Another Kyoto Weekend (Shinzaburo Hanpu, Animate, A-cho, Super Position)

(tags Kyoto, Japan, canvas, bags, anime, shop, arcade, figure)

This is just a quick one because I want to play some more Final Fantasy 12.

I went to Kyoto mainly to buy me a Shinzaburo Ichizawa Hanpu canvas bag. Unlike last time, this time I was early enough because at 12:00 half the store's goods was still there. Great. I selected this over-shoulder bag, and I was going to select a strap but one of the attendants told me that the bag's ring attachments aren't strong enough. I've been using a over-shoulder bags over Akiba-kei backpacks because I don't like getting sweaty against a backpack. BTW, what is an Akiba-kei backpack? Why is it desirable and why did Gamers have that special backpack for 100 points (2006-04-20)?

This time I actually found Animate. Nothing too special in there, but it seems bigger than the Kobe store. Right next to it was a Melon Books, and I swear it's more cramped in there than in Kobe. And there was an idol picture shop. About 70 percent of it was pictures of young hot ness guys, so there were the requisite junior high girls there. I went in to check if they had any anime seiyuu pictures like the ones you buy after concerts, but only mainstream singers like Aiko and Ayumi Hamazaki and model types like that woman in Last Samurai with no last name. Ah. No Yui Horie (堀江由衣) pics? Sad.

I again checked out that arcade I went to last time. It's called the A-cho Game Center. This time when I went, they had Time Crisis 4 (no official HP yet? Here's the detailed Wikipedia EN and JP page and the official Time Crisis 3 page instead) in big double wide screen action (none of that mirror cabinet crap, yes!). I had to play a game, and there was no waiting on 2P, but there was some guy rocking 1P and it was hard to concentrate on my solo game. What surprised me is that he asked me if I wanted to play co-op. I couldn't hang with this guy, but I tried for two credits. I really like this game's style. This time it seems there are audio clues in regular Japanese and even in English, though I couldn't figure out how to change it to English mode. Another game that caught my fancy was the sit-down LCD screen (high-def?) of Virtual Tennis 3. Wow, this is a Sega Limbergh graphics card based arcade game, crazy. Remember when the only the arcade game motherboard had the name? I also tried my hand at Warashi's new shooting game, Trigger Heart Exelica. Clean clean Naomi visuals. Capture enemies and fling them back for points, damage and bullet absorption. Not bad, and moe moe sexy girls in flying armor suit ain't a detriment, no no. (Insert Credit with the win, thanks as always)

Finally... wow this post is getting long.

Finally, I visited the Super Position (「ＳＵＰＥＲ　ＰＯＳＩＴＩＯＮ　京都店」) figure resell shop. It's always nice to go. I broke down and picked up the cream green swimsuit version of Hazumu from the Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl figure collection (official maker page), which has been eluding me for 12 unopened packages. (I pointed it out previously back in March.) It was 1200 yen, twice the price of an unopened package. The rare "red swimsuit" version was 2800 yen, but at the Yellow Submarine at Kobe, it's only 2300 yen. No one is buying it. I'm still trying my luck buying the regular unpened packages, but at 500 yen or more it's a hassle to get Janpu-chan all the time. I think that the cream green color really suits Hazumu, either that or I'm used to seeing that color on him/her from that wonderful PS2 game.

Ah I also checked out Sofmap, Gamers, and Kikuya Shoten's new Manga-Kan. Nice clean bookstore dedicated to anime and manga remodeled recently. No more third story Magic The Game card space?

Okay enough! Gotta relax by maxing my stats in Final Fantasy 12. Arg.