Review: Nendoroid Ryougi Shiki

I had this post all written up, and then I went and got ill and forgot about it!

A new figure arrived from Amazon this weekend – the newly-released Nendoroid Ryougi Shiki, the protagonist from Type Moon’s Kara No Kyoukai series. She’s one of my favourite anime characters (I’m weak to the Type Moon girls), and I really love the movies, so Nendoroid Ryougi was a must-have for me, espeically given how awkward some of the other figures of her are to get hold of (like a certain PVC from GSC which is virtually impossible to find for under 10,000 yen now).

A Trip to Volks in Akihabara

I made my second trip to Akihabara today, as I’m fortunate enough to have no classes on a Friday, and it will be my last trip there for a while because I spent an awful lot of money today!

More art and craft in Ibaraki-ken

As a follow-up to my previous post about pottery in Kasama, I have another post, this time with pictures from Mito, Yuki and a different part of Kasama. It was the second and final trip I made as part of one of the modules I took at Tsukuba, which I picked on a whim but it turned out to be pretty interesting and a lot of fun.

First up was another museum, this time in Mito. Rather than art this time, the museum contained various old artifacts from different periods in Japanese history. This was rather more to my taste than the ceramics museum I visited in Kasama, as I’m rather fond of history, the older the better and some of the pieces in the museum were pretty old. No photographs allowed inside as with the previous museum, which is a shame because they had some interesting things there, including a replica of the Seven Branched Sword (七支刀, shichishitou), which fans of the Phoenix Wright games might well be familiar with as in made a cameo in the third game.

Next to the museum, and pictured above, was an old school building. According to my teacher it’s one of the oldest in the prefecture. I don’t think the original building is being used any more, but it was interesting to look at.

Akihabara Loot

I finally received my first scholarship payment yesterday (or rather my first three, as the previous payments had been delayed) and decided that a trip to Akihabara was in order! It was a short trip this time, as although I had planned to spend most of the day there and make a trip to Volks, a friend of mine had some tickets to a couple of films at the Tokyo International Film Festival, so I went along to that in the afternoon.

A couple of hours wasn’t long enough to fully explore Akihabara, but I did visit the big anime stores and a few smaller ones as well, and I’ll have  a better idea of my way around on my next trip (which should be pretty soon as I want to order myself a doll from Volks while I have the money for it, and while I’ve got enough time for their Full Choice System wait time which is currently about two months).

I just have pictures of the spoils of my trip this time. Next time I’ll be taking some pictures of Akihabara itself.

From top to bottom, left to right: Figma Kagamine Len, Azone Ryougi Shiki, trading figures from Togainu No Chi and Sengoku Basara first and second sets, an Azone biscuit freebie, clear files from Kara No Kyoukai and Canaan.

Kasama Pottery

Here’s another Japan-related post. I won’t be traveling much until after I get my scholarship money, but I do have a couple of interesting trips to post before then. First up is a visit to Kasama – a small city in Ibaraki Prefecture. I don’t expect many of my readers will have heard of it, but it does have some points of interest. It’s home to a famous Inari shrine, and is also known for its art and in particular its ceramic products known as 笠間焼 (Kasama-yaki). As part of a study tour I signed up for at Tsukuba University, I got to take a trip to one of the ceramic centres there, as well as a ceramics museum.

Nendoroid Saber Lily

I didn’t think she’d arrive today because of the typhoon we’ve had in Japan, but it cleared up aside from the wind by mid-morning or so and a worker from Sagawa delivered my parcel from Amazon amidst the howling wind. All of my classes today were cancelled due to the bad weather, so I set up my room to take some photos not long after receiving her.

Saber’s Lily outfit is perhaps more popular at this point than her regular armour, despite it merely being an extra costume in a video game. It’s easy to see why when looking at it, though. While the design shares a lot of elements with her original blue clothing, the pale pink, white and black make an elegant and striking combination that really suits Saber. It’s no surprise then to see the major figure manufacturers milking the design for all it’s worth with two static PVC figures, a Figma, a couple of garage kits and now the Nendoroid. She does have great figure potential though, and I’m quite happy with figures companies rushing to make figures of Saber Lily if we get results like this.

Sega EX Summer Beach Nia

A preorder of mine arrived from HLJ on Tuesday morning – Sega’s Nia Summer Beach version. She’s the first figure I’ve bought from Sega, although I have Ciel and Sebastian ordered, and I’m quite impressed with her. Obviously she’s not on the same level as the high-end PVC figures, but she’s very nice for such a low price. I really like Nia with short hair, so I jumped at the chance to get her. I also plan on getting the regular edition Wave figure of her at some point as well.

Tokyo Game Show 2009

Since it was my only opportunity to do so in my year-long trip, I went with some friends to the Tokyo Game Show this weekend and it was quite an experience. It’s definitely one of the most crowded events I’ve ever been to – it was vast and yet still completely full of people. Actually trying out most of the games was practically impossible as many of them had wait times of well over an hour, and some over three hours! There were a variety of different companies showing off their future releases, and there were a lot of interesting things to see, though.

GSC Kagamine Len 1/8 PVC

Having successfully used my British credit card here in Japan, I caved and bought myself a new figure – Good Smile Company’s Kagamine Len. He cost me an impressively low ¥3387 with free shipping, a far cry from the £40 or so he would have cost me to import into the UK (and that’s without getting caught by customs). Another advantage is that I received him the day after placing the order, and I was given a tracking code even with Amazon’s free shipping service. I’ve been very impressed by the efficiency of the Japanese postal system in comparison to Royal Mail in the UK. What finally pushed me into ordering him though, aside from the ease of obtaining him, was actually that there was a volume of manga I really wanted to get, and it was convenient to buy enough to qualify for the free shipping, and I’d been so tempted to get him anyway that I gave in and just bought him in the end.

He looks great, as figure collectors have come to expect from Good Smile Company. He’s 1/8 scale and leaning forwards so he’s quite a small figure and wasn’t as expensive as some of their other offerings, but the quality is very good. He has a nice, dynamic sort of pose. I think the only downside is that the angle of his head is such that you can’t really get a good look at his face without crouching down, which is how I took all of these shots of him.

Japanese Mobile Phone

A second post in the same day, since I had this one mostly written and just needed to add some photos to it.

During last week I finally got around to getting myself a Japanese mobile phone (or cellphone for readers who use American English) after having a lot of trouble trying to communicate with people and arranging to meet up. I never used my phone much in the UK, so I didn’t realise how necessary it was until suddenly I didn’t have it any more. I knew coming to Japan that I would have to buy a new mobile phone, but I wasn’t sure which kind I would get, which network I would use or even whether I would go with contract or prepaid. Thankfully one of the local electronics stores here in Tsukuba made things a lot easier by having a special offer for foreign students arriving at the university.