Japan Extra: Gacha Gacha

  • June 15, 2026

There’s a McDonald’s near Akihabara station that I often have breakfast at while I’m here. Almost every day around 6 am it fills up with businessmen and women, just sitting quietly with their coffees. It was suggested to me they come here before work to mentally prepare and destress from the rush hour travel. It’s a surreal experience joining them because virtually everyone is alone and the dining room (which has 96 seats) is almost entirely quiet.

I’m sitting here now, and it’s a good time for an extra blog post! I’ll be showcasing a few topics I wanted to go into a bit more detail into and today we’ll start with gacha machines.

As usual these continue to multiply, as does the diversity of prizes. I read recently that the number of drink vending machines in Japan has been declining every year and I wonder if that has been offset by the proliferation of gacha machines.

The prizes these days can be anything, although ‘small’, ‘cute’, ‘accessory’ and ‘useful’ descriptors usually apply. Above we see a panda hair accessory, small flocked cats dressed as Kamen Riders, a strange flocked eel and Sesame Street grocery bags. Guess which two I bought?

Or here we have an ‘EM wave prevention seal’ (don’t ask), miniature OxiClean products, a very mysterious UFO that claims to create sound when clipped onto a power cable, and a can badge making kit that unfortunately doesn’t come with most of the required parts! I bought none of these, but I think I should have got that UFO.

The average price seems have settled now around ¥300 or ¥400 (about $2-3). The number of ‘premium’ machines (¥500 or more) seems to have dropped, and machines ¥200 or less now are very rare and usually give dubious prizes.

Some vinyl cyclops toys, large stuffed… things, miniature cassette tape keychains and a keychain of a… drag queen pirate (I assume a Japanese comedian)? I bought none of these, but I should have gotten Bernard a pirate.

The sticker craze here right now may be the strongest craze I’ve seen in 24 years of visiting this country! Even the gacha machines are not immune, and I find it intriguing that as these two weeks have continued the amount of stickers I’ve seen in machines is increasing as if the craze is still ramping up.

A soft flexible ‘W’, a coin that helps you make decisions (eight different types!), a small acrylic stand of some dude and miniature Karcher pressure washers. Of all these, I regret not getting the W. What is it and what is it used for? No man knows, which is part of the allure of these machines 🙂

Which machines did I invest in the most this trip? The ‘punk girl’ ID photo ones I found in Osaka! I found six different ones and rolled ten times (¥300 a pop) and still hope to find more of these, which appeal to me in an indescribable way. They’re objectively worthless but they’re so much fun. As you’ll see when you get yours on a postcard…

There are also the so-call ‘flat gacha’ machines, that distribute things like clear files, coasters, art prints and even (rarely) postcards. In an extraordinarily rare and fortuitous event, I received two Kamen Rider ‘art boards’ from a single pull of one of the machines at Hirakata Park!

I’ll end this with a few photos of drink machines getting into the gacha game with the sticker cans that KLS and I first spied a couple of years ago. These seem to have multipled as well, and they’re not cheap at ¥900. It’s a drink machine so you still get a drink, but the cans have a large vinyl sticker wrapped around them. The stickers are random and as you can see there are quite a few, so if you’re after a particular character it would be very pricey. I got a couple of these, but the stickers are very large and it’s a challenge to find somewhere to put them when you’re traveling!

Even the Ultraman exhibit got in on this racket, with their sticker-wrapped drink vending machine in the gift shop. Yes I got one. No it wasn’t Zoffy 🙂

Back To Tokyo

  • June 15, 2026

Most bullet trains rocket through Atami station without stopping, and in fact four did this during the half hour or so I waited for my train today.

Once I got on I was the only person in the ‘green’ (first class) car. I noticed the other cars were quite full and to be honest the benefits of first class were all but irrelevant considering the journey to Tokyo was only slightly over 40 minutes.

Regardless the trip was extremely pleasant and I enjoyed the rainy views. I ate my hog sandwich and wondered where I was going to get the energy to keep up my pace for another five days.

I arrived too early to check in so I went to Nakano mall to visit the increasing number of dedicated Mandarake stores. I saw many amazing things – some you’ll see on posts this week – but the tokusatsu store ‘Gallery of Hakama’ was having a Ultraman Tiga 30th anniversary event and had a bunch of props on display, including one of the filming suits for Dark Tiga. There were a lot of people here to see the displays (and buy the merch) since Tiga is one of the most popular Ultra series. Those that watched it live are not young any more 🙂

I’m staying in the same hotel (the check-in girls remembered me!) and Maron, the hotel robot, was so happy to see me she did a pirouette! One of the first things I did was laundry and she came in with me and watched. It’s very easy to put a personality on her, and when she looks at me with those dewy eyes it’s difficult to walk away.

This week I’ve got no plans other than shopping, packing, then more shopping. I want to fill every possible spot in the luggage, and this takes time and effort. Will I go crazy and need a break? Perhaps. But if I do I currently have no idea what form that break may take…

The Day The Gods Of Men, Elves, Dwarves, Beastfolk and Fairies Blessed Me With Serendipity

  • June 14, 2026

That’s Atami Castle, which I visited today. It’s not a real historic castle, but was built in 1959 as a tourist attraction. According to a plaque inside it became famous in 1962 for being destroyed in a Godzilla film, which I looked up:

The castle is up on the same cliff the ropeway took me yesterday, which means I rode the ropeway again today. Here’s a view looking up the cable (the opposite of the photo I posted yesterday):

The ropeway and area at the top was much busier than yesterday, so it seems Sunday is a bigger tourist day than Saturday here in Atami. There was a line to buy tickets for the castle, and as I was waiting I spied a sign hanging above the entrance which rendered me speechless:

Wizardry Daphne is currently one of my favourite games and I play it daily. I was even playing it in line moments before I noticed this sign! Not only did I have no idea there was a collaboration going on with Atami castle, but for me to arrive on the final day is incredible luck!

I was hopping with excitement waiting in line to see exactly what a collaboration between a game and a tourist attraction could be! When I purchased my ticket I was given a leaflet with a ‘quest’ inside:

You needed to find give of the games characters hidden throughout the castle (one on each floor) and you also had to find and defeat the ‘red oni’ to finish the quest. It sounds much harder than it was to complete, although I initially had some difficulty with defeating the oni since it required accessing a YouTube video via a fiddly QR code.

I went through the castle twice: once to complete the Wizardry quest and again to actually see the attractions. The quest didn’t take me long, and when I presented my solution to the man at the shop he chuckled, I assume due to my poorly written Japanese:

And my reward for this effort? A very high quality vinyl sticker:

Of course Japan being Japan, the collaboration also meant exclusive goods for sale, and you can bet I made a few purchases. Overall I loved doing the quest and experiencing the collaboration, and I’m still amazed how lucky I was to stumble onto it.

The castle itself had different exhibits on each of its six floors, including authentic samurai armor and weapons. The katana in particular were brilliant:

There was also an eight-barreled arquebus which is the most ridiculous firearm I’ve ever seen and took three minutes to load!

One floor had extensive historical information about Japanese castles in general, as well as a dozen or so extremely detailed wooden models of famous examples. Can you tell what these are made of?

They are entirely made of matchsticks! The detail was extraordinary and I can hardly imagine the effort that went into making all of these.

There were also displays of Edo-era art, and an entire floor dedicated to pictograms which was entirely lost to me because of the language barrier 🙂

The basement was a surprise: an arcade of mostly gigantic cabinet shooter and rythym games with everything on freeplay! I sat at that massive Space Invaders with the LED screen and played it for maybe half an hour, amazed that I could since this is usually a redemption game and it beggars belief anyone could last that long. It gets insanely difficult – almost impossibly – but with free play I just kept going. It was fun 🙂

In fact if this castle was next to my hotel I’d still be in that basement, playing the latest House Of The Dead and Jurassic Park shooters through to the end!

The highest level of the castle also provides the best views of Atami city. As you can see it’s cloudier than yesterday, although even since we had a light rain forecast today it never eventuated.

I’d say the castle would have been worth it anyway, but the Wizardry collab for me made it one of the most memorable moments of this entire trip!

Right next door was the ‘Atami Trick Art Museum’. These are common in tourist locations here in Japan, and are full of art based around optical illusion. KLS have always imagined these to be worthless tourist traps, so I was surprised today how much fun it was.

For starters, massive props to the employee who walked me through half the museum, taking the photos you’ve already seen. She had no English, but managed to show me how to pose and knew exactly how to take a good photo. She was lovely.

Secondly I was surprised how many adults visited. Or rather, how few children. I had been incorrect when I dismissed these places as just for kids!

Many of the illusions were extremely effective, including paintings that seemed to move when you viewed them, but my favourite is probably the one above. As you see, only my reflection in the mirror is visible. Can you guess how this was achieved?

Before we head back down to the city a word of caution: Beware the black kites!

I headed down and slowly back to my hotel, walking along the promenade. It was very hot and humid, and the light breeze was very welcome. The beach was more popular today, and there was some sort of event going on where a long line of men (possibly tied together) walked out into the water while being cheered by the crowd.

The sand is fine and in various colours. There’s almost no surf (probably due to breakwaters) and watching the men it seemed to deepen quickly. Compared to Australia it’s not much of a beach, but it’s probably the best I’ve seen in Japan.

I saw something unusual from a distance, and when I got closer it resolved into a giant monkey (Kong?) holding two buckets of pachinko balls! This is on top of a very old pachinko parlor down near the seafront. I didn’t go in and regret that. Silly me!

I returned to the shopping district near the station and it was even busier than yesterday! I saw many people eating the fish cake hotdog things, and it seems ‘octopus and ginger’ was the most popular at the stand with the longest line.

I was looking for ice cream (with no luck) and saw the above. This is puréed fish – tuna or salmon – in an ice cream cone. They refer to it as eating sushi in a cone and the photo at right is a stealth shot I took when two people ordered it. Judging by their reactions this is as unusual to the Japanese as it seems to us!

There were some performances going on outside the station, including a lady middle-aged rapper and a bunch of other older women dancing in kimono. These had drawn large crowds and were quite delightful to watch. These dancers in particular were excellent and very well coordinated.

Atami has been fun. It’s exactly what I needed, since I was so worn out. While I haven’t exactly been resting – I still did over 20k steps each day and climbed over 700 steps today alone – it was relaxing to be away from the crowds and intensity of Osaka. Plus I was forced to sleep in since nothing opens early!

Tomorrow I return to Tokyo for the last leg of this trip. Lots of shopping, lots of arcades, and a few blog posts about specific topics. Look forward to them!