Japan Report! A fujoshi trip (Part 1 - Akihabara & Ikebukuro)
Hi everyone! From May 1 to 10 I was actually in Japan having a blast (for a fujoshi, anyway), so just reporting in on it now since I just got back from China and HK as well~ :) I took a lot of photos so bear with me as this may be a "heavy" entry.
Day 1 (Arrival - Akiba BL shopping)
SO MUCH RAIN THAT DAY. Our flight actually arrived to Japan in the afternoon so we had to rush to our hotel to make the most of our day.
Train was quite empty since we had to wait a half hour for it to depart. orz
Fortunately our hotel is just a block from the JR Akiba station, so that met we had time to shop!! :D First stop? BOOK OFF. Because of course you buy secondhand manga first before you're forced to buy it new.
Let's just say it was VERY DIFFICULT to leave Book Off....... Because there's so much I want to see and oh god their BL section takes up two rows of shelfs.... So in the end this is what I managed to score after 1 hour of browsing:
Most were actually 350 yen but I managed to get a few from the 105 yen section too! So wonderful ahhh♡
And then because we blew a bit too much time at Book Off the stores in Akiba were starting to close.... But it didn't stop me from buying more stuff at Toranoana.
...This was 15 minutes in Toranoana. LOL. I was speed sifting through the "Hibari uke" section. The Toranoana they had in Akiba had more doujinshis targeted for guys, so I grabbed what I could~
After that we went to do some gambling..... My sis and I go a little crazy with UFO machines at the Game Centre. I think we went to blow our money almost everyday in Japan. Snagged ourselves a Ringo figure from Mawaru Penguindrum :)
Sis is really good at it which is why we can afford to play XD;;
Day 2 (Ikebukuro, Otome Road = Insane fujoshi shopping & Butlter cafe + Macross Event)
Weather? POURING RAIN AGAIN. orz
Macross was having a special event during the time we went to Japan so we headed to Sunshine City to see it! :) Went right in the morning~ Sadly all the photos of that event are on my sister's camera so I can only talk about it... They had a whole floor just for the event! We went to see the displays first and they had life sized cutouts of all the characters in Macross F, with their voices talking about the event in the background XD They even have walls just explaining how each Macross links up, including character relationships. If I was a real Macross fan I'd be really excited, but I only watched a few eps of MacrossF and the movie........ (´・ω・` Sis was the real fan so she went cosplaying Sheryl~ (Yes, cosplay is allowed at the event). They also had life sized sculptures of Sheryl & Ranka in new outfits, + Alto's machine that you could step onto and take a pic with~ There's also a Karaoke area, food area (all Macross related food), and a board for you to write to wish Ranka a happy birthday.
(Photo was taken on another day that wasn't quite as wet...XD)
Once we exit Sunshine City we found ourselves at Otome Road... HEAVEN~~♡ I was actually trying to find Meikido (really cheap 2nd hand doujinshi store we buy from online), but we ended up finding Lashinbang first. They had some doujinshi and cheap otome and BL goods in the back, so I rummaged but only bought 2 doujinshis from their first floor. But their 2nd floor was packed with figurines that sold a lot cheaper than other stores!! You can even get figures only for game machines. :) So I got myself a Ayanami Rei figure for 300 yen and Penguin plushes from Penguindrum♡
And then..... we went to K-books comics. It's where you'll find BL manga, shoujo manga, and josei manga, along with a smaller selection of shounen manga. Bought a few BL books from here too but couldn't find all the ones I was looking for ;u;
Then we hit... K-books' doujinshi shop and......Lol. The first floor is for the newest doujinshi they had, which in our case would have mostly been from HaruComi 2012 (the most recent big doujin event to happen in Japan at the time). I pretty much took all the DinoHiba ones that were on the shelf. ^q^ But stupid me, I went to pay and the clerk chased after me.... telling me I took the samples instead!! ;;;OTL Basically the first book of the pile is their "sample" book. It's neatly wrapped with plastic like all their other books but they stick a preview on the back, as well as the price. You're actually supposed to take starting from the second book of the pile until there's only that one copy left. So I had to apologize with a 90º bow and put the samples back. A tad embarrassing but a lesson learnt ;;;
After that sis walky-talkied me to go to the second floor, where they have all the older doujinshis..... So many shelves omg ;;; I got so lost in it and it took me a good 5 min to finally find the DinoHiba section. The sifting began and.... I wasn't done until an hour-ish later ahhh bought so much. They were busy counting my purchase so a line up started to form behind me since I kind of clogged it up, so they started a new register www I wish I could remember how many I bought but I dropped the receipt. ;3; But it was basically 16000 yen worth of doujinshi XDXDXD Including the stuff I bought on the first floor I spent about 20000 yen at that K-books. orz orz Sis was no better HAHA. So we left with probably 100 books in our ecobags and carried them with sore shoulders to Animate to meet our friends. STILL POURING RAIN. orz
Animate actually wasn't that great for me, despite all the lovely stuff they had! They had mostly stuff from the most popular series at the time, so lots of UtaPuri and Starry Sky for me to see :'D But I had spent so much money at K-books I had to hold back and only buy things I really wanted. There's 5 floors there and we took the elevator to the top and made our way down. If you're a Drama CD fan you'll spend so much on their CDs floor ;3; Everything in there is shiny and new so of course you pay more than you'd like, so really, don't buy what you want at Animate unless you have to (ie: Animate-only or Animate-limited edition stuff....TuT) or it's the same price everywhere else.
Our friends had made a reservation at Swallowtail so we went to that after.... Maybe because it was Golden Week so people were on holidays, so the place was pretty packed (as in, every table was filled). For those who don't know, Swallowtail is a popular butler café in Japan. :D Ahh the princess treatment ww They took our bags and everything but hey, remember those 100-ish books we bought?? ONE BUTLER CARRIED THEM ALL. Including our bags! HAHA. When he offered to take our books we sort of looked at him going "REALLY? ARE YOU SURE? THIS MIGHT HURT :(" But it's their job so of course they had to take it and we just gladly piled it on ROFL. Food-wise it was pretty good, but the tea they gave me actually tasted a lot like the tea you have when you yumcha......;;; Sorry I'm poor at telling black teas apart. TuT Treatment-wise, I wish I had better Japanese www But it was quite cute how they took time to set the table all perfect and to come to us ASAP when we rang the bell. My set had a cake tier, so every time I wanted to eat a plate on a different tier I had to tell our butler to switch it for me. 8D When we left, one butler had all our bags ready. As in, all our shopping bags, purses, of the four of us. You have no idea how impressed me and sis were at how much he could carry, despite him shaking a bit and struggling to keep his smile up wwwww Poor guy. In the end I quite enjoyed it! But I don't think I'll come back again until I have better Japanese..... (´u`;;
Ikebukuro day over? No way. There's still Mandarake!! MORE DOUJINSHI RAWR. Although less than K-books, I still bought a lot....OTL They had higher shelves so I had to climb up and down on a little stool to grab at the books 8D;
That was it for Ikebukuro~ Sorry for the lack of photos, a lot of books + pouring rain + umbrella means you DON'T feel like taking pictures.... But here was the doujinshi loot for the day!
I covered the bed. ;u;
Next time: Odaiba, Super Comic City, DinoHiba Hatsukoi Petit Only event, Starry Sky Petit Only event!!
Day 1 (Arrival - Akiba BL shopping)
SO MUCH RAIN THAT DAY. Our flight actually arrived to Japan in the afternoon so we had to rush to our hotel to make the most of our day.
Train was quite empty since we had to wait a half hour for it to depart. orz
Fortunately our hotel is just a block from the JR Akiba station, so that met we had time to shop!! :D First stop? BOOK OFF. Because of course you buy secondhand manga first before you're forced to buy it new.
Let's just say it was VERY DIFFICULT to leave Book Off....... Because there's so much I want to see and oh god their BL section takes up two rows of shelfs.... So in the end this is what I managed to score after 1 hour of browsing:
Most were actually 350 yen but I managed to get a few from the 105 yen section too! So wonderful ahhh♡
And then because we blew a bit too much time at Book Off the stores in Akiba were starting to close.... But it didn't stop me from buying more stuff at Toranoana.
...This was 15 minutes in Toranoana. LOL. I was speed sifting through the "Hibari uke" section. The Toranoana they had in Akiba had more doujinshis targeted for guys, so I grabbed what I could~
After that we went to do some gambling..... My sis and I go a little crazy with UFO machines at the Game Centre. I think we went to blow our money almost everyday in Japan. Snagged ourselves a Ringo figure from Mawaru Penguindrum :)
Sis is really good at it which is why we can afford to play XD;;
Day 2 (Ikebukuro, Otome Road = Insane fujoshi shopping & Butlter cafe + Macross Event)
Weather? POURING RAIN AGAIN. orz
Macross was having a special event during the time we went to Japan so we headed to Sunshine City to see it! :) Went right in the morning~ Sadly all the photos of that event are on my sister's camera so I can only talk about it... They had a whole floor just for the event! We went to see the displays first and they had life sized cutouts of all the characters in Macross F, with their voices talking about the event in the background XD They even have walls just explaining how each Macross links up, including character relationships. If I was a real Macross fan I'd be really excited, but I only watched a few eps of MacrossF and the movie........ (´・ω・` Sis was the real fan so she went cosplaying Sheryl~ (Yes, cosplay is allowed at the event). They also had life sized sculptures of Sheryl & Ranka in new outfits, + Alto's machine that you could step onto and take a pic with~ There's also a Karaoke area, food area (all Macross related food), and a board for you to write to wish Ranka a happy birthday.
(Photo was taken on another day that wasn't quite as wet...XD)
Once we exit Sunshine City we found ourselves at Otome Road... HEAVEN~~♡ I was actually trying to find Meikido (really cheap 2nd hand doujinshi store we buy from online), but we ended up finding Lashinbang first. They had some doujinshi and cheap otome and BL goods in the back, so I rummaged but only bought 2 doujinshis from their first floor. But their 2nd floor was packed with figurines that sold a lot cheaper than other stores!! You can even get figures only for game machines. :) So I got myself a Ayanami Rei figure for 300 yen and Penguin plushes from Penguindrum♡
And then..... we went to K-books comics. It's where you'll find BL manga, shoujo manga, and josei manga, along with a smaller selection of shounen manga. Bought a few BL books from here too but couldn't find all the ones I was looking for ;u;
Then we hit... K-books' doujinshi shop and......Lol. The first floor is for the newest doujinshi they had, which in our case would have mostly been from HaruComi 2012 (the most recent big doujin event to happen in Japan at the time). I pretty much took all the DinoHiba ones that were on the shelf. ^q^ But stupid me, I went to pay and the clerk chased after me.... telling me I took the samples instead!! ;;;OTL Basically the first book of the pile is their "sample" book. It's neatly wrapped with plastic like all their other books but they stick a preview on the back, as well as the price. You're actually supposed to take starting from the second book of the pile until there's only that one copy left. So I had to apologize with a 90º bow and put the samples back. A tad embarrassing but a lesson learnt ;;;
After that sis walky-talkied me to go to the second floor, where they have all the older doujinshis..... So many shelves omg ;;; I got so lost in it and it took me a good 5 min to finally find the DinoHiba section. The sifting began and.... I wasn't done until an hour-ish later ahhh bought so much. They were busy counting my purchase so a line up started to form behind me since I kind of clogged it up, so they started a new register www I wish I could remember how many I bought but I dropped the receipt. ;3; But it was basically 16000 yen worth of doujinshi XDXDXD Including the stuff I bought on the first floor I spent about 20000 yen at that K-books. orz orz Sis was no better HAHA. So we left with probably 100 books in our ecobags and carried them with sore shoulders to Animate to meet our friends. STILL POURING RAIN. orz
Animate actually wasn't that great for me, despite all the lovely stuff they had! They had mostly stuff from the most popular series at the time, so lots of UtaPuri and Starry Sky for me to see :'D But I had spent so much money at K-books I had to hold back and only buy things I really wanted. There's 5 floors there and we took the elevator to the top and made our way down. If you're a Drama CD fan you'll spend so much on their CDs floor ;3; Everything in there is shiny and new so of course you pay more than you'd like, so really, don't buy what you want at Animate unless you have to (ie: Animate-only or Animate-limited edition stuff....TuT) or it's the same price everywhere else.
Our friends had made a reservation at Swallowtail so we went to that after.... Maybe because it was Golden Week so people were on holidays, so the place was pretty packed (as in, every table was filled). For those who don't know, Swallowtail is a popular butler café in Japan. :D Ahh the princess treatment ww They took our bags and everything but hey, remember those 100-ish books we bought?? ONE BUTLER CARRIED THEM ALL. Including our bags! HAHA. When he offered to take our books we sort of looked at him going "REALLY? ARE YOU SURE? THIS MIGHT HURT :(" But it's their job so of course they had to take it and we just gladly piled it on ROFL. Food-wise it was pretty good, but the tea they gave me actually tasted a lot like the tea you have when you yumcha......;;; Sorry I'm poor at telling black teas apart. TuT Treatment-wise, I wish I had better Japanese www But it was quite cute how they took time to set the table all perfect and to come to us ASAP when we rang the bell. My set had a cake tier, so every time I wanted to eat a plate on a different tier I had to tell our butler to switch it for me. 8D When we left, one butler had all our bags ready. As in, all our shopping bags, purses, of the four of us. You have no idea how impressed me and sis were at how much he could carry, despite him shaking a bit and struggling to keep his smile up wwwww Poor guy. In the end I quite enjoyed it! But I don't think I'll come back again until I have better Japanese..... (´u`;;
Ikebukuro day over? No way. There's still Mandarake!! MORE DOUJINSHI RAWR. Although less than K-books, I still bought a lot....OTL They had higher shelves so I had to climb up and down on a little stool to grab at the books 8D;
That was it for Ikebukuro~ Sorry for the lack of photos, a lot of books + pouring rain + umbrella means you DON'T feel like taking pictures.... But here was the doujinshi loot for the day!
I covered the bed. ;u;
Next time: Odaiba, Super Comic City, DinoHiba Hatsukoi Petit Only event, Starry Sky Petit Only event!!