Robot Claw

It’s the final days and we’re waking tired. It’s time to cross off the remaining things on our ‘lists’, which basically means shopping and game centers!

We returned to Ikebukuro and there was some sort of cosplay event on – we saw people (almost exclusively girls) in full costume everywhere. I noted elaborate uniform cosplay seemed to be very popular, and some of the outfits were amazingly detailed and would have taken vast amounts of work. We visited a cosplay shop and the above pic was the wig section, showing all the colours you can order wigs in. I saw a girl with a photo of 2B (from Nier) trying to pick the correct colour 🙂

And that’s just a selection of the available contact lenses. If you look closely you’ll see many have dark rims around the edge, to make your eye more resemble a drawn anime eye. Some even have white rings at the edge to make your pupil smaller (to make girls look more like boys). The selection is so vast it would be a challenge to choose!

We returned to Akiba and I went to play games while Kristin visited a cat cafe. She said there were more than twenty cats, but it was late in the day and they were full of treats so they didn’t mob her when she purchased a lollipop for them.

The cats roam free in a large room but she said they all had aloof attitudes since they were sick of people! They were all very cute though.

She was there for feeding time, where the cats all line up next to each other for their food. Again, since it was late in the day they weren’t super enthusiastic and lost interest quickly. You’d want to go for the morning feed to see this at its best.

I finally got around to packing, which took me many hours but revealed we’ve still got some space left. I’m sure we’ll try to fill it tomorrow!

We went to see Stardom: New Year Dream yesterday at Tokyo Garden Theatre in Ariake.

This was a much bigger venue that where we saw them last year, and the production qualities (and ticket prices) reflected this. It was also a long show: almost 5 hours including the dark matches.

Our seats on the first balcony were directly in front of the stage. We weren’t as close as last year but they turned out to be good seats and we had a good view especially of the intros which were spectacular.

We don’t watch Stardom (a Japanese joshi, or women’s wrestling league) and only recognized the ex-WWE wrestlers (such as Ember Moon) and the very famous Japanese ones (Dump Matsumoto, SLK) but it was very entertaining regardless.

As usual audience participation was a big part. Japanese fans are vocal and polite and even in the much bigger venue you could tell the wrestlers fed off the crowd support. Next to Kristin was a young girl (with her mum we think) who had big banners of wrestlers she supported that she would hold up during their matches. I hope they saw them!

It was fun, even though it went into the night and we got back so late I couldn’t go play games in Akihabara. It’s a good thing we’ve got a couple of days left 🙂

Yesterday we split up – I went to look for the usual stuff at Nakano and KLS went to look for cosmetics at Harajuku – and reunited later in the day in Shinjuku.

As usual I gazed starry-eyed at endless cases of fascinating and fascinatingly expensive retro toys, but alas found no treasures and made no purchases. Looking back at some of my photos I probably should have!

Kristin was much more successful, and when we met she had a bagful of loot! She’d also eaten Kura sushi by herself (at a counter seat) which she said was great.

Later in the afternoon we walked to Ueno for some night lights and more shopping. The crowds were immense but we managed to find a few items that had eluded us to that point so it was a worthwhile excursion.

We’ve got a special event planned for today. Let’s hope it works out!