toys

Spam From Japan: International Tokyo Toy Show 2011 Report

The International Tokyo Toy Show (Also known as “Tokyo Omocha Show”) is the one of the first major ‘fun’ event to be held in Big Sight since the earthquake. Okay, there were trade fairs devoted to sales incentives and a few doujinshi markets, but nothing with sponsors. They weren’t even sure if it would go ahead considering both the Tokyo International Anime Fair and its new rival, Anime Contents Expo, were cancelled. Although numbers for both attendees and booths owners seemed like it was down, I’m glad they went through with it.

I must admit, fewer things caught my eye this year. However, the people behind Doubutsu Shougi (“Animal Shogi” or “Catch The Lion!”) were there again to give demonstrations. If you like board games or puzzles, I totally recommend this one. It has a few basic shougi pieces, represented by simple illustrations of animals and a reduced playing area. The pieces have the potential moves (mimicking actual shogi moves, obviously) included in the illustrations too.

This year they had a treat for us — a full shogi set with the same basic concept! That is, the legal moves for each piece are clearly marked and all pieces are adorable animals. These are a perfect gift for anyone, even adults (especially adults!).

Amongst other toys that caught my eye was Yummy Dough. According to the flyer, they started making it when a little German girl asked “Why can’t you eat clay?” Instead of replying “Because we said so,” they made edible play dough and set up children for a lifetime of bad decision-making. It looked like a pretty good idea, but I didn’t try any of their many samples, simply for all the children already pawing through them. There’s a photo of the booth below though.

Amongst other things I photographed was 4D Cityscape Time Puzzle from Yanoman. The concept isn’t new, but now Tokyo has been added to the list of 3D cities you can make. There were also plenty of sentai and tokusatsu rangers on display at the Bandai booth. Like Takara Tomy, their booth took up about a quarter of an entire hall. This time they were promoting Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger (AKA Pirate Squadron Gokaiger), which is a mash-up of a Super Sentai show and pirates. Probably my favourite photographs were of Lego’s new magic-ninja-and-dragons model line, called Ninjago.

I was very pleased by what I found in the Takara Tomy booth. I’m a big fan of ‘we made it so-so-so cute that it stopped being cute and became creepy’ — I love soulless eyes, kigurumi cosplayers and life-sized dolls with visible balljoints that they didn’t have to include but did anyway. Good work guys, and I won’t be able to sleep for some time.

Here’s a list of Japanese Toy Awards 2011 grand prize winners. There are a few changes from the previous year (See a list in English here), although Bandai are still making sentai transformation belts and Anpanman keeps educating kids. This year, Takara Tomy took more wins all round and their winning entry for the Innovation Award, Ningen Gakki, looks particularly intriguing.

List of award winners 2011. Scroll on for the photos!

Category	Name	Company	Sale Date	Price in Yen
Access For All Children “Kyouyuu” Award	Tomica Yubi-Con Series	Takara Tomy	June 2011	5,229
Educational Award	Anpanman Touch de “AIUEO” o-kyoushitsu Kids Tablet [Link to .PDF]	Agatsuma	August 2011	7,329
Boys’ Toy Award	Henshin Belt (Kamen Rider) DX OOO Driver O Medal Series	Bandai	September 2010	6,825
Girls’ Toy Award	Licca-chan 31 Icecream Shop	Takara Tomy in association with Baskin Robbins	April 2011	4,725
Character Toy Award	ONE PIECE LOGBOX	Megahouse	September 2010	630
Innovative Toy Award	Ningen Gakki	Takara Tomy	June 2011	3,360
High Target Award	nanoblock Tokyo Skytree and LED Plate	Kawada in association with Tokyo Skytree	September 2011	2625 (+1050)

I hope you enjoyed my report and photographs from the International Tokyo Toy Show 2011. If you like anime, you might enjoy my cosplay photographs from Winter Comiket 2010. If you want more photographs from other big events like this toy fair, maybe you’ll prefer my report from last year’s Tokyo Game Show. Alternatively, click on the banner to your left to see photographs from other bloggers in Japan. You can also share this on Facebook or Twitter (amongst many other sites!) if you click the button to your left below.

At the Tokyo Game Show, you go from the blue skies of Chiba prefecture into a dark hall lit only by neon advertising boards. It’s difficult to overstate the contrast.

As usual, I ended up moving towards the nearest booth with the shiniest lights. This year, however, I chose well. The booth was Konami, who were advertising trailers for Dance Evolution, Catherine, Metal Gear Solid Rising, and Love Plus +. Of these, Catherine — from Studio 4C and the team who brought us Persona — looks the most interesting. It’s apparently an adult-themed mystery starring a guy who’s losing his grip on reality. Right now, when all the games are starting to look the same, this is a welcome change.

As it happens, I had arrived just in time to get a fairly good spot for the Kojima Productions Special Stage on Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. The official photographer was just in front of me and kept popping up like a meerkat every few seconds to take another picture. It got annoying, particularly when it became clear that all his photographs were the same except with different pictures on the screen behind the guests. Amongst the guests were Ohtsuka Akio, Sugita Tomokazu, Inoue Kikuko, and Kobayashi Yuu, who all provided voices for the game. Fujiwara Keiji provided a video message, dramatic cat style.

About halfway through, they told us not to take photographs. I think the reasoning was that they figured everyone knew not to take photos during a seiyuu event, so didn’t bother to make any announcements. Meanwhile, everyone noticed they made no announcement and went crazy with the cameras.

They showed a behind-the-scenes video of the voice actors recording their lines and I was struck by how different Sugita sounds. It seems as though he gets that deeper sound by tucking his chin in. Kobayashi Yuu seemed justifiably proud of her ability to voice both a heroine and an old woman.

The trailer itself is already online, but I was struck by how derivitive it seemed. There’s a bit of something from everywhere. If you showed someone a still of the character Necromancer and told them it was Mumm-Ra from the new “gritty reboot” of ThunderCats, they’d totally believe you.

Afterwards, they showed us a trailer for Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, which shares many of the same voice actors with Castlevania. We also got to hear some music clips of cover versions by MGS characters. “Snake” has recorded Showa Blues, while Sugita sings Minato no Youko Yokohama Yokosuka.

Ryuu ga Gotoku: Of The End is the fifth installment in the series known as “Yakuza” in the US. As its name suggests, the game was set in a fictional version of Tokyo’s red light district, with the player training hostesses and brawlers while playing pachinko. Of The End turns Shinjuku into a post-apocalyptic wasteland and adds zombies. While there’s definitely a market for the prostitution-gambling-zombies genre, it’s probably not the same audience who bought the title previously. Basically, stop adding zombies to everything.

I have nothing to say about Gyakuten Kenji 2. The waiting in the queue was listed as being 120 minutes. They must think I’m stupid.

I was impressed by a Taiwanese company called Zeroplus Technology. In contrast to Kenji 2, there was just a two minute wait for the 3D shoot-’em-up in their low-key booth. You wear 3D glasses and then shoot cartoonish cowboy characters. I would have liked to have seen a better game, but I was impressed with the accuracy of the gun. I had plenty of time to try both the training mode and the challenge mode, such was the the length of the queue behind me.

Finally, I tried out Marvel VS Capcom 3 because the thought of Deadpool versus Dante from Devil May Cry was too good to pass up. Plus, the wait was listed as only thirty minutes. I was on my own, so I was paired up with the guy behind me. The first thing you do is select the characters you want to play and I was all over Dante and Deadpool. But who to select as my third? I figured it should be a Capcom character since Marvel characters team up all the time, so I selected one at random based on the headshot. It turned out to be a six foot catwoman wearing few clothes. Couldn’t look the other dude in the eye after that.

Marvel VS Capcom 3 is a solid retro-style beat ‘em up with little innovation in its gameplay or design. That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it though. In fact, the only real improvement I would suggest is distingushing the characters more when both players choose the same one.

The coolest piece of tech I saw was Kinect for Xbox 360, which essentially let’s you play with a baby lion. It consists of a large screen and a number of motion sensors which let you play without a controller, using your entire body. The centrepiece of the demonstration was one of the booth girls playing with a lion cub on a desert island. The concept was that, as its trainer, it would mimic her moves. When she turned around, it would start learning to spin. She could also throw balls for it or wipe off condensation on the screen from lion kisses.

I can’t see myself buying an Xbox and Kinect, but I imagine I’ll buy the technology that builds on its success(?).

Overall, a great show and I’m glad I didn’t try to do everything. There’s a surfeit of similar-looking RPG titles though, many of them a recombination of swords, samurai or sorcery. If anyone thinks of a better system of gameplay, they’ll be rich. Oh. Right. Gyakuten Saiban series. Yeah…

Tokyo Toy Show 2010 Report

Tokyo Toy Show: Steampunk Project Pullips.

Tokyo Toy Show is an annual event where toy makers from Japan demonstrate their latest products. The first two days are for business only, but the weekend is open to the public. For some reason, llamas always seem popular.

My first booth was Groove Inc which has apparently taken over marketing Pullips, a brand of Korean doll, in Japan from Jun Planning. If what I saw at their booth is any indication, they’re doing a great job. The booth manager approached me in English, talked positively about their products and gave me his business card. I was extremely impressed by the professionalism on display here… not to mention the products themselves. My favourites were the new limited edition Steampunk Project dolls, each one based on different doll types. The designs were more than just ticking boxes (“Okay, goggles… top hat… gears… we’re done!”) and detail was incredible.

Hot Toys, on the other hand, were doing the same things they always do. Alien figures, Michael Jackson figures, Mars Attac– wait, who is buying these things? Who has been searching all over for plastic models of Inglourious Basterds’ characters?

A small stand devoted to Hexbug Nanos was hidden in the Bandai booth labyrinth. The bug-like robots, about the size of a thumb, ran around on a tabletop. “Put your hands down!” exhorted the salesperson. “COLLECT THEM!!” If you put your hands flat on the table, the Hexbugs vibrated violently towards you and got stuck between your fingers and you’d amass ten or twenty of the things thrusting into the creases between your fingers.

However, I’ve never bought anything at the Toy Show until today. At the Gentosha Education booth, I watched a demonstration of Doubutsu Shougi (“Animal Shogi“), which has been put together by the Ladies’ Professional Shogi Players of Japan to introduce children to the strategy behind shogi. It’s played on a 4 x 4 board and players control four thick wooden blocks which each have a simple animal picture – a lion, an elephant, a giraffe and a chick, which can be promoted into a cockerel. Despite being aimed at kids, this is a fun strategy game for adults and comes highly recommended.

Finally, here’s a list of Japanese Toy Awards 2010 grand prize winners. I find myself a bit uneasy at the separate categories for girls and boys. I’d suggest they change it to “Toys To Celebrate Domesticity” and “Toys To Celebrate Sports And Engineering” but everyone would be able to see what they did there.

Category	Name	Company	Sale Date	Price in Yen
Access For All Children “Kyouyuu” Award	Korokoro Talking Tomica A I U E O	Takara Tomy	June 2010	6,090
Educational Award	Talking With Anpanman: Picture Dictionary	Sega Toys	April 2010	7,140
Boys’ Toy Award	Ishikawa Ryou’s Exciting Golf	Epoch	July 2010	8,379
Girls’ Toy Award	Shushurun	Pilot	April 2010	2,604
Character Toy Award	Kamen Rider W Transformation Belt DX Double Driver	Bandai	September 2009	6,825
Innovative Toy Award	JIGAZO PUZZLE @rt	Tenyo	September 2010 (provisional)	2,310 (provisional)
High Target Award	Otamatone	Cube	November 2009	2,940

More photographs from Tokyo Toy Fair 2010 (including a llama!) after the jump

Just back from the Tokyo International Anime Fair 2010 (TAF2010) and can’t wait to tell you about the promo videos I saw.

The highlight of the event for me was definitely the five minute preview for GARO The Movie 3D Red Requiem [Official site]. I think I’ve seen a few posters for the TV series at previous anime trade events, but I know very little about the story. Not that I needed to. The preview moved briskly from scene to scene and was full of magical sigils in 3D and giant robots with beautifully detailed mechanics. Even the title was done using 3D kanji, with the brush strokes seeming to flare out into the audience. Looks way better than Avatar and I’d bet it cost a fraction of the price. It’ll be out in autumn 2010, so watch out for it.

I also saw two more 3D-ised anime trailers; Blassreiter and Last Exile at GONZO’s [Official site] booth. Neither of these were intended for the 3D market and it shows, although less often than you would think. During fight scenes, it looks fantastic, although 3D should make directors rethink what kind of shots and what point of view they’ll use. However, when cel-like animation is used, it tends to have black lines surrounding the characters and buildings and so looks more like a bumpy cardboard jutting out of the screen. Fix this and we’re cool, okay?

The trailer for Space Pirate Captain Harlock [Official press release] made its premiere, along with GAIKING. I must admit, I didn’t realise Harlock wasn’t played by a real actor at first. Lest you think me completely stupid, let me point out he appears mostly in shadow. The rest of his surroundings looked as real as any Hollywood movie (as in Star Trek and, again, Avatar). The coolest point was that many of the designs and costumes in Captain Harlock are ridiculous. I refer to the ship with the huge skull on it, of course, amongst many other smaller details. But in this, it breaks through the clouds in all its stupid glory and looks real. Can a flag fly atop a spaceship in a vacuum? I think not, but it does in this animation and it is cool. My only annoyance was the American voiceover. I can’t really justify this. All I can do is point out that I love a number of American cartoons, but I don’t like dubs even when they are considered the default in Japan. Or, perhaps, particularly when they are the default in Japan.

Another trailer premiere was for Togainu no Chi [Official site] anime. Nitro Plus claimed they would show a trailer for a new, top secret anime project at the Tokyo Anime Fair, but everyone figured out what it would be pretty quick and they admitted it a day later. It’s supposed to be BL (yaoi), but the trailer showed more over-the-top cool fighting than the usual BL trappings, so I’m interested in seeing how it turns out. There needs to be fewer generic BL merchandising machines and more plot-based dramas where the guys involved happen to be gay. If they can work in some explosions, spaceships shaped like skulls and 3D battles, that would be great.

The Kuroshitsuji II trailer [Official site] was another TAF2010 exclusive. First off, I love the manga and despise the anime. And now, we have a rip-off of an anime I didn’t like in the first place. Despite this… I didn’t hate it. I also couldn’t hear it well because of all the other sounds going on around the booth, so maybe I’ll start hating it properly later. Anyway, the first thing I liked about it was that there was a spider eating a butterfly, emphasising that the evil butler (Claude) will eventually eat the boy’s (Trancy’s) soul. Good. Let’s get that out there. The second point was that it was so excessively stupid that it went right round the dial to become cool again. In one iconic(?) scene, Claude throws his glasses up in the air, uses the standard cutlery-as-weapons schtick, then looks upwards so his glasses to fall back in place. In other points of note, the entire reason Claude is named Claude is so he can be called Kuro. I guess that means there’s some significance in that Trancy abbreviates to Tora, or ‘tiger’ in Japanese. Also in the trailer are three identical servants and a maid with a bandaged eye. Finally, it’s stated that it takes place in the latter half of the 19th century, but I don’t know if it puts it before or after Sebastian and Ciel.

I also saw a preview for Rainbow [Official site] which is a drama set in a prison for juvenile boys in 1955 and stars Oguri Shun. I love hearing about anime that covers new topics. I even had a quick read of the manga that had been left out in the viewing room and it seemed a fascinating, gritty historical piece. The anime (as much as they showed us), didn’t do it justice. It was much cuter and had a voiceover plus an info dump where each boy in turn fights their cellmate ‘sempai’ and their name is read out. Still looks sufficiently interesting though.

Other trailers I saw were for Trigun Badlands Rumble [Official site]., Ibara no Ou (King of Thorn) [Official site] and Red Line [Official site].

The main reason I went on Sunday rather than Saturday was because I managed to get a ticket to a special invite-only event for Arakawa Under The Bridge [Official site]. This was a total waste of time. Described as a ‘baton touch’ event between Hanamaru Youchien (Hanamaru Kindergarten) and Arakawa Under The Bridge, but very few people had seen the previous anime as, like me, they’d applied for tickets from the Arakawa site. So when the Hanamaru panda came out and danced for us, we really didn’t care. Then they brought out a man in a kappa suit to represent Arakawa Under The Bridge. The panda and kappa had a bit of a tussle, then they showed us the video for the OP and ED themes and video messages from four of the seiyuu. I just… what the hell were they thinking? I would have been happy if this was done as a regular booth event, but with all that applying for tickets and queuing, I expected something special.

Advice for attendees
You don’t have to buy a ticket in advance, but it will cost less money. Tickets on the day cost 1000 yen.
You can start queuing to enter the Big Site without a ticket, but buy a ticket inside the building as soon as you are able.
It’s fairly cold outside, but warm inside. Dress appropriately.
There are no cosplayers (apart from booth staff) at this event.
If you have a child who is elementary school age or younger, you are entitled to use the family entrance and jump the queues. Ask a member of staff for details.
As with Comiket, plan a route that will take you past all the booths.

Spam From Japan: Tokyo Game Show 2009

Makuhari Messe convention centre was dark, with all lighting coming from booths and large TV screens. I did what anyone would do when faced with massive crowds and sensory overload — I grabbed a program and played the first game with a clearly signposted queue.

My first game was Dynasty Warriors Multi Raid Special (真・三國無双 MULTI RAID Special / Shin Sangoku Musou MULTI RAID Special) for the XBox 360 (also available on PS3). It was fun jumping and smashing things in ancient China, although I felt as if I was just button-mashing a lot of the time, especially when different body parts of my character would glow for no reason. I also made the mistake of trying to kill all warriors in each area before moving on. When I got to the boss, a magic missile-tossing magician, I had very little time left to kill him and he seemed invincible to my previous buttonmash combo. Having played it though, I got a little something for my mobile phone.

Kaihin-Makuhari train station had been covered with advertising for Resonance of Fate (End of Eternity in Japan) and I immediately wanted to play it once I saw the trailer. It looks quite Final Fantasy-ish in presentation, design and character archetypes. However, one of the unique selling points is that you can change the characters’ costumes and see it reflected in their cut-scenes. Also, unlike Final Fantasy, there doesn’t seem to be just one ‘hero’ character to represent the player. You control all three characters equally and when one dies, the game is over.

While the queue for the PS3 version was so long they had stopped admitting people, the line for the Xbox 360 version was relatively shorter. The hour-long wait didn’t faze me, although it did use up most of the battery in my phone as I kept posting to Twitter.

I played a special version of the game intended just for TGS 2009. First, I sat through the tutorial, which consisted of defining scratching damage and direct damage and what weapons you can use to inflict them. Maybe I should’ve waited a bit longer, since I never really got a clear understanding of gameplay from it. I skipped it after about eight minutes (everyone does this, right?) and ended up in a room with a monster hitting the three main characters, without any idea how to hit back. Eventually, one of the booth staff came to help. Press X, then X again, select your path and then buttonmash the hell out of it. I don’t know if he told me the only strategy or if he told me the one that would get someone as clueless as me through the game. If that was all there was to it, I don’t get it. The result looked really cool, but I don’t know how much skill really factored into it. On the other hand, one of my characters (Reanbell) died fairly quickly and so ended the game. This really is something I’d have to play more to tell if it’s good or not.

While I was waiting, I watched the trailers for Bayonetta and the people playing it. It seems very similar, if not identical, to the Devil May Cry series in terms of gameplay. I really loved the main character’s tough attitude and I think response to this game will depend on how gamers feel about her. One of the scenes I saw was her fighting angelic monsters on a Big Ben-like clock whizzing through space. Very cool. Another one was her fighting a giant whilst standing on the same bridge he was holding in his hand.

I stopped at the Playstation 3 booth to watch some game trailers. Nier Replicant had a short trailer, but the cutely horrific monster designs intrigued me. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow looked like an amazing blend of Japanese gaming action and character design combined with epic European set designs and camerawork. It had Patrick Stewart narrating too, as well as voice-acting from Robert Carlyle.

Of course, I have to talk about the Final Fantasy trailers. Final Fantasy VIII will blow you away with individually animated hair strands. The first scene from the trailer, where two main characters are watching fireworks, was a richly imagined world but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from their hair. Oh, and the skin. You can almost see the pores. Um, but that’s the most detailed scene and others haven’t got the same level of animation. I imagine that one also comes with a hit pop song as the fireworks explode around them.

The Last Guardian (人喰いの大鷲トリコ / Hitokui no Oowashi Toriko) intrigued me but ultimately had some problems. The basic story is that of the adventures of a boy and his giant chimera-like eagle named Trico. The trailer I saw starts with a feather floating down. A tiny crow lands next to it and you see how big the feather really is… A monstrous bird lands and chases after a young boy, who almost goes over the edge of a cliff, until he befriends it. Trico looks adorable, not to mention incredibly realistic. The backgrounds too, have amazing levels of detail and shading and I saw a five minute behind-the-scenes preview that emphasises this. You can even see the dust rising up when shards of sunlight hit them. Why, then, does the boy look like he’s on loan from a completely different game? Flat and cartoonish compared to all other aspects of the world they created. The more I watched, the less I could unsee it.

I left when they started playing an extended Playstation “Game Face” commercial. Don’t get me wrong, I’m under no illusion that game trailers aren’t commercials too. But they are exciting and interesting to me in a way that footage of people playing the PS3 isn’t. Awesome games with good advertising should be their own adverts for your gaming system. All we need is a quick reminder of which one it is.

With not much time left, I opted to play one last game. I chose a less popular one, with a shorter queue and a free gift for having played it. That game was Ghost Trick for the Nintendo DS.

First of all, I’m a slower reader compared to most people in attendance. If I have a time limit, I can only do so much. After a while, I realised that the compulsory in-game tutorial wasn’t getting me anywhere and I really should just click through to get to the game itself. The story goes that the main character is dead. However, he can possess and jump through objects to activate them. As an example, there is a bad guy pointing a gun at a woman. Your character lies slumped (he IS dead) in front of a bicycle, but his soul can only travel so far (about one centimetre on the screen). Using the stylus, you guide his soul to the pedals and then to the bell. With a tap, you activate the item. The bell goes off, the bad guy is frightened by the sound and he doesn’t shoot the woman. Ghost Trick has a new take on gameplay, but I need to play more challenging problems before I’ll give a stronger opinion on it. I liked it as far as it went.

One more photograph before I go, which might be considered “not safe for work”: Booth cosplayer. This unusual (but official) costume caught my attention for its weirdness. Click on any other of the photographs to see them in a bigger size on their own Flickr page.

Thank you for reading my review of the Tokyo Game Show. If you want to read more articles like this, click on any of the tags below or to your right.

Amusement Machine Show 2009

I recently had an article published on the newly revamped Blogcritics: The Amusement Machine Show Experience. There, read my short review of Tetris Dekaris and my ongoing concern about the existence of Unko-san.

Consider this your reminder that the first public day of the Tokyo Game Show (東京ゲームショウ) is on Saturday (26th September). Hope to see you there.

Spam From Japan: Taking Silliness Seriously With GI Joe

Please note that this review contains spoilers.

Every summer a cry goes up. “Movies these days have been designed for ten year old boys with tiny attention spans!” they say. If you took one of these critics and asked them to create a parody of what they thought movie execs wanted, in between muttering “Then he joins two katana together to make a double katana,” and “So he covers his face in silver and renames him Destros,” they would have written the script to G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.

GI Joe makes it work by using everything they can think of. When it gets a bit too silly, they add another trope to the mix and make it even sillier. Evil guy with a mask and monocle? Sure, but how about if we made him the brother of the main guy’s love interest? (I would love to recommend TV Tropes to you, but I’ve never known anyone to make it out of that site alive). It’s internally consistent and it makes perfect sense when it turns out the two ninja, one dressed in black and the other in while, have a shared history.

One has to disguise one’s love for these movies, of course. It’s appropriate to say, “While it didn’t shed any light on the mystery and existential nature of the human condition, it was in accordance with the way the trailers portrayed it.” You can’t say, “The fight scenes and explosions were really cool and that evil ninja in white was awesome!”

But GI Joe IS awesome. Not awesome as might be commonly understood to mean ‘very, very good,’ but awesome as in the moment The Doctor describes the way he’s injected a serum into a group of men to take away their sense of fear in order to turn them into an army of killing machines. Then he makes one stick his hand into a terrarium holding a king cobra, which bites the guy, but his body pushes out the poison. Then there’s another explosion, or something. See? AWESOME.

Incidentally, said awesome evil ninja (Byung-hun Lee) will turn up very soon in The Good, The Bad, The Weird a movie from South Korea which looks like it’s going to be… y’know… awesome. The release date for “GBW” in Japan is August 29th.

Spam From Japan: Tokyo Figure Show

The Tokyo Figure Show started today (August 4th 2009) and so I headed to Harajuku. It was to be held in the H&M building, so I ignored the shoppers inside and bravely headed to the stairs. After searching several floors for the elevator I’d read about online that went straight to the top floors, I still couldn’t find it.

I’m not someone who doesn’t ask for directions, but I hate looking lost. And I draw the line at asking staff in a store for (mostly) women’s clothing if they’ve seen the secret elevator that leads to a stash of anime figurines.

I found an elevator on the fourth floor, which was as high as I could go using the stairs and pushed ‘up’. A woman pushed past and pressed ‘down’ and looked at me as if I was so stupid. It was like the time I accidentally pulled the tag off a teabag while making tea in the drink bar of an internet cafe and a nearby gamer decided to educate me on the correct use of teabags.

Was it really H&M? That really didn’t seem right. The post on DannyChoo.com had been talking all about bringing plastic anime figures to people who didn’t usually see them, but it was hard to believe the people surrounding me would care at all as they ploughed through the brand-name goods in search of a bargain. No, something was amiss.

I called it a day and headed to a cafe I’d heard did crumpets. Along the way, I ran into a friend and we did a tour of Takeshita Doori, ending up outside H&M once more. Outside, a queue was forming for an elevator hidden between the two main doors and a man was touting free drink samples of Vitamin Water. I’d finally found the place.

Inside, were several stands of Good Smile Company figurines (including the Suenaga Mirai figure). There were also figures for Haruhi, Death Note and other anime keywords that will hopefully bring traffic to this blog.

We descended a spiral stair and came out in a room draped in white cloth, padded areas to sit down on, and tons of bottles of Vitamin Water, a drink they were promoting alongside everything else. You spun a wheel and they gave you a drink based on what it selected for you. I landed on the ‘lucky!’ segment, so got to choose. I choose dragonfruit, because it’s got the word ‘dragon’ in it. It

Below are more photos of the event. If you liked this article, you’ll also want to read my write-up of the Tokyo Toy Show.

Spam From Japan: Monster Hunter 3 (Tri) Snack

For gamers and those who grab the most brightly-coloured packaging in the convenience store, comes a new snack from Japan. It’s clearly designed for people who have an attention span that can’t handle anything longer than a Twitter post.

Inside are lemon-shaped puffs which apparently apparently taste of kongari niku or “well done meat”, an item found in the game itself. Personally, I couldn’t really identify any specific taste beyond, “Mmm, these are pretty good. Now let’s go play with my Pokemans.”

…Which is the problem of advertising to those of us with miniscule attention spans.

Spam From Japan: Top Eight Most Memorable Toys From The Tokyo Toy Show 2009

While nothing could hope to replace the simple brilliance of last year’s Teacup Poodle, it seemed that a lot of products at the Tokyo Toy Show 2009 (東京おもちゃショー２００９) took a more traditional approach and favoured updates of older toys or figures based on licensed properties. I never saw anything amazingly high-tech, although I admit I must have walked past the dog-speak translator at some point without it registering.

This is not the collection of the coolest toys, or the toys I would most like to own. It’s what left a lasting impression on me, for better or worse.

Necktie Llama (pictured)

Meet Necktie Llama. Actually called “Mirabakesso”, which is an abbreviated Japanese phrase meaning ‘products to transform the future’, you can play games, watch commercials and anime shorts by Studio 4°c on the official Mirabakesso homepage. Some of these creatures can talk, by the way, just in case you didn’t find your nightmares sufficiently fuelled already.

Hot Toys Booth

The first thing I noticed was a large T-600 figure, standing slightly taller than myself. Having drawn me in, there were a number of anime figures and figures based on Hollywood properties like X-Men and Pirates of the Caribbean. Also, a surprising amount of Edward Scissorhands merchandise, including cute SD figures. There were also a number of Michael Jackson figures prominently displayed, which made me wonder how long they had been in development.

Mickey Mouse Transformer

One of the runners up in the “High Target Category” at the Toy Show. See below for a picture.

Yakiniku-Ou

Yakiniku is often translated as ‘Korean barbecue’ and many ex-pats living in Japan love showing these restaurants to visiting friends and family. You have an open grill in front of you and the meat and vegetables arrive to order, which you then cook yourself. All the fun of eating burnt meat and fighting over the cooking tongs is now brought into your home in the form of a new game. It consists of vibrating board and plastic meat and vegetables (of various values) which you have to pick up with plastic tongs. As fun as it sounds.

Canaan Model Gun

You too can own a model gun or airgun based on the ones seen in the anime Canaan.

Unko-san

Children in Japan love poo and adults are only too willing to indulge them. Naturally, this is in direct opposition to Western countries where children love poo and adults keep Mr Hankey to themselves. From what I could figure out, there are many different types of collectible poo that live happily together in a village on a poo-shaped island.

Dancing Gachapin

Like Domo-kun, Gachapin is an iconic mascot in Japan. This time, he appears as a cuddly dancing toy, along with hundreds of other properties (mostly Disney-owned). The overall effect was terrifying.

Pogo Sticks

Pogo sticks are back! Okay, probably not. These are powered-up versions that had the crowd watching in awe as the demonstrator did backflips while several metres in the air. At no point were they thinking that they could do that themselves and they wanted to buy one.