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| Quite random if you ask me |
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Tokyo loots
At the end of the day, aside from the memories and such, what we have are physical results.
Most of these are used. Sorry for being a cheapskate. The new ones are the dengeki magazines that comes with the little Kirito figures, and a small manga volume with chapters from various series under that label. There are three volumes (out of 8 in the series) of the Hanbun Tsuki ga Noboru Sora (半分月がのぼる空), the Kogado game, some nendroid petit of Kyouko, Homura and Mikoto. There is also that plastic grief seed and soul gem. The fan was a promotional freebie, and the plastic file was a bonus from a Cospa purchase I made for a friend. Not very much, since I was on a tight budget. Sorry for the lousy background, but I was too lazy to flip the covers of the bed.
Tokyo Adventure: Akihabara
Getting into a habit of posting regularly is difficult. I will try to update this weekly from now on. That means there will probably be a quick review or two of the anime I am watching.
Akihabara, the heaven of otaku, the land of maid cafes, the archive of doujins, the never ending fountain of magazines and tankobon. It never sleeps. Oh wait, it does. Most things in Tokyo go to sleep at 8pm. If I believe in heaven (Western or Eastern), Akihabara would probably be it. I can't find the word to describe this overwhelming feeling of goodness flowing from (almost) every centimeters of shelves and cases in (almost) every building along this street. It would triggers any otaku inner Rena, without fail. It is an absolutely blinding sight to see all the fresh magazine lined up on the shelves and tables, stacks upon stacks of light novels and manga, floors with all sorts of goodies from key chain to folder to t-shirt to towel to pillow covers, and shelves upon shelves of figures, small to big, of (most) things existed. Anything and everything are so shiny that it is oppressive. Every time I walked by Akihabara I was at low stamina and my feet hurt from walking all day long, but the feeling of a mouse in a cheese storage room kept me going, and going, and going...If there is a heaven, it would probably be like Akihabara. It is so good that it hurts. Sorry for the lack of photos.
Going to Akihabara without a specific goal is suicide. Or just extremely inefficient. Fortunately, I had an ancient game by Kogado Studio in mind, which made the trip much more fulfilling and entertaining, as I got a good idea of the less ostentatious stores here. Big stores separate their goods into floors, usually CD/DVD, character goods, Shonen manga, Shoujo manga (or BL at some places), Games, Doujin (game and book), and a few have an adult floors. These often have a 2x2m elevators with a similarly small set of staircases leading up to as high as 8 or 9 floors. Most of the times I used stairs, which contributes to the terrible foot pain experienced throughout my time in Tokyo. It also made me seriously question the stereotype of the big fat sweaty otaku. Everyone around (not just Akiba, but Japan in general) seems to be lean and healthy (on the outside, of course). My target being an ancient game (and only upon finding it do I realize it is DVD sized, not enclosed in huge boxes with extras like most other well-known galges), it took me some ten hours of ploughing through shelves and shelves of games to find it in a small corner on the second floor of a small secluded shop. At least I found it. For your information, not all galges have nice bright covers like Key's or Circus' or August's. Some gave eye cancer and some shelves can downright faint the uninitiated. To paraphrase xkcd, the distribution of this sub-culture is fractal. There is no limit to how deep you can fall.
Not only the main street with big, multi-storey stores and arcades, the side streets of Akihabara also contain many shops with desirable goods, unfortunately I didn't have the time to went through all of them. Like most other Japanese arts, it takes months, may be years of constant patronage to have a decent grasp of the stores and their specialties. The side streets stores are much more crowded, as they try to cram as much as possible into their small limited spaces. They are a lot more shady too. The one thing I love about this culture is that everyone keeps their stuff so well, that used products look as good as new, especially when it comes to book. I bought four volumes of Hantsuki light novels used in Japan, and they all look as if they were just taken off the shelves. Akihabara goes to sleep early. Around 7 or 8, the streams thickens as people started to go home and shops started closing. Walking through Akiba after dark is relatively more pleasant due to the lack of the Japanese summer sun, and all sorts of lights brightening up the places from all kinds of signboards, lamps, stores and such.
That was the essence my Akihabara trip. The loots will come in another post.
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| The streets of Akihabara |
Akihabara, the heaven of otaku, the land of maid cafes, the archive of doujins, the never ending fountain of magazines and tankobon. It never sleeps. Oh wait, it does. Most things in Tokyo go to sleep at 8pm. If I believe in heaven (Western or Eastern), Akihabara would probably be it. I can't find the word to describe this overwhelming feeling of goodness flowing from (almost) every centimeters of shelves and cases in (almost) every building along this street. It would triggers any otaku inner Rena, without fail. It is an absolutely blinding sight to see all the fresh magazine lined up on the shelves and tables, stacks upon stacks of light novels and manga, floors with all sorts of goodies from key chain to folder to t-shirt to towel to pillow covers, and shelves upon shelves of figures, small to big, of (most) things existed. Anything and everything are so shiny that it is oppressive. Every time I walked by Akihabara I was at low stamina and my feet hurt from walking all day long, but the feeling of a mouse in a cheese storage room kept me going, and going, and going...If there is a heaven, it would probably be like Akihabara. It is so good that it hurts. Sorry for the lack of photos.
Going to Akihabara without a specific goal is suicide. Or just extremely inefficient. Fortunately, I had an ancient game by Kogado Studio in mind, which made the trip much more fulfilling and entertaining, as I got a good idea of the less ostentatious stores here. Big stores separate their goods into floors, usually CD/DVD, character goods, Shonen manga, Shoujo manga (or BL at some places), Games, Doujin (game and book), and a few have an adult floors. These often have a 2x2m elevators with a similarly small set of staircases leading up to as high as 8 or 9 floors. Most of the times I used stairs, which contributes to the terrible foot pain experienced throughout my time in Tokyo. It also made me seriously question the stereotype of the big fat sweaty otaku. Everyone around (not just Akiba, but Japan in general) seems to be lean and healthy (on the outside, of course). My target being an ancient game (and only upon finding it do I realize it is DVD sized, not enclosed in huge boxes with extras like most other well-known galges), it took me some ten hours of ploughing through shelves and shelves of games to find it in a small corner on the second floor of a small secluded shop. At least I found it. For your information, not all galges have nice bright covers like Key's or Circus' or August's. Some gave eye cancer and some shelves can downright faint the uninitiated. To paraphrase xkcd, the distribution of this sub-culture is fractal. There is no limit to how deep you can fall.
Not only the main street with big, multi-storey stores and arcades, the side streets of Akihabara also contain many shops with desirable goods, unfortunately I didn't have the time to went through all of them. Like most other Japanese arts, it takes months, may be years of constant patronage to have a decent grasp of the stores and their specialties. The side streets stores are much more crowded, as they try to cram as much as possible into their small limited spaces. They are a lot more shady too. The one thing I love about this culture is that everyone keeps their stuff so well, that used products look as good as new, especially when it comes to book. I bought four volumes of Hantsuki light novels used in Japan, and they all look as if they were just taken off the shelves. Akihabara goes to sleep early. Around 7 or 8, the streams thickens as people started to go home and shops started closing. Walking through Akiba after dark is relatively more pleasant due to the lack of the Japanese summer sun, and all sorts of lights brightening up the places from all kinds of signboards, lamps, stores and such.
That was the essence my Akihabara trip. The loots will come in another post.
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