Robot Claw

Went to the Nakano Broadway shopping arcade yesterday, probably my favourite place to shop in the entire world.

Dozens of specialized stores sell all sorts of collectibles and curios. While some are ‘mom and pop’ shops crammed to the gills with stuff (like the example above), most are part of a megastore called Mandarake, and run the gamut from book and CD shops to stores specializing in specific types of doll or model kit.

I could – and have – spend hours just perusing the weird stuff sold in these shops, and there’s a treasure around every corner. Like these tiny Japanese Star Wars candy boxes from the late 1970s (priced at about $380 US today) that seemed to contain a Star Wars character Letraset each.

Or this tiny (about 10 cm square) little booklet with art from a famous mangaka that was priced at about $2500.

Or even this snail zoids kit! I very nearly bought this actually, but the box was a bit too large for our remaining space.

Kristin saw a 28 million yen Hermes purse in a resale shop (that’s $213k US dollars in todays money), and a $30k amplifier for a turntable. It’s hard to imagine who will buy these, and how they even got into this slight out-of-the-way mall.

The above is an item I didn’t buy, which is perhaps regrettable since it was sealed. But it was amazing to see regardless. I did make a few purchases, including of some items I’ve been after for years, but I’ll leave them for future posts.

We found an Ultraseven ‘exhibit’ to celebrate 55 years of the beloved character. I was able to pose next to an original suit (not the original suit, but one made since) which was cool.

But mostly the 7 hours spent there was perusing the weird shops, and occasionally communicating via google translator with employees to try and find a treasure or two. It was another fun day 🙂

Since we’re just shopping these remaining days, it’s time for some thematic posts. Today let’s cover crane games!

These haven’t changed fundamentally: you put ¥100 or more in and manipulate a crane to try and win a prize. The prizes are usually food, figurines, plushes or some sort of toy or accessory. Often they are anime themed, but equally often not.

I like the figures of course, and as usual they’re difficult to win. The cranes are weak, and randomly become stronger, so luck and persistence are required. Sometimes – rarely – you’ll win a prize in a few goes. Sometimes you’ll dump thousands of yen in and walk away empty handed.

It can be maddening when the crane picks the thing up and drops it once it rises. Here the evil of these machines is on full display: they manipulate you to keep trying: ‘you can do it, you almost just did!’

There exist exotic variants as well, such as this one where the prize is held by what seems to be the merest of elastic strings. But it’s a ruse: no matter how well placed you get the crane this just bounces up and down. It’s locked in with an amazing force, and far, far harder to release than it looks!

Or there’s the above type, where you manipulate the red bar on the left to hit one of the plates to tilt the entire device, at which point treats rain down as prizes. I actually won on this first go. It was a box of cookies, which we discarded without even opening.

This one dispenses Kobe beef flavoured crisps. In these types the crane picks up the object every time (see the rubber grippers on the crane in top left) and the trick is hoping that when it drops it actually falls into the prize slot. Basically it’s random, and you’ll lose far often than win.

Here’s some cute chickens, which are much bigger than the prize slot. Here the difficulty is twofold: actually picking them up and then hoping they fall sideways so they can fit in the slot. Do you feel lucky?

The above shows a ¥10 machine (yes, ten yen) which vended tiny Australian animals. This was easy, with a nice strong claw. While designed for kids I played this a lot and won every animal! The ¥10 machines are fun since they give you the adrenaline boost of a win for a low cost 🙂

Obviously these machines wouldn’t be so common (and fun) if they never paid out, and one of the reason we love them is the feel when you do win. Like me getting two Umamusume (‘Horse girl’) branded energy drinks from one go. They tasted unspeakably bad, but the cans will live in my can collection for ever (which reminds me maybe I need to do an update blog post on that). I’ve also won a figure, a sheet (I think?) and many little toys.

Sometimes you see a prize you want that you know you’ll probably never get, like this horse girl noodle stopper. In this case you can just ‘cheat’ like I did yesterday and buy the figure new at Akiba in one of the many shops that sell crane game prizes. Sure it cost me ¥2000, but I never would have won it for that price had I tried the machine 🙂

Bullet train back to Tokyo yesterday. Once again, first class, and once again a super comfy and enjoyable trip. As usual we got up with the Sun and were on the train when lesser people still slept. Here was my breakfast:

After dropping our so-heavy-even-Hercules-would-struggle suitcases off at the hotel, it was time for Odaiba! Now we’ve been before, and I’ve even posted photos of the giant Gundam on this blog, so today I’ll show a dramatic one taken from the back:

You can’t see the (new) head in that pic, which features a single prominent horn. As you can see the weather was beautiful, and the Gundam shone even more beautifully than Himeji castle 🙂

After lunch we headed to the main attraction of the day, Teamlab Planets. Three years back I went to the now-closed Teamlab Borderless installation also in Odaiba and it was breathtaking. We had high hopes for this one as well.

Much like Borderless it is a series of art installations utilizing light and projections, and the viewer walks through them to experience them. Most are in large spaces, and the use of darkness and mirrors makes it difficult to gauge exactly how big the rooms are. Where borderless was almost exclusively light projections (albeit creative ones) Planets has a few more tricks up its sleeve.

Such as this room full of large inflated ‘bubbles’, many of which can be freely moved around.

Or this room which includes hundreds of strings of real orchids that dangle from the (mirrored) ceiling. You crawl under them to get into the middle area, after which you feel like you’re in a cave of orchids. It’s quite special, especially since it’s currently winter here and the orchids all seem healthy and as you can see are flowering.

The two highlight parts of Planets for us were difficult to photograph due to them being mostly dark and involving projections. The first is a gigantic domed space with a mirrored floor. Intricate and super high resolution animations of flowers are continuously projectors onto the dome in such a way you feel you’re floating. Imagine a planetarium, only the show is gigantic flowers floating through space. It was a dazzling display, and because it’s constantly spinning and moving around the optical illusion of movement in the viewer was astounding. We sat on the floor for a while in this room, and it really felt we were spinning around and not just the flowers.

The other amazing exhibit was this room of shin-deep warm milky water on which were projected colorful koi fish. They were extremely realistic, and the opacity of the water made them seem an inch or two underneath the surface. When you touched them they left flowers in their wake, the petals of which would drift away in the ‘current’. Both this and the previous room were random projections, so you could spend all day in them and not see the same thing twice. We were both extremely impressed by these fish 🙂

Needless to say Planets was incredible, and although (perhaps?) a bit smaller than Borderless I’d say equally worth visiting. Unfortunately Borderless is gone now and Planets will be gone in six months or so, so don’t delay if you’re interested!