this Flipper toy, and probably would have had my attention not been caught by postcards in the same store. What would I have done with the Flipper thing? No idea, but at sub $20 I’m sure it would have made a good gift for Bernard who I’m guessing is a Flipper-lover.

Nakano is certainly changing, and yesterday I thought a lot about the fact my first visit was over 23 years ago. Things that were brand new then are being sold as retro now and displays of the truly old stuff – like the 70s/80s manga magazines above – are shrinking over time.

I hardly bought anything (I have all the above FF books already) and after a few hours returned to Akihabara. When KLS returned (she’d been to Harajuku and Shinjuku) we went out again to explore the local shops.

There’s a doll shop in the Radiokaikan building that makes and sells unique dolls. Often the sale process is a blind auction, but many of them have price tags and it seems you can just walk in and buy them. The one above amazed us, especially the list of parts used and the fact you can apparently just buy a ‘snake body’. If you want it you’ll need over $2500 and a big suitcase!

The topic of doll shops in Akiba is fascinating and possibly warrants its own blog post. Maybe on a future trip I’ll do that…

Big Magic, the MTG shop in the same building, never disappoints and they’ve just casually got ¥1000000 boosters on display as well as much more expensive single cards (including five Black Lotuses). My feeling this trip is that interest in MTG seems to have actually declined here, so it’s good to see this one store holding fort (although I assume their customers are mostly foreign).

The Dragon Quest McDonald’s promotion began yesterday as well. There is a cool set of slime toys, but it’s purchasable only by lottery winners who live in Japan!

I was considering a review series on Japanese fairy floss cotton candy but after eating so much this trip I’ve realized it’s all almost identically wonderful.

Japan has mastered the ancient art of manufacturing and packaging cotton candy and it’s now become my favourite candy item here. I’ve eaten so much of it (over 20 bags of the bottom right one in the first pic) that I need to stop, but you can bet it’ll be on the menu again next trip 🙂

You won’t be surprised to hear that gacha machines are as ubiquitous as ever. The average price of prizes continues to rise, and machines below ¥300 are very rare now.

Dedicated gacha shops are common, and there’s even a few chains. We went into a three story one near Osaka station with over 2800 machines (most with unique prizes)! These places are popular with locals and tourists alike, so it’s no wonder they’re reproducing.

As we do every trip, we’ve sunk a decent amount into the machines. And according to our policy we don’t open the capsules until we return home. Since some bubbles are opaque, we’ll certainly forget what’s in them.

Heres my usual gallery of the variety of prizes. I used to be able to broadly categorize (anime, game, animal, tokusatsu etc) but those days are gone since anything seems possible now.

I watched a Japanese documentary on gacha prize design a few months back, and they estimated 20-25 new sets go into machines every day!

If you happen to be watching the new Kamen Rider series called Kamen Rider Zeztz, you’ll have seen his power ups are vended from gacha machines. Of course there are machines decorated to look identical to the ones in the show, and they vend toy versions of the power ups. It would be so much fun to be a child in Japan!

The premise of gacha has now made its way into drink machines. While I’ve seen such things on previous trips, they seem much more common now. A certain amount of ‘slots’ in a drink machine is dedicated to vending beverages with unique cans. Since there are several types what you get is random like a gacha, plus you get a can of tea as well!

Thats the Shadowverse can I got. The design is actually a sticker that was immediately removed and applied to a handy postcard 🙂

Let’s break my rule and open a gacha prize! I saw the above machine in Osaka and bought it (¥300) not due to the art, but because I (mistakenly) thought it was one of the machines with handwritten messages. Here’s what was inside:

Keen observers (I wasn’t) will note the ‘messages’ are spoiled not only on the included sheet, but also on the gacha poster as well! I’ll give it points for having an actual glass bottle, and also being the smallest bottle I’ve ever seen. It was devilishly difficult to get the message out and I had to use tweezers in the end. Here’s what it says:

I would have preferred a handwritten message from the girl on the poster!

We caught the Shinkansen back to Akihabara today. As usual it was a comfortable trip, and both of us may have even dozed a little.

Ten days ago when we did this trip in the other direction we went through a blizzard, but today the weather was clear. It looks to be the same for the remainder of the trip, so we’ve been lucky!

There’s our train lunches. Which one would you eat?

Our Akihabara room is large by Tokyo standards, which is good since we’ve got a mountain of luggage to pack. The view outside the window looks onto the train track and we can see the trains going all day long, which is cool.

Dinner was Sushiro with the touchscreen wall. It’s a dazzling display of technology miles beyond anything the USA has, which is another thing I like about Japan. We only ate 8 plates (which cost about $16) but the table across from us – 4 young men – ate over 50!

We’ve got no plans for Tokyo, aside from just enjoying the familiarity and the vibe and filling up our suitcases. I’m sure we’ll fit something else in one of these remaining days.