Japan Part 1

December 13, 2010 by murasakime | 18 Comments

Hi!

Last week I came from Japan. It was my first trip there and a long-awaited one! In a few words: I loved it!

I’ve never been to any Asian country before, and it was an awesome experience. Japan is so different from European countries, Tokyo is by far in a different world, the amount of people, the delicious food and culture in general. I was really looking forward to see all those differences, and I wasn’t disappointed. I felt like I was in a different plantet xD. I can’t wait to go back again!

We were able to meet Danny too! I’m so glad he had time to meet with us. Nia-chan was very happy to meet his daughters as well! and I think she got along very well with them^^ .

We were staying in Yokohama at my cousin’s apartment, so the first day, we went to visit Yokohama’s China Town and the harbor.

This ship is permanently there and you can even go in there and visit it.

This is the Yokohama pier, it has a very original design, with wood and even some parts had grass, if you want to see the Ferris wheel, this is the place!

And there it is! A murasaki Ferris wheel^^. Sadly, that day the Ferris wheel and the whole park were closed due to security measures as Obama was there in a near by hotel. But it was beautiful anyway!

We stayed there quite a lot of time, we wanted to wait until it was completely dark.

I think there were stores in there…

Ferris wheel close up. There is like a fun-fair, you can see a roller-coaster there too.

The next day, we went to Tsukiji (Ginza) to see the fish market and eat fresh sushi! If you go there, look for a place where they only prepare tuna dishes next to a one preparing salmon, delicious!

After the “breakfast”, we visited the market.

Some of the pictures were taken by my husband, check out his flickr ^^ That is me buying some Sakura Mochi xD

Those were huuuuge!

And that was huge too xD. Nia didn’t tag along to the fish market with us, but talking about seafood..this pictures fits here perfectly :D

After the market, we went to Ginza.

This shop was on our way to Ginza, cute xD

We saw the Big Apple Store, huge malls with expensive brands, Sony building and nice second hand Nikon shop, then time for food again :D I found there a small soba/udon place. I ate my soup for 390 yens! and it was soooo goooood!! it was in a small street just behind the Apple Store, near it there was an Unagi restaurant.

The next day we went straight to Akihabara :D. This time Nia-chan came with us because I wanted to go to the Volks store and buy her some new stuff :3

Akihabara was incredible :o i think. I’ve never seen so many stuff together. We went to Yodobashi Akiba, it’s a big store next to Akiba station with all electronic gadgets, pc’s, games, toys etc.. you can imagine, and the last floor is full of restaurants. We spent there almost half of the day (it’s veeery big) and I think we even dreamt of the music they put in there hahaha.

The Gundam café is right next to the “electronic city” exit of Akihabara station, but we didn’t went in, next time maybe xD.

I even found Feito-chan!! she was so cute!

While we were looking for the Volks store, we came across with many second hand figure shops… in Spain we don’ have such big figure shops and my mouth was open like this :OOO again hahaha.

You can’t read it maybe, but in red I marked the location of second hand stores, Cospa, Kotobukiya (Volks is on the 5th floor in the same building) and Mandarake.

Actually we went to Akihabara 3 times during our whole trip and we checked almost all 2nd hand shops because they have different prices. Here I scanned the map I was given in one of the stores, you can see here all the list of stores nearby, I’ll make sure to keep this one for my next trips, since finding all those stores again will be hard. In the end I was able to find some long sold out figures!

like this Shana figure from Shakugan no Shana. Originally it came out in 3 versions, Alice version is the one I was looking for but I guess that was asking too much. This one is the Noir version. Here you have some of the figures I could find.

Nendoroid Konata and Kagami Fate/Stay Night cosplay ver, Figma Konata Haruhi cosplay ver, I found this one too, Sakura, she is so sweet! and the top can be casted off! And Ringo from Air Gear

Sexy Yoko-san, this cute Banpresto Nia-chan and Rin Kagamine from the Vocaloid series.

This is me and my friend (husband taking the picture) with our happy faces after we got our loot ^^

Good second hand figures on Mandarake’s last floor! On the second floor, they have second hand DD’s, they had 10 or so, as far as I can remember there was Rin, Miu, Mio, Yui, Louise, Mai, Mari, Escalayer…and some more. I’m not sure if they all came with the clothes and wigs because every DD had a note attached which I couldn’t read. The prices were like 150.oooyen for Rin, 85.000 ish for Escalayer….but at least you could ask to see them and check for stains and such :) So if there is someone interested, you know, go check Mandarake in Akiba!

It was already dark when we found Volks store. It’s on the 5th floor in the same building as Kotobukiya’s shop (which is at ground level)I wasn’t allowed to take pictures there u_u, they had almost all released DD’s there, I was so glad I could see them! In the picture, me and Nia-chan after we came out of the store, she insisted on wearing her new wig, hihihi.