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!

It was a beautiful Sunday in Tokyo, so we decided to enjoy the crowds in Harajuku. First stop, we hit up Kiddyland, where character goods are plentiful and the bathrooms are clean. (Stores “for women” in Japan always have clean, spacious bathrooms, with changing tables for children.) Kiddyland had some familiar banners hanging overhead.

We then made our way over to the La Foret building to see spend money at the Sailor Moon store. Which we did. My wife was >this< close to buying a $400 purse, while I mused about losing enough weight to fit a Japanese women’s Medium to get a hoodie.  Instead we bought stuff.

Including, I might add, stuff for you, dear readers. This year’s New Year Lucky Boxes are going to be lit.

We saw a poster for the upcoming Sailor Moon classical concert and while we won’t be here for it, we did grab a bunch of these awesome promo posters.

We stopped on Takeshitadori and had a cute waffle dessert with our lunch, that we yet again forgot to take pictures of. We also ate it like it was our last meal. ^_^;

For dinner, we crashed the TCAF get-together at a lovely izakaya near our hotel. Caught up with translator extraordinaire Simona Stanzani,, met and had a lovely conversation with indie game developer Christine Love, comic artist John L. Gehron, and bunches of folks who were here with the TCAF crowd, and eat good food (some of which I *finally* remembered to take a picture of!)

The duck sukiyaki below was brilliant. I will totally eat at this place again for this dish.

Today was Akihabara day. Traditionally, I begin this day with a statement that I won’t be buying much. As is traditional, I then follow this up by buying too much. Today I kept with tradition.  BUT…and this is a big BUT, things were not the same at all. It is much easier to find Yuri in Akihabara than it has ever been.

Toronoana still has a multi-publisher “Yuri Corner” clearly labeled, with all sorts of creator art and advertising on the walls.

And a lovely ad for the Kase-san series.

I picked up a few things I hadn’t heard of or known about, which is always the best. Exactly why Yuri sections are so important, in fact.

The Animate doujinshi section also had a separate “Yuri Corner” with some reasonable inclusions. 

Comic Zin featured both prominent Yuri artists doujinshi on the second floor as you walked in and a section labeled Yuri. I thought I got a picture of this, but apparently took it from the wrong angle, so you can’t see the labels, duh. No large banner, but the shelves were clearly marked and they were right in the front as you walked in. I picked up some doujinshi by Hakamada Mera and Morinaga Milk.

Gamers also has a multi-publisher “Yuribu” section, clearly marked and, surprisingly, nicely varied. I’m going to admit that I was expecting skank world there. The last time I visited Gamers, it was all creepy all the time. Not at all true of  the Yuri section, although it favored the moe.

They also had a special exhibit in honor of the release of the 8th volume of Ichigo Mashimaro. There were goods, bags, t-shirts of which I bought two, one each in my least favorite colors, white and pink, because the designs were brilliant and coolest, actual original pages by Barasui.

I’m always surprised and pleased at these new “Yuri” sections, because they will change the way people can shop for Yuri. Up until now, people had to know what to look for, where. These new “Yuri” sections, that are multi-publisher and in some cases, multi-format, with novels and manga together signal the continued legitimacy of our growing genre.  

Even more exciting, the Animate store in Akihabara does not have a Yuribu because, of course, you remember that they chose to locate it in the “girl’s” store in Ikebukuro. In my opinion, this is a major success, separating “Yuri” from being the purview of men, and laying it in our laps and yes, that was meant to be a pleasantly salacious analogy. ^_^

 Tomorrow is our last full day and we intend to spend it and all the rest of our money locally in the girl’s Yuribu. ^_^