Our last full day had arrived in Tokyo and we knew exactly where we were spending it. Sunshine-dori is a busy pedestrian-only street that runs along a shopping district full of clothing, shoes, pharmacies, general goods stores, restaurants, pachinko parlors and game arcades, and includes stores like Uniqlo and Tokyu Hands along the path. It terminates in Sunshine City, which is like 2 different malls attached underground, one, with performance space and exhibit space,and restaurants and a bazillion boutiques. This particular Tokyu Hands ends up getting a lot of our money, since there’s always interesting stuff there. This year we bought New Year’s postcards featuring the Egyptian god Anubis because we could. (Jackals are like a dog, right?)
We also stopped here. Or, I should say, my wife did, while I played Pokemon Go and watched people go by.
We gave Tokyu Hands a farewell walk around and noted fittingly that Bruce would not have been able to buy his Euglena (his favorite single-cell creature) bars there anyway, as they were no longer carrying them.
They did have a ramped up crafts section, with these wonderful creations to inspire you.
We then went down to Otome Road and visited most of the stores, looking at whole floors of goods dedicated to fictitious boy singer groups. It was fascinating. And then we saw something that appealed to both of us. Hell had come to Otome Road. Specifically, a themed cafe for Hozuki no Reitetsu, the second season of which is airing on Japanese TV now, in which we are treated to a comedic look at the Buddhist Hell and its bureaucracy, run by the competent, always annoyed demon Houzuki.
It was a blast. We ordered character-themed drinks.
You could take these little cutouts from the shelf and pose them with your food and drinks.
Wifey ordered the curry, I had the rice balls, pickles and soup.
We agreed that, for what essentially was microwaved food, it was pretty tasty. We received special coasters for every item, and there were goods for sale (of course!), which were displayed along with little character-themed dioramas.
Even dessert was yummy. We shared a cake set and an anmitsu.
Last, but not least, we went to the flagship Animate store which has, you may recall, the “Yuribu.”
This signs says that there are 22 Yuribu store locations; the display has some featured manga – both old and some slightly more “classic”, includes novels and manga and is immediately inside the front door of the store right by the wall of magazines. A wall, which I will note had, in every location of every manga store we went into, a tidy little Yuri section once more, consisting of Comic Yuri Hime and Galette. It was especially nice to see Yuri magazines with what I consider to be “good” art. May our tribe increase.
By virtue of imprints clustering books, there were still little communities of Yuri on the shelves, as always. It was nice to see some friendly faces being advertised as being part of the “Yurimate” event.
We dragged our purchases back to the hotel and overfilled our luggage tremendously. ^_^
Here’s the unpacking of most of what I got. All the Sailor Moon stuff was in different bags. This includes stuff I got as gifts for a few friends. You see the white t-shirt?I hate white t-shirts, but how could pass that up? The back has Nobue and Miu dressed as the devils. The pink shirt amazed me, because while I think Chika and Miu are an obvious couple, I thought I was alone in that. I really dislike pink, too, but had to get the shirt. The tote is an omake from the Galette calendar set., which has prompted me to cull some of my many, many, many random tote bags. The coolest ones are going to go in this year’s Lucky Boxes.
And here are a couple of fun purchases I made. Funky Utena calendar.
New phone case.
At last, the reveal on those foil packages from the other day!
These are the pins from the Asagao-to Kase-san booth at the Animate Girls Festival a few weeks ago,
This New Year’s Lucky Boxes are gonna be awesome. In fact, I think we’ll do a “Premium” Lucky Box that will have some of the items we bought specifically this time for a Lucky Box (with the limited edition harder to get stuff,) and then usual assortment of boxes full off random fun crap.
And with that, another Tokyo Journal comes to an end (at least until the credit card bills drop. ^_^;) Many many thanks to everyone we saw and ate food with!
