Entries about anime

I got bored today so I grabbed my camera and just started walking.
Took a bunch of good pics that I will soon be uploading here, ate at a freaky little small place where no one spoke English, and then found a used book store that also sold cd's. Ended up digging around there for about 2 hours, finding lots of awesome stuff but the prices were a little skewed. I mean who the fuck would pay 5,000 won for a Video CD of Super Mario Bros in Korean? So I ended up buying just Yobi the Five Tailed Fox and Nobody Knows, plus a promotional-only-not-for-sale AVP VCD. Because there's no way I will ever be able to buy that anywhere else ever again. The Starcraft and the headphones were bought on Gmarket, together with a sweater that is so fucking Kpop I'm almost afraid to wear it. The patches are from an Army Store I ran into during my random walking around.
Seoul still holds some interesting surprises.

In this post, I want to tell you guys a little something about the stores and arcades in Japan.

You know, I really, really love arcades. We used to have some small ones in my country, but they have long since disappeared, and even though I have no nostalgic memories of them, I still miss them a lot. Because what's better than paying €1 to play Street Fighter or House of the Dead for 2 minutes before paying another €1 to continue, amirite!?
Well, the arcades in Japan are alive and well, and oh so glorious.


Have a look:

You weren't supposed to take pictures (let alone video) in the arcade, but..well..I'm a baka gaijin so how was I supposed to know that? >:3

[Me kicking ass at the awesome Terminator Salvation game. I love the games with big fake guns <3]

[This is the capsule pod to one of the most awesome games I found in Japan. It's like an online Mech Warrior kind of game where you have an entire cockpit with a 180 degree view of the battlefield and a bunch of knobs and handles to move your mech with. Needless to say I sucked ass at it, but I had fun sucking!]

[Luckily I am much better at the shootan gaems, I even managed to stay alive longer than Taka-San]

[Cow, Taka, Chizu and Yuki playing some crazy 4 player SHMUP]

[One of my favorite games: Taiko No Tatsujin!]

Here's some videos of me and Chizu and Taka and Yuki playing Taiko:

Not only are the arcades full of badass video games, the Japanese also love their gambling. So there's a lot of Pachinko machines and also crane games.

[Gendo Ikari is watching you throw away your money. Keikaku Doori~]

[Coolest crane machine I ever saw]

[There's crane games for everything, including hug pillows and big and fancy €100+ PVC figures. Of course it's nearly impossible to win one of those, but that won't stop otaku from trying]

Then there's one more game I'd like to show you, and it's by far the weirdest one I encountered while in Japan.
Watch and wonder:

So aside from awesome arcades, Japan also has awesome manga, anime and figure stores. I was lucky enough to be with a group of people who knew all about that sort of things, and especially a big thanks goes to Taka-san for taking me to the eroge stores I would never have been able to find on my own (since they are slightly hidden from gaijin eyes).
Once again it wasn't allowed to take pictures, of course (imagine your Japanese ass might end up on the internet and your wife will see you were browsing the loli section at Melon Books!) but being the gaijin that I am I DONMAI'd through that to bring you the TRUE OTAKU EXPERIENCE!

[Please follow me upstairs]

[To a place where pink curtains separate the men from the boys]

[A place where even Chizu noona gets a little too embarrassed sometimes]

[But then she still goes in anyway, because she is a boss. Would you prefer to buy one of the thousands of doujinshi?]

[Or would you rather buy an Eroge PC Game?]

[Or maybe you'd rather have some hentai or porn DVD's?]

[Either way, you can't have this one]

[And you should pass the cashier on your way out]

Buying porn (2D or 3D) has been quite uninteresting here. No one was surprised by a white guy browsing loli doujinshi, and no one even batted an eye when I bought Japanese Language eroge games. Then again, that's probably for the best since it made the entire experience a lot less embarrassing.

Now of course it's not all porn and games (hohoho). There's also figures and manga!

[Manga is incredibly cheap in Japan, and even the smaller stores have hundreds of titles in stock]

[The video games are much less cheap, even to the point where they are 20-30 euros more expensive than in Europe. However, there's lots of awesome special editions and of course a lot of games that will never see the light of day in Europe or America. There's a lot of awesome VN's, Dating Games and RPGs we will never get to play ;_;]

[The amount of figures is what really made me soil my pansu. The prices for the new figures aren't as great as I expected, they're pretty much the same as on AmiAmi, but the prices for the older ones blew my mind. There were limited edition figures that go for over €300 on eBay for a mere 1,500 Yen (€15) and huge €130+ PVC figures for around 3,000 Yen. There's also pretty much any anime/manga merchandise you can dream of. I had to contain myself a lot in order not too buy too much crap, but I still ended up with a 10kg box of stuff ;=;]

So that was it for my post on Japanese arcades and stores.
In the next post, I will tell something about the friends I made in Japan, and about the awesome 'special' café I went to on my last day.
Please wait for me~

Today, Chizu Noona took me to some of the most awesome stores I have ever seen.
Even within 30 meters of her house, there's a huge DVD, Anime, Manga and Games store, and in the center of Fukuoka there's a giant Mandarake store with the largest amount of figures and porn I've ever seen in one place.

[Me and Chizu in front of Mandarake. Walking in there was like walking into heaven..]

[Manga sections of the other store we went to]

[And part of the 18+ section. There's onaholes, anime lube, striped panties, sexy mousemats, hentai games, doujinshi, DVDs, hug pillows, and pretty much all of the other things you think about when you think of Japan]

So of course I couldn't help myself, and I bought all this stuff.
However, I didn't even spend €70 on it, so I think I did very well in constraining myself.

[One of the eroge I bought, called Hi To Yume. It came with an artbook, and the box is so cool.]

[The other eroge I got, Volume 7, first limited edition. Comes with a drama and a vocal CD :3]

[The Ichigo Mashimaro PS2 game, Limited First Press Edition that comes with the figure of Miu in a kimono. I almost paid €140 for this on eBay once...and it was 1,500Yen (€15) here...madness]

[A naughty Love+ towel]

[I only bought 3 doujinshi since they weren't especially cheap, but I might get some more later...browsing them is kind of addictive...I got the awesome and famous Mikan one, a P3 one, and a full color one. These were from the budget bin, so the most expensive one was only 420 Yen.]

[When I first looked around Mandarake, I was disappointed, because the figures were pretty much the same price as they are on HobbySearch or AmiAmi, but when we walked back a little it turned out that new figures are pretty much the rape price we pay in Europe, but as soon as they're a little older, they get delicious discounts. There were figma for 1,000 Yen, the limited PS2 game only Haruhi figure for 1,200, Revoltech for 800, and giant €120+ statues for 3,000. This Nia figure was only 300 Yen. Now you see how hard I had to stop myself from buying much more stuff!]

[Finally, I also got a photobook from American/Japanese gravure model Leah Dizon.]

Nippon...sugoi desu ne?

So for those of you who are worried about me being dead in a ditch somewhere in Pusan (that's you, mainly, dad~), I'd like to let you know I safely made it to Japan after a rough ride from Seoul to Pusan and then sleeping on the icecold floors of Pusan train station.

Japan, so far, has been amazing.
Chizu, my penpal, has been incredibly friendly in opening up her life to me, letting me sleep in her awesome guestroom and meeting her Genshiken friends at their 'Labo' to play games and have delicious food, and I am so indebted to her that I don't even know what to do to make us even. Noona, if you are reading this, thank you so much, you are an amazing person.

So I have been in Japan for about 10 hours now, not counting the 2 hours I spent in customs because I had ritalin on me, and I've already driven on the wrong side of the road, saw a giant manga/anime/game store, played PES with Japanese guys, ordered a Japan only PS2 game of my favorite anime for only €15, saw delicious school uniforms and drank about 5 different Japanese beers.
So yeah, things are going well!

Here's some pictures of my cool room so you can all be jelly:



[The amazingly cute banner Chizu's boyfriend and her friend made for me~]



[The cool K-On! gifts they gave to me since they know I like Mugi~ There's 3 file folders, a box of chocolates, some candy and chips, trading cards and Japanese traditional art of K-On! Also, one of the Genshiken guys gave me a Katana umbrella which is like the coolest thing ever.]



[This is my cool guestroom, complete with bookcases of manga and some figures, and the Lovecraft book I sent to Chizu earlier for her birthday :3 Kapibarasan, also called Lee GaHee, feels very at home here because this is her home country. Actually, the girl at the immigration office recognized her and told me about how cute she was, kukuku.]



[More manga, and all of my crap stacked up against it..]

So yeah, everything is awesome here, and don't worry about me!