2011: Part 7 - Nippon, Otaku, Desu

Part 7 - Japan, got lazy and decided to copy and paste the old post I originally wrote.

Shinjuku

This is where we ended up staying, on a lot of train lines including express services, our hotel was so close to the train station and there were lots of shopping to check out in the local area.  Marui One stood out as a highlight, while I was aware of all the lolita and goth brands before coming to Japan, actually going and seeing the stores located in the building was absolutely mindblowing.  All the brands have their own stores, while all the stores are tiny their size and decor really amazing, none of the stores allowed for pics so I can't exactly put anything up.  It was a good introduction to properly seeing what all the brands in the Tokyo Hardcore store were going to be like in person.

Walking around and exploring was a lot of fun which included checking out some of the interesting arcades, some of the amazing food they had around the area and looking out for all sorts of fun things and general exploring around of the place, thankfully I had Susannah who made sure I didn't get lost because even once I found my way around Shinjuku the subway was definitely going to prove more confusing!  Also note the picture where Susannah is at the temple, our translater Naomi kept joking that the big wooden part is a penis, once seen it could not be unseen!

This was my favourite highlight from Shinjuku, you can hear me nyaaing near the end.  XD

Harajuku

This is one of the places which is absolutely amazing for shopping and to look at but ironically it was the place where we got the least amount of photos.  However it must be said the main reason why you go is for two reasons, the shopping which was amazing yet the downside here is that you are not actually allowed to take photos in any of the stores and also the fashion and the people, we saw plenty of interesting looking people, we didn't feel the need to stop any person in particular since there were way too many well dressed people me and Susannah were absolutely amazed by.

If anything stood out it was actually going to Takuya Angel and actually getting to meet him in person, he was actually a really cool guy to talk to and we've got a good potential business relationship here for multiple reasons actually now!  His store was great but actually insanely small, shopping would have been fun but we were on a tight budget here due to the nature of the trip in general so I have very little to show from my time there but even so, just going around and exploring was a lot of fun.  Personally I found Putumayo definitely a personal fave, they had did a punk collaboration with Vocaloids.  Which meant there was a punk Hatsune Miku outfit which I would have so needed if I was a girl.  XD

Shibuya

This was fun but I barely got to spend much time here.  From my end I didn't go away with much of an interesting experience since I feel like there was a lot to offer here but barely got to check much out overall.  However, the scramble definitely provides one hell of a highlight though, which is fun to look at but actually crossing the road is not fun and is actually kind of scary when you're down there, you're trying your hardest not to bump into someone every second!

I personally got to check out the Guhroovy store which was by far one of my favourite stores to check out.  It's essentially a store that's considered the rave capital in Japan, owned by Guhroovy and M-Project, it features lots of interesting rave CD's across a variety of genres by rave DJ's in Japan.  While I couldn't find my most favouritest of J-Core CD's they had an awesome variety of some really good CD's worth checking out and you can get a variety of rave fliers which included a few interesting events which I missed out on and possibly one of the best fliers I've seen in the rave scene for a CD, check out the detailing mp3 buttons on the cover girls breasts on the picture below!

Akihabara

Absolutely awesome, Akihabara is the nerd/otaku/anime mecha of the world.  Featuring many 8 level buildings dedicated to arcades, cosplay, video games, anime, merchandise and maid cafes, it was just pure heaven!  Sadly I barely got much time to check out the place and neither did I get much photo-wise.   We found a very detailed naked Hatsune Miku model in a store for around $350, it was really impressive but we just weren't perverted enough to buy it, nor did we get around to buying much tentacle rape. XD

The streets are lined up with maids everywhere shouting at you to come to their cafe, even just taking a flier makes them insanely happy and they're even happy to walk you to a cafe.  The cafe we decided on was one Susannah went last time and it was an RPG tavern themed place which had all the prices listed in gold rather than Yen.  I decided to order  custom maid cocktail which actually saw a maid making up a cocktail depended on what you liked right in front of you, it was very cute and so were the maids in general, we spent our night getting 'drunk with maids!'  Checking out the maids together the entire night.  I guess the other highlight was the arcade, which saw most of the games abandoned until I went upstairs to find a huge line for the vocaloid game which Sega recently released, it's a simple rhythm game but my god I need it, especially for days when I can't get to an ITG machine which will be very hard now that I'm in Adelaide and don't have much time for it these days too!

Osaka

Got to hang out in Osaka for a day, it was a long 4 hour train trip and we only had one day which we could go due to our business meeting schedules, however it was well worth exploring and even from a business perspective the way that meeting went was completely worth it!

Osaka saw a lot of random exploring including probably the most craziest variety store I've been to which included alcohol you could drink out of a shoe, food products from all over the world, including Tim Tams which Susannah bought to show our translator Naomi what Australians eat.  We got to check out many wonderful sites such as Takoyaki everywhere which is Japanese for octopus balls, it just seems they love to get tentacles inside them here in Osaka!

We had a blast over here checking out some interesting stores that we have known about such as Angellic Pretty and some new surprises such as an awesome cyber store we found here called Qutie Frash, the shopkeeper looked pretty awesome and I've been looking for something interesting and unique like this for some time and Osaka really springed a surprise there, so I've got a new outfit for DJing at the next Neko Nation now!

Definitely a huge highlight of the trip and even the train ride where I got to sit back and watch Japan go past was really enjoyable, being able to see the different areas of Japan from the hustle and bustle of Tokyo to the quiet and peaceful Japanese country side was a wonderful an amazing way to see Japan.

Overall it was one hell of an awesome trip but one week to explore the place definitely was not enough, we were there for almost two weeks but one trip was mostly for business and didn't really count in terms of exploring.  It was a wonderful an amazing trip which I'll definitely be going back to Japan in the near future and will have lots more pictures and stories to tell soon.

Also there will be more updates on my other blogs too!