Woke up to a winter wonderland (of sorts) in Tokyo
Snow on the side of the traintracks
More snow
Mr Titan is on his way to magical Osaka
Katsu Sandi and Tonkatsu Bento on the Shinkansen. Good food and great travel.
Dotonburi Hotel in Osaka.
Look, a Edged Tool Festival!
Kimchi Ramen. Great Stuff
Ferris Wheel at Don Quixote which has not worked for years. Not sure why
Ahh good ole Amusement Scott. Plenty of shmups and other classic titles all at the 50 yen price. I think this is my most favorite of arcade game centers.
Another picture of Scott. Look at all them Candy Cabs. I wish I had more room in the house to get a 3rd.
Taito Game Station: This actually ended up being pretty lame, but hey it looked really cool and epic from the outside.
My haul for the day! M1 Tricycles, Kurokuro Takora, and an M1 Ultraman glow
VW sponsored Ice Skating rink in the neighborhood. As far as I can tell the cars were not allowed on the ice rink.
Had desert at some fancy shmancy desert place. Chocolate Souflee, filled with chocolate and an extra pitcher of chocolate for that over indulgent I am sick of chocolate taste.
Instead I had some pistachio ice cream on almond cookie, plus strawberries. It was one of those dishes that tasted great, but a complete pain in the butt to eat.
Weather was absolutely horrible when we got to fabric town, so after being drenched we sat down with a little Mos Burger to wash our worries away.
Cold and dreary look at the train station. This is the middle of the afternoon by the way.
Started off the day at Lotteria. The burgers here always have an interesting taste, almost reminds me of breakfast sausage patties. I like Lotteria to visit it just once.
Some random Engrish
With our bellies full we headed off to Ginza as Mika wanted to go shopping at the Hello Kitty store. I also checked out the Sony building where they had some 3D Demos of some random nature programs and Wipeout running on the PS3. I have to say I was pretty impressed, the glasses were very comfortable and the 3D effect was easily as good as the technology offered by Real3D and Dolby and obviously much better than Imax's outdated technology.
Chi's Home?
Decided to try the Banana milk drink. What can I say? It tastes exactly like banana's in milk.
From Ginza we headed off to the Kappa Shrine. The neighborhood was full of Kappa's!
I have to say after seeing the mummified Kappa hand which I thought looked pretty fake on TV, I was pretty impressed in person. I am more convinced than ever of their existence.
From there we headed waay outside Tokyo to a toyshop called Kakaido. This was definitely a sight to behold. Tons and tons of stuff inside, maybe not the best place for Henshin / Character type goods, but there was lots of Gokin and soo much G1 Transformers. Very cool place and worth the trip out.
Ended the day with Mika's favorite curry rice place which was completely un-remarkable. The curry was ok but the Katsu was pretty poor. We ended the day in Shinkuku with Marui One, lots of cool stuff to see and most everything at Black Peace Now was 70% off so I got to see a lot of stuff I paid full price for at a fraction of the cost.. FUN!!
Some random shots of food, Shinjuku, and today's haul are to follow.
Started the day off in Harajuku. Found a new place that carries George Cox, and conveniently right next door to the other place. Ended up picking up a new pair of monk strap creepers. H Naoto's clothes were completely overpriced and over designed as usual. I mean does a hoodie really need two hoods and a bjorn baby strap on the front? Well whatever, after done with clothes shopping I headed over to kiddie land where there was some death metal monchichi parade. Where along the way monchichi became associated with death metal I have no idea. Place was too crazy so I grabbed some hello kitty taiyaki and headed out to Shibuya.
Here are a couple of random Harajuku picks
Headed off to Shibuya to visit Mandarake and Project 1/6th. Ended up picking up a Robot Detective K Medicom, Giant Marusan Mecha Godzilla vinyl, and a doctor Hello Kitty DrX version.
From there we headed off to the infamous Third Uncle which has been reported on so many times I will not repeat it here but for those not familiar you can take a look at the following link. http://anime.collectiondx.com/index.php?q=gallery&g2_itemId=32792
I have not been to Third Uncle in years, and while it is still a treasure trove, the stock is nowhere what it used to be or even close to the pictures in the above link. Not sure if they are offloading to yahoo japan now or what. Anyways, the owner is super nice and if you speak the language he constantly offers you other items from the same series, which is super helpful and super dangerous, as he does not really ask you if you want it he just starts putting it in your to buy pile. I had a lot of fun here browsing around and chatting with the owner, ended up picking up a few odds and ends, mostly old henshin vinyl figures.
From there we headed to Manga Juka. Not sure what quite happened here, but it has seemingly turned into a Seedy joint where questionable workers are spray painting vinyl molds as soon as you walk in the door. All of the old vintage toy cases were covered in boxes, and the workers really acted like they did not want us there, even though Third Uncle called them ahead of time and told us we were heading over. Its a shame, this place used to be really neat. Will not be visiting again though.
For food we ended up going simple and had Nakau which I really like as far as cheap japanese fast food chains. Cheaper than mc donalds and infinitely better. Good tasting Donburi and Udon for 450yen? Im there!
Started off the morning with a Dydo vending machine. Was surprised to see the Ultraman promotion still going on, pondered at the Banana milk but went for the Caramel Milk Tea instead. Amazing stuff, you can feel your teeth melting while you drink.
On the way to the subway stop I passed by a place with hanging meat. Making mental note to possibly return later.
Heading into Tsukiji Fish Market
Sorry Mr Bonito Shaver Man but you will get no money from my friends today.
Breakfast of Champions! Negi Toro was really good.
I opted out on Mr Whale
I was attempting to save some room for this amazing 'curry substance' I saw during the last trip, but when I headed over there I paid closer attention to the menu and found out it was not typical curry at all, but the lady was specializing in some fish gut brew. While I would normally go for this, at 7:30 in the morning I decided to pick up a couple of Wasabi Paste bottles and head to Ueno instead to eat fruit on a stick.
Wandering down Ueno I was greeted to this little guy that not even the locals knew what he signified. Instead as the morning went on they decided to cover him with boxes.
Yamato in a can
Nuff Said
While waiting for the fruit on a stick guy to open I went to the local game center and played a few games. Elevator Action Death Parade was actually quite good.
I was afraid the elevator doors might be a pure gimmick but it was done quite well with monsters trying to pry them open and the doors acting accordingly, they also used it to do these strange perspective shifts when going around corners by having one of the doors close. Overall it was quite good, but reminded me nothing of the older titles.
I also played a namco Gears of War vs Metal Gear Solid gun game, and a sega museum light gun game, but they were both garbage so I am not going to mention them further. I headed over to the local toy store and picked up some GeGeGe no Kitaro Hanafuda Cards and an Oyaji metal pin. Fruit on a Stick was pretty good until they poured this terrible cream paste that came out of a tube all over it. Dairy products really are terrible here.
Upon heading into Akihabara I decied to play some shmups, while waiting for the pcb shops to open
Dodonpacchi Daifukkatsu Black Label
Death Smiles 2 (I still hate the art for this series)
With the help of Mak and Try, I picked up Elevator Action, Cotton, Snow Bros (complete with ugly orginal arts) and Macross II. I didn't even bother visiting overpriced G-Front this time. Also, went to Mandarake and grabbed a vintage Kikaida vinyl and an old Takatoku Umi Bozu which is comletely frightening. Don Quixote did not have the Devilman costume, sorry Chappy.
Upon entering Nakano we went straight for Ramen. Pretty good, the runny eggs were great and the Chashu melted in your mouth. The Tsukemen was the better of the two with a great spicy broth.
Nakano appears to be in bad shape, with the 3rd and 4th floors almost completely barren. Mandarake seems to still be hanging on strong though, so I am hoping this treasure won't be gone like so many others next time I come around. I ended up picking up this great Devilman vintage bootleg along with a Godzilla Biliken. I also picked up an ugly whale monster vinyl from Ultraman :)
Random pics of a random toy shop
After Nakano I attempted to punish myself with the Texas Burger from Mc'Donalds as according to Ronald that is what hamburgers are like in America.
Unfortunately the promotion had ended, so I opted for a Chicken Sandwichi instead. Oh well, maybe next time.
My toy haul for the day
Elevator Action
Cotton (sharp version shown as I could not find an appropriate video for the arcade version)
