The Studio Ghibli Store et. al.
Saturday Jen and I journeyed to Ginza and Akihabara. A whole day set aside for shopping!
The main street in Ginza was closed to traffic, allowing people to walk all over. We were looking for Ito-Yo, the paper department store. Yeah, nine floors of paper, cards, etc. We got turned around after leaving the train station, but managed to find the place. It turned out that it was bigger than Jen thought. They had two more annexes in different buildings.
While Jen shopped for fancy paper for our friends, I stopped in at a model ship shop in Ito-Yo 3. There were some beautiful completed ship models, in addition to modeling supplies. I had my eye on a delicate little model of the racing schooner Bluenose. Only about 4 inches long, all the sails and rigging were shown, with each rope represented and strung individually. At around $120, I considered it to be fair value. However, there was no box for the model. It was too delicate to pack in luggage. If we can solve the packaging problem, I'll be back to buy it.
Later, we went to Akihabara, Electric Town. Again, the main drag was closed to vehicles. What can I say? Multiple stores with multiple floors worth of action figures and electronics.
We found Donguri Kyouwakoku, The Studio Ghibli shop.
Score!
We managed to find a long out-of-print copy of ROMAN ALBUM EXTRA #61: NAUSICAA. This 1989 art book has screen shots, storyboards, interviews, sheet music and fan art.
We also picked up a well-sculpted PVC action figure of Nausicaa flying on her 'Moeve' flying wing, with Teto on her shoulder.
Jen saw a wall of cute stuffed Miyazaki characters. She picked up a plush, gray furry creature from Kiki's Delivery Service.
She also wanted the fat white cat from Whisper of the Heart, but we couldn't find anything. I'll have to come back when Jen's working again next Thursday, to look around some more...
We visited a few other action figure stores. I almost bought a couple of 1/48 scale die-cast Soviet tanks from WWII, to wargame with. However, if I bought those I'd have to paint infantry figures to go with them, and then get German stuff to oppose them. Not going to happen any time soon. Too much 40K and Flames of War stuff sitting neglected on my workbench at home.
We did buy a few more items:
Interestingly, the majority of the items above are from stories featuring strong female protagonists. I wonder what that says about our tastes?
One store in Akihabara had life-size statues of the three Norns from Ah! My Goddess! standing at the entrance.
Jen said immediately, "No, you're not taking those home!"
Jen did take my picture standing beside them. Inside the store they had some great sculpts of Belldandy and Skuld in a glass case. The Belldandy figure in particular was striking - she had her robes spread almost a foot wide and she seemed to be floating in the air. However, they weren't for sale.
Out front several otaku (geek fanboys) were taking photos of women, those wearing Lolita dresses as well as women in maid costumes from the local maid cafes. We noticed that one attractive young woman in black Lolita gear was posing prettily, looking over the top of her eyeglasses. She was getting attention from several high school girls, as well from the otaku. I took a photo of the photographers taking photos.
Now that I've scoped out the place, I want to go back by myself to Akihabara to see if I can pick up stuff for our friends - Kubricks, Gundam, Maschinen Krieger, etc.
I shouldn't inflict that kind of mind-numbing activity on Jen.
The main street in Ginza was closed to traffic, allowing people to walk all over. We were looking for Ito-Yo, the paper department store. Yeah, nine floors of paper, cards, etc. We got turned around after leaving the train station, but managed to find the place. It turned out that it was bigger than Jen thought. They had two more annexes in different buildings.
While Jen shopped for fancy paper for our friends, I stopped in at a model ship shop in Ito-Yo 3. There were some beautiful completed ship models, in addition to modeling supplies. I had my eye on a delicate little model of the racing schooner Bluenose. Only about 4 inches long, all the sails and rigging were shown, with each rope represented and strung individually. At around $120, I considered it to be fair value. However, there was no box for the model. It was too delicate to pack in luggage. If we can solve the packaging problem, I'll be back to buy it.
Later, we went to Akihabara, Electric Town. Again, the main drag was closed to vehicles. What can I say? Multiple stores with multiple floors worth of action figures and electronics.
We found Donguri Kyouwakoku, The Studio Ghibli shop.
Score!
We managed to find a long out-of-print copy of ROMAN ALBUM EXTRA #61: NAUSICAA. This 1989 art book has screen shots, storyboards, interviews, sheet music and fan art.
We also picked up a well-sculpted PVC action figure of Nausicaa flying on her 'Moeve' flying wing, with Teto on her shoulder.
Jen saw a wall of cute stuffed Miyazaki characters. She picked up a plush, gray furry creature from Kiki's Delivery Service.
She also wanted the fat white cat from Whisper of the Heart, but we couldn't find anything. I'll have to come back when Jen's working again next Thursday, to look around some more...
We visited a few other action figure stores. I almost bought a couple of 1/48 scale die-cast Soviet tanks from WWII, to wargame with. However, if I bought those I'd have to paint infantry figures to go with them, and then get German stuff to oppose them. Not going to happen any time soon. Too much 40K and Flames of War stuff sitting neglected on my workbench at home.
We did buy a few more items:
- A well-articulated Kaiyodo action figure of Saber from Fate/Stay Night. It's sculpted by Enoki Tomohide, who captured her likeness very well.
- A box of Kaiyodo Making of Seven Samurai figures. It's from a collection of colour and black and white figures of the main cast samurai characters, plus Kurosowa amd the film crew. The likenesses are very good. I was a litttle apprehensive, since the sealed box had a random assortment of 10 figures. Fortunately, I got at least one model of every samurai.
- Finally, Jen saw a wonderfully posed Kotobukiya statue of Yomiko Readman ("The Paper") from Read or Die. Jen said we could get that, so we did.
Interestingly, the majority of the items above are from stories featuring strong female protagonists. I wonder what that says about our tastes?
One store in Akihabara had life-size statues of the three Norns from Ah! My Goddess! standing at the entrance.
Jen said immediately, "No, you're not taking those home!"
Jen did take my picture standing beside them. Inside the store they had some great sculpts of Belldandy and Skuld in a glass case. The Belldandy figure in particular was striking - she had her robes spread almost a foot wide and she seemed to be floating in the air. However, they weren't for sale.
Out front several otaku (geek fanboys) were taking photos of women, those wearing Lolita dresses as well as women in maid costumes from the local maid cafes. We noticed that one attractive young woman in black Lolita gear was posing prettily, looking over the top of her eyeglasses. She was getting attention from several high school girls, as well from the otaku. I took a photo of the photographers taking photos.
Now that I've scoped out the place, I want to go back by myself to Akihabara to see if I can pick up stuff for our friends - Kubricks, Gundam, Maschinen Krieger, etc.
I shouldn't inflict that kind of mind-numbing activity on Jen.