See this post for the introduction. While going through photos in Lightroom for my recent Sakura-Con 2015 photo blog post, I realized that I actually never finished uploading and writing the rest of my Japan Trip 2014 blog posts… Oops… So here they are, with whatever commentary I can still remember… Better late than never I guess! On the same day we visited the Art of Gundam exhibition, we explored Nipponbashi and Dotonbori. I had visited both places multiple times in the past, so I didn’t end up taking all that many pictures this time around. We meet again, Giant …

See Flickr for the complete photo set Nipponbashi, the other otaku haven! (also known historically as Den Den town)

So right after finishing university, my friends and I decided to go to Japan for our graduation trip (May-June 2012). Japan was a high in our choice of destination for a vacation. For my friends, it was of cultural interest and a new place to see. For me, it was the Holy Land of anime, and also the place where my figure collecting hobby would emerge. But the loots and food blog entries will come at the end. The following series of “Japan Trip 2012” blog posts will simply be pictorial guides of my adventure through Japan. I’ll try to …

See this post for the introduction. After our last day of visiting Kyoto/Osaka, we took the shinkansen back to Tokyo and took a day break in preparation for the main event of the trip: Comiket 86. The calm before the storm: Waiting in line for Tokyo Big Sight to open it’s doors to Comiket 86 goers… For those who aren’t familiar, Comiket (short for ”Comic Market”) is Japan’s oldest and largest doujinshi convention. It is a 3-day event held bi-annually with Summer Comiket happening in mid August and Winter Comiket happening in late December. It has in recent years been …

See this post for the introduction. In case you didn’t know/notice from my previous blog posts, I am a huge Gundam fanboy (to be fair though, I actually don’t blog all that much about Gundam, mainly cause I never find the time to build all those gunpla kits gathering dust). I grew up watching Gundam Wing as an elementary school kid (somehow convinced my parents to ignore all the “Rated T for Teen” warnings) and went on to watch (and enjoy) all the older series from long before I was born. So when I heard about The Art of Gundam …

See this post for the introduction. Continuing on from the Fushimi Inari Shrine visit, I went to meet up with sorrowmoon for a visit to Volk’s Tenshi no Sato. Tenshi no Sato was a dedicated Super Dollfie museum and “den” for Dollfie owners, complete with a Japanese-style garden in back and had always been a must-see for doll owners (reservation required, passport needed for foreigners). I had previously visited the location before and took some of my first Dollfie photography there, but that was before I had completed Arcueid, so this would be Arc’s first photoshoot there. Arcueid posing outside …

After visiting Japan the past two years, I’ve decided to return once again this summer. The 2012 trip was right after graduation and my first time being in Japan and, thanks to rigorous planning by my friends, was a full blown tourism trip, with me doing tons of random figure/gunpla shopping and starting my figure collection. The 2013 trip was still partially a tourism trip, but I had money saved up from working for a year and ended up also partially being a shopping trip, buying figures from my wishlist and starting my Dollfie Dream adventures. This third time around, …

Yesterday, a friend of mine living in New York linked me to a new maid cafe (website here) opening in downtown Chinatown. While I’ve been to Japanese maid cafes in my previous travels, I’ve yet to visit a permanent one in the US. Which got me thinking, why? And yet, I also knew the answer; Japanese-style maid cafes cannot be successful businesses in the US. And here’s my long rant about why. Cute maids at the newly opened Maid Cafe NY

So right after finishing university, my friends and I decided to go to Japan for our graduation trip (May-June 2012). Japan was a high in our choice of destintion for a vacation. For my friends, it was of cultural interest and a new place to see. For me, it was the Holy Land of anime, and also the place where my figure collecting hobby would emerge. See here for my pre-figure-collecting background It was during this Japan trip that I truely started figure collecting, ultimately ending up with the growing collection you see on my MFC profile – ~200 figures, …