Japan Trip day 10: Shopping at Osaka

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. (>_<)

 

After shopping, I returned to the hotel to put my shopping in the room and left again. Actually, while in Himeji, I went to a pool. I had a lot of fun but ended up getting badly sunburnt, so while I was in Osaka, it was starting to get quite painful. I did visit the pharmacy to buy some lotion to put on it, but it didn’t make any difference. So I just put up with it and went out again.

After initially arriving in Osaka, I had been spending my time entirely in Den den town, so I decided to take a look at the other places in Namba, such as one of the famous streets which has many restuarants and shops to see.

 

There are no “Wendys” in Australia, so I had to take a photo of it when I saw it in Japan. It looked good, but I decided that I’d eat some Japanese food for dinner that night.

   

I crossed the road outside Bic Camera.

    
   

After crossing, no matter where you looked, there were restaurants and shops everywhere. I wasn’t able to make up my mind on where to go to eat.

I went up to the bridge in Shinsaibashi and took many photos. It is a nice spot to take some great night shots.

 

Going back from Shinsaibashi, I took even more photos of the area. I quite enjoyed taking photos of Osaka at night.

 

I finally decided on a restaurant and went to eat at Tonbei, a Okonomiyaki restaurant.

It had been a while since I ate Okonomiyaku, so I really enjoyed it. So tasty!

It finished cooking. Itadakimasu!

It was so tasty.

 

I left the restaurant and walked around the area.

   
 

On the way back to the hotel, I bought some Turkish icecream from this guy. He was really interesting and did funny things with the icecream. It was also quite tasty.

Looks like some sort of accident. I wonder what happened.

I spotted this interesting game. It’s one where you have a gun and shoot at targets timing the shots with music. When watching, the song that was playing was the opening song to Evangelion.

I was still a bit hungry after the Okonomiyaki and icecream, so I couldn’t resist the temptation of eating at Wendys. I ordered a Jr.BBQ burger. It was tasty! (^_^;)

I arrived at the hotel at last! But not before taking one more photo. (^_^;)

This is my shopping loot for the day. The Tsugumi, Zange and Nagi figures from teh anime Kannagi I bought in a 3 figure set cost me only 10,000 yen brand new. It was on sale at the Kotobukiya shop. On the right hand side, I bought a 60cm dollfie doll of Estel. I got it at Osaka’s Lashinban store where I got it 2nd hand for 55,000 yen. It was actually the cheapest price for it anywhere I went in Japan. Still, I quite liked it. The price is quite expensive compared to my other shopping, but because it was alot, I gained about 3,000 yen worth of points to spend at the shop. I also spent over a certain amount which meant I got some freebies as well. The CDs at the bottom middle of the photo are some CDs I received for free. They included a Touhou music CD and a doujin visual novel game. Apart from that, I also bought a Wonder Festival limited edition cat maid outfit from Azone for the 60cm doll. I also got a event limited lucky star outfit for the doll too.

At Den den town’s Softmap, I bought myself a headphone and microphone. I bought a Rin Tousaka figure to replace one that I broke at home, and at a junk computer parts shop, I bought a cheap USB video camera for only 200 yen. I also found the latest edition of Naruto and bought various doujin (fan made) goods from previous comic market events.

 

I also bought the full set of K-on gachapon figures too! As expected, Den den town is much cheaper than Akihabara for shopping.