See Flickr for the complete photo set Just more stores in Akiba. And pizza, nomnomnom

See Flickr for the complete photo set Meidocafe and, of course, moar Akihabara <3

See Flickr for the complete set More shopping in Akihabara, followed by a trip to the local izakaya for nomi-hodai (“all you can drink”) ; 3

See Flickr for the complete photo sets Back to Akihabara for more shopping! Like in Akihabara P1, these are just a sample of pictures (see Flickr sets for the rest)… I spent a lot of my time cataloguing each store for my upcoming Akihabara Shopping Guide, so these aren’t as flashy as the first post.

See Flickr for the complete photo sets Nakano Broadway is a shopping mall right outside the Nakano station and at the end of another long covered mall. It is an otaku shopping heaven as it is also the birthplace of Mandarake, the famous chain of second hand anime goods (“second hand” being stuff like “minor box damages” or “opened once”, not “mysterious sticky stuff all over”).

So last year right after finishing university, my friends and I decided to go to Japan for our graduation trip. It was a blast and not only did we visit many new places, but it was also when I started down the road of figure collecting journey. This summer, just a bit over a year later, me and two other friends decided to return once again for a two week vacation!

NOTE: This is partially outdated, will post an updated map later. While planning out my Japan trip Akihabara shopping spree, I spend some a lot of time researching all the figure/doll/gunpla stores and mapping them out. I figure this might be useful for others in the future. Here’s the map and please let me know if you can think of any important stores in the Akihabara area that I missed ^_^ Online Google map link: https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=216291585881164541606.0004c0510f2cf86838ec4

This one really doesn’t have a story behind it… I saw, I bought, I conqueuered (yay for Mandarake). I’ve been trying to collect every single Neco-Arc figure and this is the second last item before completion (the last illusive item would be the Neco-Arc Chaos counterpart). This figma/action figure is part of Good Smile Company’s rare line of Nendoroid Plus. In this case, it is a huge Neco-Arc made out of wood and with limited mobility. I’m not familiar with the background of when/how this was released, but I do know that it’s quite rare and limited ;3 And so, …

So back in December, I decided to finally break the wait and buy myself the extremely rare Tsukibako box (Tsukihime + PLUS+DISC + Kagetsu Tohya) as a first-year-of-working, year-end bonus. So I started searching Mandarake and Yahoo Auctions Japan. Of course, while I was at it, I decided to order Mahoyo, then order the limited edition Fate/hollow ataraxia, then the limited edition Fate/stay night, then finish up my ヒロユキ TYPE-MOON doujinshi collection, and so forth. By the end of the day, my shopping cart was far more full than I had originally planned, resulting in a huge December loot. This …

Spring 2013 anime season chart. Reposted from moetron See MyAnimeList for my list of watching/completed anime. Check out AnimeCalendar for a nifty tool to keep up-to-date with airing anime.