Japan Day 2

Purakuraday2_smAfter a nice long sleep in we headed off for our second day in Japan. As it seemed that we all got a good nights sleep, we decided to walk to the train station as opposed to taking public transport.

chris

It was a lovely clear day and it gave us the opportunity to get our first look around the area that we were staying in.As we were visiting Japan in November were got to see the end of the
Autumn colours so the trees were a mixture of red, orange and green which made a lovely back drop. As we were heading towards Kyoto station and away from Kiyomizudera temple, we passed by many tourists who were on there way up there.

As we hadn’t had the opportunity to have breakfast yet we were on the look out for a place to stop at before reaching the train station. Nestled amongst the traditional wooden houses, temples and autumn scenery we came across….a McDonalds! Being a quick and easy option we made a pitstop. Sarah and I were very happy to find that they were doing Pokémon Calendars again this year.We both picked up a couple for people back at home and tried to pick a somewhat healthy breakfast… you may spy the salad and chicken nuggets… chicken salad is healthy right??? I’ll keep telling myself that anyway.

Sarah

Today we were on our way to Osaka, on the list of shops were the Pokémon center and Mandarake, if you have read my previous posts about Japan you will know that Mandarake is a shop full of awesomeness. They are like the anime lovers version of a cash converters; books, CDs, signatures, figurines, cosplay and much more, all in excellent condition with even better prices. Our first stop though, was the Pokémon center. A couple of years ago this was relocated to a large department store which is connected to Osaka station which makes it very easy to get to.

case

It’s situated on the 13 floor just under all the restaurants which are located at the top of the building. The newer store is much  bigger than the old one and is wall to wall covered in Pokémon goodness. Needless to say, Leticia and Sharon pretty much had to drag Sarah and I out of there kicking and screaming… not literally, but they did have to prevent me from trying to buy the entire store (think of my budget and it was only the second day!) I bought a couple of gift tins, not actually for the chocolate or biscuits but because the tins were awesome and I wanted to use them as cases for my 3DSXL that my amazing partner got for me last year as a present. I let him eat all the chocolate and biscuits when I got home.

coin

Next I got a coin bank of Pikachu riding a golden Magikarp…..Pickachu riding a gold magicarp, and it was ceramic too, quality stuff people, right here! How could I not buy that! (Marian I can see you nodding with me right now) So up until this point I had not approached the wall of Pokémon plushness, this is generally my weakness, all things cute and fuzzy. This wall went around half the store and then again in a circle in the middle around the escalators. I was somewhat relieved to find that they only had one Pokédoll (Pokédoll equals chibi Pokémon) that I did not have at home, so the the disaster that could have been was somewhat diverted and I only picked up one plush, and a plush Pikachu blanket. The rest of my purchases consisted of a couple Pokémon balls, a game case and lamp. As strange as a lamp may sound, it was a nicely designed lamp with a lamp shade featuring Chandelure….. Chandelure being a lamp Pokémon, I thought that was pretty cute.pokemonChristine

After spending the better half of the afternoon there, we head off to locate Mandarake. The store is located in a maze of arcades that I found fairly difficult to navigate last time. This time we choose the easy option and gave the map and address to a taxi driver who dropped us off at one of the arcade end points, closest to where it would be. There are several Mandarake stores scattered across Japan, this one has a very wide selection of BJD items, figurines, cosplay, manga, books, CDs, DVDs and various k-pop and j-pop memorabilia. mandarakeThere was a small selection of lolita in the cosplay section, but not really that much. The unique thing about this particular Mandarake, is that the staff cosplay and sing hit songs from the animes that they are from on a stage. So it’s a shopping and entertaining experience rolled into one. I was very happy to watch Sarah freak out over the aisles and aisles of cheap figurines, she turned around to me several times remarked how freakishly cheap some of the items were. She picked up quite a few figures including old school Star Wars items for a couple of dollars a piece. I picked up a couple of Pokémon items for my brother (I’m not the only fan in the family) and a couple of Ghibli art books as well.

Osakamap

From here we head back and tried locating the Q-pot Cafe, very unsuccessfully I might add. we managed to locate the small booth of Q-pot in the department store however the Cafe eluded us. There was various constructions going on around the train station so we gave up and head home back to Kyoto. All in all, another successful shopping day!

 

♥ Alyssium♥

 

Continue on to Day 3

 

Go back to my previous visit to Japan 2 years ago.

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