This year was particularly special as there was a special event where Eminence, a symphony orchestra from Sydney that specializes in performing Anime and game music, was invited to play at the event. As I’ve been interested in learning music lately, this was a great opportunity to check out professionals playing music from anime and games that I liked.

The orchestra is particularly famous as they performed and recorded the soundtracks for popular movies in Japan such as the upcoming Disappearance of Haruhi movie sound track as well as music for a number of video games.

In addition, Japanese composer Mitsuda Yasunori who is particularly famous for his compositions for Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross also attended the event.

The first day at Waicon started waiting in queue to enter the event area. My friend and I bought the pre-sale tickets to enter, which ended up being a mistake, as it seemed that most of the attendees did the same, so there was in fact a larger queue than expected in the preorder ticket queue than there was for those that purchased the tickets on the day.

Ack! I guess I should of arrived earlier. orz

Anyways, I was waited in the queue with my friend, and we eventually got our entry tags to get in.

On the way in, I took a couple of photos of the entry gate.

When I got in, there was already quite few people checking out all the stalls.

Photos of a few of the stalls.

The pencafe stall where some of the artists from pencafe sold various goodies like doujins, posters, sketches, bookmarks, stickers and so on.

Some other drawing/art stalls. The sun was quite bright, so unfortunately the lighting in some of the photos didn’t turn out right.

After a quick browse through the stalls and meeting up with friends, I went to the gundam workshop to take photos of the Perth Gundam Competition entries hosted by Tokyo Underground.

There were a lot of really awesome kits on display and I was quite impressed at the level of the model builders in Perth. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the competition but this shows that there are a lot of hardcore gundam modellers in Perth. Next year’s competition will be something to look forward to.

This Zaku is build by a friend of mine who ended up winning two prizes! Congrats Nic!

Here are some photos of the actual gundam workshop. It was free to participate and you were given a free kit upon entry. The session was an all day session.

A few more shots of the traders at Waicon. We has the first appearance of maids in the con. It seems someone started a group to try get a maid cafe happening at all the cons. In this con, they delivered roses and sold maid related outfit accessories.

There also were quite a few stores selling figures and other goodies imported from Japan. I had a good time checking out what all the stalls had for sale.

Cosplay Competition:

I took so many photos that I don’t know what to comment apart from the fact that my camera that I bought for my trip to Japan is really damn good in low light. I was suprised that many of the photos were usable despite how dark it was there.

The cosplay competition was as usual, the highlight of the con and the entries were very entertaining. There were a number of really talented people that practically performed on the stage as well as many really cool outfits.

A number of people from Pen Cafe are really passionate about Tekken 6, so when one of them spotted a Lily cosplayer, we searched everywhere around the con to find the cosplayer and ask for a photo.

She entered the cosplay competition on the 2nd day and it seems that it’s her first time cosplaying. I have to say it’s a really good outfit for a first attempt. Congrats!

Pen Cafe also has a few Higurashi fans too, so we spotted this cosplayer of Hanyu and asked for a photo too! (^_^;)

I spent the rest of the time walking around the con, talking to people, buying lots of goodies from the stalls.

After the first day of the con, there was a break for a quick meal before heading off to watch the eminence symphony orchestra. After it finished, I bought a couple of their CDs and managed to get signatures from the Eminence performers and Mitsuda Yasuda.

Although at Waicon I typically say that the cosplay competition was the highlight of the con, this time, the eminence performance was hands down the most enjoyable part of the convention.

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?

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.

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. (^^;)

At the bakery, although I thought I’d been to some bakeries in Japan before, this one had so many types of bread that I had never seen before. I really would like to sample them all, but unfortunately that is impossible given the limited time we had there. In the end, I only bought myself one of the Chokokorone breads.

I hadn’t had lunch at that time, so I decided to get a quick bite from Mac Donalds and tried a couple of their 100 yen snacks. I bought some 100 yen fried chicken and a burger.

After that, we went to Uji station. Apart from helping Ronald find the right line to go on for the train, he guided us to the Kyoto Animation building.

It was actually right in front of the stations!! Also it was much smaller than I had imagined.

Apparently it is in this building that all the hit anime series Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu, Lucky Star, Clannad, Air, Kanon, K-on and so on are produced.

I went inside and got a map to the Kyoto Animation shop from one of the staff working there who also kindly helped give us directions to it.

Before heading off to the Kyoto Animation shop, we decided to take some photos in front of the building. Ronald was the first to get his picture taken.

I was next.    

I got a map from the staff member I talked to in the building which showed the directions to the Kyoto Animation Shop. It was quite easy to find. Apparently all you needed to go was walk straight down the main road until you go a bit past the 2nd train station, and then it should be to the left.

The Kyoto Animation shop is a building with these red coloured stairs that do kinda stand out. The shop is on the 3rd floor.

Entering the store, this is what you see. According to the shop attendant, the items in the store are usually limited edition items that you can’t buy elsewhere. They also have an online shop, but when they run low in stock, they then only sell those items in this shop.

Here are some Lucky star and Haruhi pillow covers.

All the items here really were stuff that we hadn’t seen before on our many frequent visits to Animate and Gamers. There were a couple of things there that we’d seen before, but most of the goods were new to us.

When I look at the picture below, I should of bought that lucky star towel!! Ahh.. I lotally didn’t notice it. orz

In the photo above, the book with the blue cross on it is Kyoto Animation’s own text book on creating animation. I didn’t buy it because of weight and price, but now, I am regretting that.

These are some cell art samples that can be ordered through the Kyoto Animation shop website for 15,000 yen each. I am still deciding if I should buy one, although I think Ronald has already made up his mind about getting one.

This is the section next to the entrance.        

This is a little post box to leave messages to Kyoto Animation. After our shopping we decided to write a little message to Kyoto animation. Ronald also wrote something too. Also, together with Ronald, I think we almost bought most of the items in the shop. I know we did buy the last of a few things.

After leaving a message, we met up with an Otaku from Hiroshima who also left a message. However, he also did a drawing next to his message! He was really nice to us and gave both Ronald and myself a K-on keychain. Thanks!

Since we didn’t do a drawing, we went back and added drawings to our messages as well.

After returning back to Kyoto station, we arriving, Ronald dropped the camera lens cover of his DSL camera, so we quickly contacted the train staff to help us to retrieve it.

While waiting, Max found an interesting vending machine that served hot food. He bought some Karaage Chicken, but although the picture on the vending machine looked nice, what came out looked like it had just been heated up in a microwave.

We then decided to go back to to the video arcades to play more of the UFO catcher machines at the place we went to the previous day.  On the way there I took some photos of these displays. I don’t really remember what it was about but since I took photos of them, I’ll upload them anyways. (^^;)

Ronald was leading us to the video arcades.

At the UFO catchers, we again spent a whole lot of time there relying on Ronald to win heaps of prizes. I also gave a shot at the other type of UFO catchers where you have to pull down some prizes held by strings and won a few K-on prizes myself.

After the arcades, we went to eat at a really nice Katsudon specialty restaurant. It was really delicious. This was one of Ronald’s recommended shops.

Since time seemed to fly when hanging out with Ronald and Max, I had to eventually go back to Osaka. Considering the previous day, I barely caught the last train and got stranded halfway on the way back, I decided to leave a bit earlier this time.

For some reason, there were a lot of people, and it seemed like there was some sort of Matsuri (festival) happening somewhere. Perhaps a fireworks festival. But it was getting late so I decided to just go back to the hotel.

When I arrived at the hotel in Osaka, I quickly started taking photos of my loot at the Kyoto Animation shop. The box has a Haruhi pillow cover on it and the 4 posters are some rare K-on posters.

The guitar on top of the box is a K-on cell that we recieved from the shop attendant at the Kyoto Animation shop. I really wonder where this is now..

The below are the prizes that I won at the UFO catchers. The lighters are ones that Ronald won for me.

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 had always thought that Fushimi Inari was just a place with never ending red gates lined up one after another, but it seems that there are also a few temples there too.

When I entered the shrine, I finally got to see some red gates lined up.

According to the manga, the red gates were lined up on flat ground, so I thought that was the case in real life, but in reality, I’d say that about 90% of it was on a stone stairway eitheer going up or downhill. It actually is a staircase that goes up the side of a mountain and down again. It was a humid summer day, so it was quite a exhausting and at the same time interesting experience. There were places throughout the path to rest, grab a drink or ice cream and take a break. Also there were some small shrines throughout the path as well. I even found a sacred tree that was used to wishing for good health.

I actually wanted to walk through it slowly and enjoy the scenery, but there were so many mosquitos that I couldn’t stop at all and had to just keep myself moving to keep them away. Thanks to that, I think I nearly died climbing all those stairs. They seemed to go on forever. However after managing to get to the halfway point, the stairs then went downhill for the rest of the way. Well, actually it did go up and down a bit afterwards. （＾＾；）

After a while, I finally made it out to the other exit of the gate pathway. After exiting the path, there was a really breathtaking overlook of the city. It really was a unforgettable experience. However, I probably won’t attempt doing it again. It was really exhausting, and my shirt was soaked in sweat. Also there was no wind that day. If you do decide to take a trip to Fushimi Inari, please make sure you don’t follow my example and go in the middle of summer on a humid day.

Afterwards, I went to have lunch at one of the stores near the shrine and ordered some Oyako-don and ate it while sitting on the nice tatami seats in the store. Actually while I was still climbing down the stairs on the way back, I received a call from Ronald. He was staying at a hotel in Kyoto at that time, so he invited to show me all the anime shops in Kyoto. So after lunch, I quickly went to Kyoto to meet up with him and be shown around. He was with his friend Max, and we went to Kyoto’s Animate, Gamers and other anime stores to do some shopping. Then after all our shopping, we spent a few hours in one of the video game arcades trying our hand at the skill testers (UFO catchers) trying to win all the anime goods from the machines.

Ronald was actually very good at the UFO catchers, so he was getting all the cool prizes one after another. Max and I simply had the role of changing money into coins so Ronald could win more stuf for us.  （＾＾；）

Well, at the end, I did give it a shot, and found that I was actually good at the UFO catchers where the prizes hung by a piece of string, and you’d direct a lever to catch over the string and try to pull it down. For some reason I did fairly well at it and managed to win a few things too.

By the way, while enjoying ourselves at the UFO catchers, we met up with Disastorm (sorry I forgot your real name （＾＾；）). He also was addicted tot he UFO catchers and we had a great time there together.

Since we had spent quite a bit of time at the video arcades, I had to rush off to the trainstation to catch the last train back to Osaka. Unfortunately although I got onto the last train, by the time I reached the JR Osaka station, I had already missed the last subway to Namba, so I had to end up catching a taxi to get back to the hotel.

Once I got back, I went to get some dinner. Since we had som much fun at the arcades, we had totally forgot about eating （＾＾；） I decided to eat at Yoshinoya. I ordered some Sukiyaki beef. It is of course winter food, but it sure tasted good even during summer.

When I got back to the hotel, I took some photos of the shopping I did in Kyoto. I bought the 2008 Animelo Concert Blu-ray disc, K-on tea, Prizes from the UFO catchers (Azusa clock and anime lighters), K-on clear posters, souvenirs from Fushimi Inari and so on.

By the way, when I was waiting at Kyoto to meet up with Ronald, I went up Kyoto Tower and took many photos of the Kyoto scenery. Unfortunately for some reason, I can’t seem to find any photos of it.. （＞＜）.

Oh well, anyways, I had a really enjoyable day.

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 photo below is a photo of Ronald and his friends. Ronald is the one on the left while the other two on the right holding all his shopping for him are his friends. As you can tell from the photo, his sightseeing trip to Osaka was a huge success. (^_^;)

Since it was getting late, I quickly decided to take them to check out the area of Osaka where those restaurants were for a photo opportunity.

I then took them back to the subway and then had a look around the underground shopping at Namba Walk. Since it was my birthday, I looked around at the restaurants deciding what to eat. I wanted to eat something a bit over the top, so I decided on a nice plate of Hamburg which is a large meatball steak which in this case came on a hot plate with other nice tasty extras. I was lured by the nice food samples outside the shop.

I went it and quickly made my order. It was about 10pm by then, so it wasn’t very packed.

After eating, I was still a little hungry, so I decided to order some dessert. I chose a strawberry parfait. It was really delicious. For some reason, in Western Australia, there are no shops that sell sweets like this, so I was quite looking forward to eating it again.

On the way back, I took a picture of the water fountains at Namba Walk.

Going back to the hotel, I took a lot of photos of the shops.

Today, I didn’t go overboard with my shopping. It was mainly because I had done most of the shopping the previous couple of days. However, since I had some points from Lashinban when I bough my Dollfie dream doll, I traded the 3000 points I earned for 3 K-on music cds and one Candyboy CD. From the Volks rental showcase, I bought the latest Hatsune Miku PSP game which came with a limited edition CD. Unfortunately it didn’t come with the limited edition Nendoroid figure that seemed to be in high demand.

I honestly thought I was gonna spend my birthday by myself, but thanks to Ronald and his friends, I had a great time hanging out with them in Osaka.
It was a really great birthday.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I found another game store!

More food and drinks.

Lots of walking and working off all the food I ate.

Went to a gym to work out and found that there was Shorinjin Kempo tournament traingng going on.

Ate at a Chinese resturant called Kohouseki with Yuuki. Ate some crab omelette on rice which tasted like shark fin soup.