Part 1 can be seen here, and part 2 is right over here.
Day 2: Suzuki (continued)
The PSP was heavily pushed at almost every single electronic store I went to?
? as was the PS3. But the real hotness was definitely the DS and the Wii. Especially the Wii, which was pretty much sold out every single place I went to. And no matter where I went, if there was a DS section, it was guaranteed that there would be tons of games, and tons of folks crowed around them.
Even though the GBA isn?t really supported anymore, a few stores still had some shelf space for it. Hell, it still must be doing okay; I would find out that GBA hardware outsold PS3 in Japan during my stay there!
I almost got this Rilakkuma DS title, despite knowing that the language barrier might be an issue. But in the end, I ended up getting a PS2 title staring the guy. Haven?t had the chance to play it yet, but I think it?s a WarioWare-esque game, which is better for me.
One thing Joe was on the hunt for was wacky Japanese breakfast cereal boxes. But it would seem that the Japanese really aren?t into breakfast cereal. Though we did spot these?
Throughout the entire trip, myself, as well as Joe and June kept coming across cartoon renditions of myself and MK. Here?s the first one I spotted, in another electronics store.
I guess one of the main reasons why I?m a Mac guy as opposed to a PC person is that I just find PC aesthetically unappealing. Though in Japan, their machines are far superior looking than the crappy Dell boxes that populate America?
A random gum ad featuring Power Rangers?
The next stop was the bookstore. Here’s the cover to your average Japanese magazine, this one covering guns…
And here’s what they look like on the inside…
I couldn?t believe it when I saw it myself: some DVD magazine based on Millennium!
Here are some random covers to pet magazines?
Next was Tokyu Hands, a huge department store that sells pretty much everything that I had heard about beforehand. One section was chock full of assorted novelty stuff. Think Spencer?s Gifts in Japan. There was plenty of maid outfits, some with cat ears, some without?
As well as more ?normal? stuff like schoolgirl outfits and the such?
Here we have Annie wearing a poo hat…
And here we have… I have no idea.
Yet another random bit of awesomeness from the street?
Everything is just so darn CUTE!!!
Afterwards walking around all morning and afternoon, I went back to the hotel with Joe and June and decided to rest my feet and watch some television. Here’s a scene from some cartoon that I think is about potty training…
The sumo championships were also going on at the time. Over the course of my stay, the grand champ, or yokozuna, was featured on all the networking programming pretty heavily. That and the premier of Pirates of the Caribbean 3, which got a MAJOR push in Japan (I have some examples of this later). Anyhow, I grew bored of television after a while, so I decided to go out and hit the arcade again, this time to actually play some games. Didn’t get too far in Silvergun sadly… its been quite a few years since the days in which I used to play the game practically everyday (back in 2002, when I was out of a job due to the post 9/11 economy and could afford to play various games all day long). I also gave Arcana Heart a spin. I played as the Chinese cyborg chick with the huge tits…
Here I am after I defeated this one young girl character who?s a swimmer. She fights while suspended in the air via a huge water bubble, which she would morph into huge arms to pummel you. Pretty original.
Every arcade game has a one-sheet posted above that gives instructions. As pretty as this one is, I could make heads or tails of the game, so it was therefore pretty boring for me. But at least it’s insanely nice in motion.
Also, every arcade’s walls are often plastered with gorgeous posters, many of which I’d kill to have…
Here’s Mario Kart 2 for the arcade, which was pretty popular among high school girls…
As for younger girls, they have stuff like this…
Imagine Pokemon infused with Barbie. You create a character, which is carried around via a card that is swiped during game play, and battles are done via rock/paper/scissor gameplay. The winner gets stuff like dresses and accessories to enhance the character, which also builds up stats I think.
Here’s some Ultraman ride of the kiddies….
Virtually every arcade or shopping center had this warning plastered on the escalators.
At one point I stumbled across a vintage game store. Most have racks that as bursting with all sorts of games spanning a whole range of classic systems.
Really puts the shit you see at Gamestops to shame. Yet another thing the Japanese have over us: they simply treat shit better than Americans. Virtually every single game looked to be in pristine condition. Whereas in America, next time your at Gamestop or a flea market, try finding a game that doesn’t have the sticker torn off or have what looks to be peanut butter smears on them.
Afterwards I went back to the hotel to meet up with the others and head out for dinner. In the lobby I snapped this pic of an ad on the vending machine in the lobby…
… As well as this picture of a salaryman consoling his very drunk co-worker that I stealthily took from afar.
Once dinner was over with, while Joe went to have a meeting with I believe I potential client, I went along with Kieth and Annie for a test run of their inflatable cat outfits since they needed a second camera person (with June being the first). Plus, I wanted to check out first hand the tech that would have been behind the cereal box costume I was originally going to wear for the trip. They choose a lit outdoors staircase in front of a shopping center and it was pretty awesome! Unfortunately I couldn’t take pictures since I was handling a Beta cam, but at least the footage will be on YouTube sometime soon. It didn’t last too long, since a security guard had to pull the plug, but he wasn’t an asshole about it (in yet another example of how there’s no need to be a douchebag in the States, just because). Though here’s a picture of Annie right after she’s pulled her head off.
And when we got back, those two Japanese guys were still there.
We all went home afterwards to get some sleep since we had to get up early the next day, to fly out to to Okinanawa…. AND THAT’S WHEN THE TROUBLE BEGAN.
