This is my dollfie dream doll that I bought in Japan in August 2009.
I still don’t know much about dollfies, but quite like them. I used a wig from Parabox, a store in Radio Kaikai of Akihabara, and also the limited edition cat-ear maid outfit from the series Fortune Arterial that I bought at Azone International in Osaka.
It suits her doesn’t it?
It’s been a while since I have posted anything besides for my Japan trip in August last year. I’m currently planning to write about non Japan trip content as well, so expect to have some posts from the trip mixed in with regular normal posts.
Lately there has been a whole lot of stuff that has been going on, but at the moment I just wanted to announce that I have finished building my 2nd garage kit figure!
This is the 2nd garage kit figure that I’ve built. It is by the circle T’s system. The first garage kit that I built took me a whole year to make and I made every possible mistake in the process. So building this 2nd kit was quite simple in comparison to my first kit.
Actually, the surface work on the kit was quite a pain as it needed a lot of cleaning up to get it nice and smooth, but after finishing that, the painting phase unexpectedly went according to plan without any mishaps.
This time, when painting the skin colour, I tried to make the shadows much darker so it ended up looking a lot nicer in the end. However, for some reason, the shading doesn’t even show up in my photos! Why!? orz
In the first garage kit that I made, I created my own decals for the eyes, but this time, I decided to try to paint it by hand. I was really nervous about painting on the eyes, but it seems that attending Pencafe (an Anime drawing club) for a year has seemed to improve my eye drawing and painting. Thanks to that, I was able to successfully paint the eyes quite nicely. Before starting, I read numerous tutorials on painting eyes so I made sure I didn’t make any silly mistakes.
I did however make one mistake. I was impatient, and didn’t think to let the paint dry before applying the glossy clear coat to the eyes. As a result, the different colours of the perfectly painted eyes mixed with each other and ended up without the hard edged that I had intended. Still it turned out okay when not examining it closely.
Anyways, I really like how this turned out. I think that it even turned out better than the PVC prepainted limited version sold in the Hobby Japan magazine a while back.
Day 13 was a continuation of the siteseeing in Kyoto with Ronald. Although before I went off to meet up with him, I popped into a sign writing shop to request for a Shitajiki (signature board) to be made for my Jujitsu instructor back in Australia. I asked the store owner to write the name of the dojo on it for me. The sign writing shop is located in one of the small side streets closeby to the Business hotel Nissei in Osaka.
It was my first time going to one of these type of shops, so I asked the shop owner if I could take a photo of his shop. The owner seemed to do all the calligraphy and writing of many signs, menus and advertisments. When I was entering, he was in the middle of writing on this giant expensive looking lantern. Since he writes on expensive and sometimes non-flat objects, it must be pretty stressful and difficult work.
After getting him to do the Shikishi, I went to Kyoto to meet up with Ronald.
He was with his friend Max. Since our plans for today was to go to visit Kyoto Animation, we decided to have some fun and eat some Chokokorone bread (a chocolate filled bread) in front of the building like Konata from Lucky Star, a popular anime by the anime studio. So, our first destination was to the bakery. This was of course all Ronald’s idea. (^^;)
In my previous post, I forgot to mention that I actually recieved a birthday present from Ronald, the Canadian that came shopping with me in Osaka. It happened close to the end of our shopping where we spotted some Nanoha and Fate bags for sale in a random doujin shop. I’m quite a fan of the “”Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha” anime series, so I was really happy to receive them as a present.
By the way, on the day before my birthday, I went to Lashinban and bought myself a Dollfie Dream dol. I bought the cheapest one, although that still was about 55,000 yen (650AU~). The doll is from the anime “Deeper than dawning blue (Yoake mae yori Rurina iro de)” and is of the character Estel. I actually don’t know much about the anime or game it’s based on, but I liked it better than the other dolls for sale, so I chose this one.
Today was the day I planned to explore Kyoto, so I left Namba to go to Umeda station and changed to the JR train to Kyoto. However, before I left, I had some Hokkaido croquette after the hotel’s breakfast of a boiled egg and potato salad.
I had eaten the croquettes at this small shop before, however this was the first time for the trip. I was just as I remembered, really tasty.
I also have been to Kyoto before, although I haven’t seen all of the site seeing spots yet. To tell the truth, I’m kinda tired of looking at temples, however there was one scene in a manga called “Magical Teacher Negima” which feature a snippet of the characters running through the red gates of Fushimi Inari, so I decided I wanted to visit that place.
When in the train headed to Fushimi Inari, I took a few photos of the passing scenery as it seemed to be nice enough to use for backgrounds for when I make my own visual novel game. Making my own game is still a distant dream, but it is still something that I’d like to do some day.
The town that Fushimi Inari is located in is actually a much quieter place than I expected. It was one of those places that you could take your time walking around exploring and appreciating the scenery. Of course theree were many souvenir shops but I didn’t really buy much from there. I just enjoyed the scenery around me as I headed towards the shrine.
After walking for 10 mins, I reached the shrine.
I spent the morning as usual shopping in Den den town and checking out all the stores. While shopping, I got a call from Ronald, the Canadian Otaku that I met at Wonder Festival and Akihabara. Apparently he and his friends were in Osaka doing some siteseeing. The reason he called me was to find out where all the otaku shops were in Osaka. So when I heard that, I offered to meet up with him and to show him around Den den town.
Since there was a bit of time till we were gonna meet up, I of course went to eat at Wendys. I ordered the Salsa chicken burger in a chilli cheese fries set.
It tasted great!
Ronald ended up being late, so I had to wait for a while at the subway, but we managed to meet up in the end. He came with 2 of his friends also from Canada.
We went to Den den town and when we arrived at Otaroad, Ronald spotted a number of Itasha (cars decorated with anime characters) in the car park opposite the many anime shops. Since I passed by the car park numerous times before when shopping, I was suprised that I didn’t even notice it at all. (^^;)
I took Ronald and his friends to Melonbooks, Lashinbang, Volks, Kotobukiya and many other shops in Den den town. However, it seemed the shop that they liked the most was Lashingban. Since I bought my dollfie dream doll from the shop, it was also a favorite of mine as well.
The shop seemed to have a lot of rare goods in there, and as a result, Ronald really shopped quite a bit there. I remember him buying a 20,000 yen Fate Testarossa body pillow cover without hesitation. I’m sure if my memory is correct, he spent close to 100,000 yen in that shop. (>_<)
I thought that I was buying too much, but after being shopping with him, I have to say, I can’t compare to him. (T_T)
Still, being around him did encourage me to spend more. (^_^;)
The second day in Osaka, I was quite busy shopping that I totally forgot to take many pictures of Den Den town, the electronic and anime district of Osaka. As a result, I only have a couple of photos of the stores there.
The day started of course by heading straight to Den den town to take a look around. The previous day one of the stores, Azone International, was closed, so I decided to give it a visit first thing in the day. Lately, dolls have been gaining in popularity in Japan, so to find out more about it, I decided to go to Azone, one of the specialist stores.
I don’t really find regualr dolls very interesting, but I quite like the Anime-related ones. On the outside of the Azone store, they had a display of the various dolls they sold which I took quite a few pictures of. It seems they sell dolls from 25cm to 60cm in size.
The following display is of the 60cm Azone Anime dolls.
Below are some 25cm Anime dolls 
Next are not related to anime, but are some really cute 25cm dolls called Pure Neemo. 
Azone International is in the same building as Kotobukiya, so I passed through Kotobukiya to go up the stairs to Azone. On the way there, I spotted this full sized doll. I took a photo of it previouly, but I decided to take a few more. (^_^;)
After checking out Kotobukiya and Azone International, I went to the Osaka Volks store.
The first floor of Volks was a rental showcase. Essentially it’s a place where many display cabinet boxes are rented out so people can put stuff in it to sell. One of the boxes I found on the way were some interesting figures. Apparently someone took some popular character heads from some figures, and put them onto the bodies of some other figures with various modifications to them. Once I saw this display, I couldn’t stop laughing. (^o^)
After the rental showcase, I checked out the “Tenshi no sumika” section of the building which is a really elaborate display of dollfies dolls on the top floor. Unfortunately you’re not allowed to take photos in the building, so I don’t have any photos of Volks. (>_<)
I was getting hungry after all the looking around and shopping, so I decided to go try some “real” Katsu-don which I had been looking forward to for a long time. It was really delicious. I feel like eating it again each time I see these photos. (^_^;)
I did manage to take a couple of photos of some shops from Den den town’s Otaroad. However that day I was too busy shopping that I forgot all about taking photos of the shop. (>_<)
Yuuki took me to the station on my last day in Himeji, and we took a last photo together. Then I headed straight to Osaka taking the limited express train which took about 45 minutes.
When I arrived in Osaka, I took a photo, and then found a stamp which I used to stamp my sketchbook with the Osaka station stamp.
It took me a bit to find the hotel as I had to transfer from the JR lines to the Ueno subway and take the Midousuji line to Nanba where my hotel was. It took a little orientation at first, but after getting out of the station it didn’t take too long to find the hotel again, since I had stayed there the previous time.
After checking in to the hotel, I decided to go straight to den den town, the electronics and anime area of Osaka.
I entered one of the softmap stores, and found they had a floor dedicated to MIDI instruments including new and 2nd hand music making gear. Since I’m starting to learn the keyboard, this was like heaven.. although I still can’t play very much, so I decided just to take a few photos and not buy anything until I get to the point where I can read and play music from music sheets without too much trouble. I never knew much about music making, but seeing all this stuff has really opened up my eyes to this new hobby. Apart from keyboards, it seems you can connect and use electric guitars, drums and even wind instruments to a PC to record and compose music.
After checking out the softmap store, I went to check out some of the anime stores and also went for lunch. I took some photos from one of the anime stores.
I ate at a ramen resturant and ordered some shio ramen. It came with a free extra mini dish, so I got the croquette on rice.
Some photos of Ota-Road in den-den town and the various stores there.
A full sized anime style doll inside the Kotobukiya store.
Photos of the displays at Azone International, a popular doll company.
Some anime figures on display at the Kotobukiya store. Kotobukiya is one of my favourite makers of figures.
Another closeup on the full scale doll, and this time one of a full scale halo as well.
If you don’t know much about den den town, you can visit the information centre. I just went there to grab a map.
This is my room in Business Hotel Nissei. It’s quite cozy although a bit small.
Back in den-den town.. and whoa! That K-on garage kit that I bought of Mio for about 9000 yen ($110AU) was selling for 68,000 yen!!! ($750AU~).
I also found a huge sign in Melon books advertising the White clover book I bought for myself and a friend. I also visited Lashingbang and saw 2 dollfie dream dolls which were quite tempting. Especially since the prices were quite cheap there. I finished the trip by taking a photo of the Volks building and then went for dinner.
Dinner was at Mc Donalds to try out burgers I’ve never tried before like the Ebi fillet-o which is a fried patty made of prawns. Yum!
Since the burger was tiny, I also ordered a piece of pepper chicken too.
I noticed that there was a hotel closer to den-den town. I spent the night at the video arcades playing Melty Blood: Actress Again. It’s the sequel to a game that my friend, Mac, gave me a copy of previously. It is a 2d fighter game and I like playing as Len or Yumiduka Satsuki. I managed to finish the game using Len and ended up using only about 3 credits to complete the game where each credit was only 50 yen. So hours of fun for under 200 yen.
The other guys playing there were hardcore and were playing versus games doing insane combos on each other and so on. I wouldn’t even stand a chance against them.
I then headed back to the hotel.
One of the nights at Himeji, I passed by the area where the Himeji Castle festival was gonna be held and took a few photos. There were already stalls out selling festival foods although since it wasn’t the main couple of days, it was rather quiet.
The next day, I went to watch the new Naruto movie on the opening day. It was full of kids and their parents.
I had plans to meet up with Jennifer, my friend I met when doing an exchange to Japan. So after a brief walk though the stores outside Himeji station, I met up with her and one of her friends from Singapore who was also here for holiday and had dinner. WE decided to take a look at the festival and then go to karaoke.
There was a lot of dancing which was really impressive. I also went around trying various festival foods.
While waiting for Jennifer before meeting up with her, I went to animate and bought myself an artbook and a K-on music cd.
I got a little phone strap from Jennifer that she bought from Thailand.
I took a few pictures of the houses around Yuuki’s place and the photo of my room.
I took a photo of my favorite book shop there called bookmarket which has lots of manga and novels for sale 2nd hand at really cheap prices.
Got myself a “Jinbei” outfit for the festival and was planning to head to the Kakogawa fireworks festival with Yuuki, but it got cancelled. (>_<)
Instead, we ended up going to the Himeji Castle festival which was still happening as it was on for the entire weekend.
Sorry for the late update, it was a bit inconvenient to access the internet at the hotel in Osaka and at Himeji, so I managed to only upload some pictures.
After Tokyo I went over to Himeji to visit my host family from when I studied in Japan in 2004. I took the Nozomi bullet train early in the morning and arrived about lunch time.
I was picked up by my host family brother, Yuuki, who took me out for lunch, then took me to the house which had a nice welcome sign the host father had prepared. (^o^)
Since there wasn’t much to do at the house apart from putting my luggage in the room, I got a lift to the city where I did some exploring.
I found a gaming store with some anime goods as well.
Did a bit of exploring of the city. Looked like they were preparing for the upcoming Himeji Castle festival.
I managed to do some shopping as well and bought myself a PSP game called Utawarerumono. It’s the first release limited editon that came with a lot of extras.
Visited Animate to check out some anime goods, and
I tried a lot of various fast foods as well. This one wasn’t very good though.. meat patty tasted tough in parts. I should of taken it back, since there was a satisfaction guarantee, although by then i already ate the burger, so i couldn’t take anything back.
Went to some anime/hobby-related stores in one of the shopping centres.
On the 2nd day I went to Akihabara after applying for an Alien registration card to try open a bank account so I can do online shopping from Japan easier.
Since I took so long sorting everything out with the Alien registration card, it was already past lunch time and I decided to have a quick wonder around Radio Kaikan outside Akihabara station before I had to leave to meet up with my friend for dinner.
Each time I went to Akiba, I’d pass by Shibuya to change from the train station to the subway. So I decided to take a few photos of Shibuya. I’ve only ventured as far as to the outside of the station, but haven’t gone any further than that. I remember there are some anime shops there according to a book my friend, Mac, lent me so I have to check that again.
Akihabara had changed a bit since the time I went about 1.5 years ago, and it also seemed that the station was under construction which I reckoned ruined the atmosphere a bit. I didn’t even see any girls in maid outfits handing out stuff. Still, all the shops where there, and I ended up buying quite a bit of stuff on the 2nd day there. For the first day, I just mainly held back from spending money and just got used to the standard prices of everything at different stores to figure out the average price. My shopping for the first day was a 1/4 scale Konata figure released by Freeing and a 5 CDs of Manami Okui’s music.
\ 
I found one of the limited edition Kanakon figures while I was checking out Kotobukiya in Radio Kaikan. Even the the figure was meant to be a Wonder Festival only exclusive, which I didn’t buy at the event despite there being heaps of stock. I was able to buy it from there on my 2nd day after deciding that I actually wanted it. 
I started my 2nd day with K-Books and aimed to buy a few art books and groundwork books to help me learn to draw my favourite anime characters. I tried to look for Key’s 10th Anniversary art book called “White Clover” for myself and my friend Mac, although all I could find was the limited edition version that was selling for twice the price and apparently had some damage to it.
I always enjoy looking at the rental showcase boxes to find some bargains, and managed to buy the entire set of Key plushies for a cheap price.
By that time, I had a look in one of the other stores before I got a call from Ronald (Rin) who wanted to meet up. Since we were both in Akihabara, we decided to meet up next to softmap. It was a funny experience since we both knew there were a lot of softmaps there, but fortunately we were able to find each other pretty quickly.
Ronald took me around and it seemed he knew his stuff about where to buy things from Akihabara. Although I have been to Akihabara many times before, I am not as familiar with it as he is mainly because I often bought too much and got too tired of walking up 7 floors of stairs for each and every building on every street. (^^;)
Anyways, we did a bit of visiting various stores and noticed one store he took me to sold some resin kits at decent prices. I saw a couple of Liquid Stone ones at some decent prices, so I plan to check it out again when I go back to Tokyo. I hope it won’t be sold by then. (>_<)
After all my shopping I left Ronald, and met up with my friend to have some sushi at a revolving sushi resturant.
