On my Saturday afternoon during my recent trip to Fukuoka, I stopped by one of my favorite shops in town.   In English its called 'Mandrake', but the Japanese name comes out to be 'Mandarake' (マンダラケ). 

Its a bit of an OTAKU PARADISE... full of anime, manga, toys, games and other collectables. Its quite huge by Japanese standards, like 4 or 5 stories.  Unlike a lot of Japanophiles,  I actually have almost zero interest in Japanese anime. (except for 宇宙戦艦ヤマト and マクロス...)   but this place is still pretty cool. 

I snuck a few pics during my return visit of some of the random stuff.

Actually the reason I used to come here when I was living here was because of my an interest in retro-gaming.   In Japan's used CD shops, you can get a LOT of 2nd hand OG games for cheap.  I used to come here for 1st gen Game Boy games,  but since I long since put away my GB Color,  This time I just checked out the Famicon and Super Famicon systems on display.

In addition to racks and racks of new and old comics and DVDs,  they also have some collectible toys of all sorts:

I don't even know what most of these things are, but the prices are all in the hundreds of dollars.  that one in the middle labelled 'ハチ女' (aka '蜂女' or Bee Woman), is from 'Kamen Rider' apparently.... and its price tag is about US$1,200 at the current exchange rate!


This is what the character is supposed to look like!   The girl on the right, with realistic 'stinger action' is actually former AV idol Oikawa Nao (及川 奈央)...

Speaking of AV...  since this is Japan and its Otaku paradise... you can't ignore the p0rn...

actually this isn't even p0rn... they're just creepy nerd products...


The top two rows are actually anime character themed Pillow covers... for what kind of pillow?  LOVE PILLOWs (抱き枕) of course... :-O

(bet you regret reading that last sentence... don't you!)   

If you want to know more about this disturbing part of Japanese otaku culture... click here!

Not that I read p0rnographic Japanese comic books, but one other display case in the store I thought was photo worthy was this one (not work safe btw!). 


Its not just p0rn... its not just comic book p0rn... its RETRO collectible Japanese comic book p0rn!

A bit eye opening in some ways...  just in case you thought the genre of school girls being tied up and sexually molested by space aliens was a NEW invention... apparently its been popular in Japan for many decades.

Prices range from about US$7-$50..  this is just the few things I took photos of... there's about a million times more.  I'll save it for the next visit. :-P

A lot of the time I was in Japan last week was spent visiting old friends. 

One night I met my friend Juri and her friend at Oyafuko-dori,  (aka the Street of Lost Children), one of the nightlife areas with lots of bars, clubs and restaurants.

(note, for some reason this flower shop is open all night... i'm not sure who's buying flowers after midnight... but apparently there's a demand for it).

We went to 'Off Broadway', a bar I had been to once or twice back in the day, but not one of my favorite haunts. 

I got one of their non-alcoholic cocktails.  This was one was extremely sour.  Think green apples.

One person I didn't get a picture or video of but I should have was one of the bartenders,  an older Japanese lady in her late 40's or early 50s.  I had a strong hunch that she may have been either intoxicated and/or hard of hearing, because her normal speaking voice was what many of us would consider 'shouting' level.   very amusing actually.

When we were rapping it up I was thinking I could walk back to my hotel, but Juri-chan called a taxi.  It took about 20 minutes for it to show up though. 

I thought it was kind of a hassle to wait for a taxi to show up when there were plenty of empty taxis available on the street, but like in HK, if you call a taxi by phone you can get a discount. The driver who came was one that she uses regularly.  When we got in the cab he had a cooler on the passengers seat so we had to all three pile in the back....  whatever, just get me home, its getting late!    But I was surprised to see him open up the cooler and start passing out treats...



first popsicles, then bottles of Ramune (ラムネ)!




Oishikatta yo!

Sorry, I've been busy the last few days so I haven't been able to keep up with my post-Japan trip blogs as fast as I'd like (I'm worrying because I'm still taking new pictures from new events that need to show up here too!) :-P

Anyway, continuing from the same night I went to see the Hawks play the Mariners at the Yahoo dome,  Ayako joined me for a post-game dinner at the adjacent Hard Rock Cafe.


Long Long time Etchy blog readers will recall that I used to come here quite often back in the day when I was living here.  Not only because I think its the best Hard Rock Cafe (in Japan, if not the world), but because it was the only place in town (besides Costco) to get real (corporate) American cuisine. :-P


Sometimes its crowded after a game, but I guess because it was already past 10 when the game ended, it wasn't too busy when we got here.

It wouldn't be a meal in Japan without lots of food pictures.  Here's just a few,  we went a bit nuts on the ordering:

Beer is very popular in Japan...


Nachos es muy Oishii!


I think at this point any concerns for nutrition were out the window.  :-P



As you can guess, I wasn't the only one taking pictures of the food!


Of course you have to top it off w/ the brownie sundae.  :-P

I was totally dying by the time we (mostly me!) finished this off....  

We had a LOT of trouble confirming our venue for our Halloween Party, but I have had enough time to start considering some costume ideas.  You'll recall two years ago I got a pretty kickass 'Super Mario' costume in Tokyo, so this year I thought I'd check out the options available here.  I went to the 'InCube' store in Tenjin to check out what they had.


Anyone want to see me in full body tights? No? me neither!


Not exactly sure why, but they had a large selection of cross dressing themed costumes...  tells you something about Japanese men, doesn't it? :-O


Must have for you Dragon Ball fans...



I'm not sure what 'Gyrandu' means, but these claim to be 'interesting sexy underpants'...  I think it is neither!

update - i looked up what that word means -

a ha... ok... no thanks! :-P

Last one - this one is for Elvanna,  she was asking for some inspiration too. 

In her case I recommend....

ALL of them! 

I'm not sure if you heard about the hostage situation at the Discovery Channel Headquarters yesterday in Silver Spring Maryland.  (this is actually where Rottendoubt and I went to high school back in the day).


From the post-event press conference, its clear that the police infiltrated the building and were observing the suspect via hidden camera (I'm guessing drilled through a wall, under a door or through an air duct).  Someone made a tactical decision once the suspect drew his gun and started to threaten one of the hostages with imminent harm.

Luckily they were able to resolve the situation with only the gunman/bomber being hurt.   The media who was covering the situation live had actually talked to the suspect on the phone but didn't broadcast the information until after they had shared it with police and then the situation was resolved.

Contrast this to the circus that happened in the Philippines last week...   where the gunman was watching the police prepare to storm the bus live on TV.  They didn't control the perimeter around the location (the suspects brother tried to approach the bus with a gun!) and ultimately had no plan to enter the bus or take out the suspect...