Robot Claw

Today we split up to do our own shopping and I went to Den Den Town, a few stops away from Osaka station. This is the otaku shopping district of Osaka, and I always look forward to visiting when I’m in town.

Den Den town is packed to the gills with figure and game shops, and many of them look like the above photo, with ‘rental cases’ containing items for sale.

It seems like any scale or prize figure released in the last few years is easily purchasable here if you look hard enough. I wasn’t in the market for any, but it’s always fun to browse. I went into many of these, as well as card shops, model shops and gacha machine shops.

Even though I’ve sold much of my collection and have more or less obtained all the Wizardry games, I still love looking in the retro game stores. The Osaka branch of Super Potato is incredible, with vast stocks of games going back decades. As has been the trend since the pandemic, the prices continue to climb. Retro gaming using real hardware is a rich man’s game these days.

Alas the one thing I want to buy – a 2DS – eludes me. I’ve seen many, but none in fantastic condition. I’d probably pay good money for a near-mint boxed model. I’ll keep looking.

Speaking of expensive games, the above Famicom (NES) game is notable. It’s an unremarkable port of an arcade game, but it’s widely believed to be the best NES box art and in recent years has become very well known for this reason. Since the game is purchasable on the Switch store for a few dollars, anyone buying the Famicom version is doing it for the box anyway. But for $350+ they better really like that art!

Even more eye-watering is this Gameboy Light I saw at Mandarake. I’ve given up ever owning one of these – I should have bought one two decades ago – but this version which was an Osamu Tezuka shop exclusive has a sticker price of over $1000 dollars. That’s impressive enough, but if you translate the tag you’ll see it’s in damaged condition!

Many of the reseller shops post buylists, and I saw this one at Mandarake for a Wonderswan game. I did some research and the game is rare, but this buylist is for a special version that was only sold at a single launch event and may be limited to fewer than 20 copies! It’s incredibly rare, and Mandarake will give you over $3000 for a copy if you own one. I wonder if they’ll get any takers?

Something remarkable occurred at Mandarake today as well: I had a lengthy conversation with another customer, and he even asked to exchange phone numbers! What did we discuss? I’ll save that for another post…

Tomorrow we’re heading back to Tokyo for the final phase of the trip. We have loose plans and will mostly just take it easy and enjoy ourselves for a week. Since we’re not doing anything particularly interesting (with regards to this blog) I’ll take the chance to do my usual catch-up posts on various aspects of Japan I enjoy so much. Look forward to them!

That’s the ferry we took to Osaka. The company is Sunflower and the ship is the Murasaki. We boarded around 6pm yesterday, and arrived in Osaka about 13 hours later.

The ferry was modern and well-appointed, with a restaurant, shop and all sorts of conveniences like baths, pet runs, and areas to relax. Since it’s an overnight cruise it also includes guest rooms, and functions basically as a hotel on the water.

That was our room. It was small but comfortable, and it contained a bathroom with shower as well (the left door). The entire room was a demonstration of efficiency, with all the usual room conveniences packed into a compact space.

We’d wanted to take a ferry in Japan for years, but until recently it was challenge to book them from overseas. Even now although we booked out room moments after the bookings opened (three months ago), almost all rooms were already sold out. Yesterday was an extremely popular day for cruising, and the ferry was sold-out and very full.

Dinner and breakfast were buffets, and dinner in particular was excellent! Neither were included in the room charge, but were inexpensive by American standards. There were also vending machines all over the ship, and areas with microwaves and kettles if you wanted to prepare ramen or heat something.

Since it got dark right after we boarded and stayed dark until just before we arrived, the lack of a window in our room wasn’t a big deal. I had been apprehensive about seasickness and couldn’t take medicine due to drug interactions but as it turned out it was a nonissue, and neither Kristin nor myself had any queasiness whatsoever.

The entire experience was great, and relaxing, and we can’t wait to do it again!

Now we’re in Osaka for a couple of days. We’ve got nothing planned except for exploring and shopping. Our hotel room is gigantic, has real flowers in the vases, and has a bathroom with a heated floor and incredible view. In short, too fancy for a rogue like me.

I think we’ll be comfortable here for a couple of nights 🙂

Speaking of which we went to see the lights of the Dotombori district this evening. We’ve seen it before, but you can’t go to Osaka without a quick visit (like Times Square in NYC). I’ll return to the vicinity tomorrow for some otaku shopping while KLS braves the mazelike Osaka station area to visit the mega department stores.

It was snowing when I headed out for a McBreakfast this morning. Let’s skip over the fact that I’d paid $$$ for the high-end hotel breakfast and enjoy the nice photo of the street outside the hotel. It was snowing as I walked, and it only got worse as I sat inside and ate.

Kristin incidentally was enjoying the high-end hotel breakfast we’d paid for two of. She said the lemon jelly was particularly good!

The ryokan we stayed in was lovely, with a very cozy room and nice hot baths. But it’s time to move on once again and after we checked out we headed for a nature park I’d discovered when we arrived a couple of days ago: Takasakiyama Natural Zoo.

Let’s cut right to the chase: this is a place with 760 wild – no cages or fences – monkeys. They live on the mountain and come down for food and to eat look at tourists.

They mostly ignored us and groomed themselves or squabbled or just ran around. They were everywhere, and it felt like half of them were babies. I was amazed how close they came to us, almost as if they didn’t even see us.

They’re Japanese macaques, and they were fairly small, with the biggest only being about as big as a medium sized dog. We were told not to make eye contact or try to touch them since if you do they might kill you jump on you!

They were cute little buggers, with expressive and wizened faces. I think the one above looks a bit like Jim.

And this baby – not much bigger than a kitten – looks like my uncle John.

It was cold on the mountain but we hardly noticed so entranced we were by the army of mankillers monkeys hopping around. But, as it does, the existential dread associated with all monkey exposure eventually overcame us so we fled the mountain and sought refuge in a giant aquarium across the street.

This place – Umitamago (‘sea egg’) was great! It had many different species on display in beautiful tanks, and interesting shows including a demonstration of archerfish and an electric eel:

Japan does aquariums-as-art well, and while that was hardly the focus of this one many displays were mesmerizing like this sardine school:

Or this cutlass fish that just floated vertically and nearly motionless:

And of course the jellyfish:

It was super busy, which again surprised me since it’s winter, but I suppose the very cold air outside today drove everyone indoors.

That room looked like it was in a spaceship or exotic submarine. The architecture of the entire building was unusual.

The walrus show was good, and mostly based around the beast making noises I never knew walruses could make (like whistling).

And the dolphin show was a crowd pleaser and included Japanese dolphins I’d not seen before. Overall the aquarium was fun, and perhaps the best I’ve been to in Japan.

As I write this I’m in the boarding area about to board this ferry. We’ll sleep on this tonight, and wake up in Osaka! Tomorrow I’ll tell you all about it 🙂