You know you’re in a rich part of Japan when you discover a second-hand shop (or recycle shop as they call them here), in your town and amongst the chairs, gym equipment and other junk you find this…
Scary Stuff
More Stuffed Animals
Unfortunately it wasn’t near pay-day so I couldn’t take the bear home with me…maybe next month?
Mind you I think it would take up nearly the whole of my tatami room!
Went to the cinema in Nishinomiya yesterday to see “The Box” – pretty weird and strangely sexist, what is it with women and pressing buttons?
Anyway while we were there Aki discovered a new Star Wars capsule toy (Gachapon) machine!
Chewbacca Sound Egg
I came out of the Osaka Yodobashi Camera (huge electronics department store) and was a little startled to see a group of people with what looked like VR goggles on.
Turns out it was a demonstration of the new Panasonic 3D Viera TV.
3D Viera TV
I gave it a miss.
I read somewhere that with the new Sony 3D TVs you get 2 free 3D goggles included with the TV…does this mean if you want to invite friends around to watch a movie or something after the pub you’re gonna have to stock up on 4,5,6 extra goggles or ask people to bring their own?
Bit of a flaw in the plan here I think.
Updated 22/06/10: I tried out a 3D tv the other day at one of the smaller electronic shops (Joshin) and they were showing the golf demo…it’s…well it’s alright I guess.
But it doesn’t look or feel natural so I think after a (short) while I’d rather go back to the 2D TV version. Let my brain do the 3D work.
It’s Cherry Blossom Viewing (Hanami) time in Japan at the moment (well to be honest, it’s over now, but it was a couple of weeks ago), and this means sitting under cherry blossoms, drinking sake, wine or whatever and also, the first festivals of the year (for me anyway).
Ashiya Festival 2010
Fancy a pizza?
Well I couldn’t not get my picture taken with him could I…
Stormtrooper And I
It’s been 21 years since The Wonderstuff released the legendary (in my opinion) album HUP! in 1989, which I spent vast amounts of my teenage years listening to and tryin gt oplay (with limited success) on my guitar.
They’re actually on e of the bands I’ve seen most live along with The Cure and bizarrely Ozric Tentacles (bizarrely as although I was a fan I wasn’t obsessive and seemed to end up seeing them live more by accident than anything else, and who seemed to be constantly playing at my university back in the day).
Anyway to celebrate the anniversary the Stuffies plated a special gig at the O2 Academet in Birmingham back in December 2009 where they played the entire album (in the track order they wanted it to be, not the track order on the album according to Miles Hunt).
Unfortunately, being in Japan, I was unable to go, and I haven’t seen them since, I dunno, 2004 perhaps, and I was unable to get to Tokyo when they played in Japan last year either. Luckily they recorded and filmed the gig and have just released a 3CD box set (CD, DVD and Iphone disc) of the event.
As an extra special treat, the first 1000 pre-orders from NyQuest got their name on the packaging so imagine my cheeky grin when this arrived in the post last week…
Hup Live
After frantically scanning the 1000 names, on the second run through with my hopes flagging I found my name centre stage (well, not quite…) in the middle fold.
Marvellous.
(And it’s a good gig too).
