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 …
Read More »Sakura-Con 2015
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here (I blame ArcheAge), but last, last week was Sakura-Con 2015. Sakura-con is the largest anime convention in the north west, with over 20,000 attendees and held at the Washington State Convention Center (Seattle, Washington) between April 3-5th. I went last yearand took tons of cosplay photos as an attendee, but this year, I decided to attend not only as volunteer staff, but also as a panelist! Since I spent most of my time helping out in the console gaming room (I was part of tournament gaming staff), I was only able …
Read More »Japan Trip 2014 – Art of Gundam
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 …
Read More »Japan Trip 2014 – Tenshi no Sato + Kyoto Station
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 …
Read More »Japan Trip 2014 – Fushimi Inari Shrine
See this post for the introduction. This was the first actual do-stuff day of this Japan trip, and the plan for me was yet another visit to Tenshi no Sato, but this time with my completed Arcueid Dollfie. sorrowmoon had scheduled our visit for the afternoon, so I decided to spent part of the morning with the rest of the group visiting the Fushimi Inari shrine yet again. Arcueid chilling at the Fushimi Inari shrine Japanese breakfast at the ryokan/hotel! Consisting of tofu, fruit bits, cheese balls with some sauce, preserved radish, bowl of tea, some spinnach?, piece of fish, …
Read More »Japan Trip 2014 – Arrival
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, …
Read More »Shinonono Houki ~Akatsubaki ver.~ 1/8 PVC Figure (AmiAmi Zero)
This came in one of the huge AmiAmi boxes that I finally got around to unboxing along with the rest of my June 2014 backlog loot. I’m a huge fan of mechas and mechamusume, so I was pretty excited way back when AmiAmi Zero announced their Infinite Stratos line (though right now all they have is Akatsubaki and Blue Tears). While I was ultimately quite disappointed with the show (especially its sequel, “Infinite Fanservice 2” as I call it), the IS designs are apparently inspired by various Mobile Suit Gundam designs, with Akatsubaki very likely inspired by the ZGMF-X19A Infinite …
Read More »June 2014 Loot Backlog
Been pretty busy lately with work and planning the upcoming Comiket/Japan trip but I finally got a chance to sit down and unbox/go through all the loot backlog that has accumulated over the past while. Normally I don’t bother posting loot blog posts, but this time around there were some pretty big items I had been looking quite forward to getting. And so, here’s the rundown, with the lovely Arc as eyecandy ^_^ Pile of loot boxes, from AmiAmi, Suruga-ya, Rakuten, Yahoo Japan Auctions, and more! Everything opened up and all together! Mostly TYPE-MOON stuff (of course) but a few …
Read More »Sakura-Con 2014
Last weekend was Sakura-Con 2014, the biggest anime convention in the north-west. The convention is pretty big with over 25,000 attendees this year and was the biggest I’ve ever been to since Anime Expo 2011. It was also the first time I was attending an anime con with friends also interested in anime (including OhnoRaptors and Tsukikira), which made it a lot more fun since I wasn’t always the only person excited to see stuff. Attended a few of panels, including “A Helpful Guide to Anime Figure Collecting”, “Are We Live? The iDOLMA$TER!”, “Cosplay Skit Contest”, and “Lesbian-Themed Anime”. Spent …
Read More »Spring 2014 Anime Season
See MyAnimeList for my list of watching/completed anime. Check out AnimeCalendar for a nifty tool to keep up-to-date with airing anime. It’s the second week into this airing anime season. All the episode ones have been watched and all first impressions made (see here for notes and thoughts on the last season). Time to jot down the notes so we can check back three months from now and see how ridiculously wrong (or accurate) our initial thoughts were. It’s a bit early, but I think I’m more looking forward to the summer 2014 season (Sword Art Online 2: Gun Gale …
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