it can’t all be about manga…

I’m so buying this summer time Yotsuba figure when it comes out…

I’ve actually been meaning to mention J-List (I’ll link to the under 18 site for this) since Christmas, believe it or not.  I got a couple of calendars from them (my Saiyuki Reload calendar, which rocks!) and killed a few hours browsing through their website.  The Japanese make some mighty odd things, people.  I ended up getting a bunch of candy for everyone as well as far too many KitKat bars.  (Oddly enough, I’ve only been able to get the KitKat search to work on their adult site.)  Vanilla Bean KitKats… mmmm…. 

They have a lot of other neat stuff there too.  Figures, t-shirts, bento and other cooking things, learning Japanese books, bilingual manga.  I was tempted by the bilingual Nodame Cantabile but couldn’t justify the cost considering that I’m not actually trying to learn to read Japanese.: Also, I picked up a couple of bilingual volumes of the Tale of Genji when I was at the International Manga Museum in Kyoto and haven’t read them yet.  Bad, Cathy.

I was also going to get an ITunes Japan card from them, but ended up buying one on my trip.  I was looking forward to actually paying for Japanese music!  When I finally got around to loading my gift card onto a new account there, I realized that they don’t sell the songs I wanted there!!  I really wanted to buy some High and Mighty Color songs but couldn’t find any.  I ended up buying a few songs by randomly clicking on things until I found some music I liked.  One thing I dolike is that the songs are all either 150 or 200 yen.  I’m not going to have a stupid little balance left like I did with my Canadian iTunes cards.

These are my newest figures.  I have here a set for Maison Ikkoku, two from Fullmetal Alchemist, Bleach, two from Naruto and finally School Rumble.

This is what my coffee table looks like right now:

This is one sans camera flash.  I can’t decide if it’s easier to see or not.

The figures on the left:

A couple of the Fullmetal Alchemist figures came with little extras, like tool boxes, etc.  The best though, is Al.  He not only comes with an extra head (the little round thing next to him) but his chest plate comes off to reveal his little yellow kitty inside.  Awesome.

(I probably shouldn’t have sweet innocent Al in front of the drunken crew from Ikkoku.  The three in front are definitely wasted!)

And the right:

If you look at the top right corner of this one you can see a little container on the box.  Those are the dreadful salted cherry blossoms that turned out to be tea.  It’s actually not that bad once you rinse the salt off.

Also, my camera kind of sucks.  None of my close up pictures turned out.  I couldn’t even zoom on these ones for some reason. 

Ah well.

I would like to point out that once the figures are moved to their new home I have a lovely tray from Pottery Barn that will be taking up residence where the toys are now.  I try to be grown up about some things.  Not very hard, but I do try….

I so didn’t need to spend money on this today, but she was just sitting in the box looking so lonely…

Yes!  I now own Danboard to go with my two Yotsubas.  One Yotsuba wants to play with her, the other wants Danboard to make her day…

It’s kind of hard to tell, but angry Yotsuba is holding her water pistol.  Happy Yotsuba is just thrilled to be there, so I didn’t feel the need to pull out the ice cream bar.  But!  I have to say that the pistol fits perfectly in the hand that comes with it - no need to jam it or prop it in her hand at all.

The little black spot on the left side of the cardboard head?  That’s a switch that moves!  Neat!  This figure is a lot more poseable than I thought it would be when viewing it in the box.  Though as my friend pointed out when I bought it, the sample poses on the back of the box are quite creepy.

I also found out that I can stick Yotsuba’s head on Danboard’s body.  Heh.

More pictures today!  I’m (slowly) organizing and weeding the books and manga I have in my room, which has left time for little else.  It was all getting to be a little too disorganized and I was having problems finding things.  (I did a count from my manga list and I’m now at over 1150 volumes.  That’s too many to not be in order.  That’s too many, period.)

So, I wrote before about getting to fly on the Pokemon plane when we were leaving Tokyo.  Here’s my proof!

First we took the Pokemon monorail….

Then we rode on the Pokemon plane…

And when we got home I bought some Pokemon ramen.

Er.  I had to continue the theme there…  Seriously though.  Evidently Pikachu has lost none of his steam in Japan.  It was everywhere.  By the end of my trip I was definitely ready for something else!

I had a little boy in buying Pokemon stuff on my first shift back at the bookstore and I got to tell him about riding on the Poke plane.  His eyes got about three sizes bigger and he said, “YOU GOT TO RIDE ON A POKEMON PLANE???“  If you ever want to become an instant hero to a nine year old, that’s the way to do it.  After that he had to pull out his trading cards and we had a very deep discussion about who our favorite characters were.  Moments like that make me remember that the book discount isn’t the only reason I like working there.  :)

And since I had a request, here are my Ichigo Mashimaro figures, which didn’t need much assembly after all.  The only ones in pieces were Ana and Miu (because it’s very important to have complete realism with Ana’s panties, apparently) and the rest just needed to be propped on their pillows.  I chose this set because the only other one available was the girls after a bath.  You can see in the back that I got the Miu one, but only because she’s just being Miu, as usual.  It’s kind of creepy to get figures of young girls in towels.  Viva la cultural differences, I guess.

I had fun putting them together, but most will be going into a box until I have room to display them.   One thing I regret not buying while I was there was a Maison Ikkoku set.  The Manager figure was $13.00 and I kind of stalled at the price.  The rest of the characters were all around $4-$5, which was much better.  Now I’m kind of cursing myself for being a cheapskate… 

I’ve been answering this a lot since I got back from Japan - mostly on Facebook.  :)  And yes, I got back ages ago.  I’ve been catching up with friends, sleeping, watching season finales and cleaning cleaning cleaning.  (Aren’t closets fun??)

Tonight I also did two things:

1) Put together most of the figures I bought in Japan.  The Rozen Maiden ones are the best, even if a couple of them do tilt a bit.  :)

2) Finally got around to downloading the pictures from my camera onto my computer.  I also tried to set up an online photo album, which didn’t work.  Then I switched to Flickr which seems to be working.  I also discovered that the movies I take with my camera have sound when you play them on a computer.  D’oh!  I think I would have taken more movies in Japan had I known.  :(

Here are a few of my new toys!

My new Catbus and Gigi posing on my manga stacks.

The gang from Azumanga Daioh.

Rozen Maiden!

I also bought an Ichigo Mashimaro set but got distracted by the photos and didn’t finish putting them together. 

So now that I finally have more time and have figured out the Flickr/blogging thing I’ll start posting pictures from my trip.  Next will be pics from my Ghibli Museum trip!

I poked my head into iTunes tonight to see if there was anything new I wanted to listen to and came across a new Avril Lavigne song called “Girlfriend.”  I was both intrigued and amused by the fact that there’s also a Japanese version of the song.  Well, it’s in English and Japanese.  Yes, yes.  I bought it.  I figured if I took an interest in even a partially J-Pop type song maybe they’d look into trying to get more Japanese music in the store.  (The only ones I’ve been able to find are from Puffy Ami Yumi and I already own that cd.)  Also, I still have an absurd amount of iTunes gift certificates left from Christmas so I can buy according to my whims with a clear conscience.

It’s not bad.  All I really require from my pop music is a catchy tune with a beat I can have fun walking to.  This has both, I guess.  The lyrics are about what you’d expect - repetitive.  Even the ones you can’t understand.  :) 

Perhaps the Japanese version is in anticipation of her graphic novel coming out in April, which I am not going to be cynical about or make fun of.  (Shocked?)  However the plot may turn out, I do like what I’ve seen of the art so far.  It might be enough to make me buy it.  We’ll see.

 In the meantime, they actually put up a music video/gn preview.  Kind of neat, actually.

And I have another manga update, damnit!  I tidied my room a bit tonight and kept finding new manga every time I shifted a pile of books.  grr.

Platinum Garden 3
Twelve Reasons Why I Love Her  (a belated Christmas present that finally came in)
Bleach 17
Gals! 9 (second last volume)
Hayate the Combat Butler 2
Naruto 13
Free Collars Kingdom 1
Mushishi 1
Train + Train 1
Innocent W 2

Another fun purchase I made this week was The Cute Book by Aranzi Aronzo.  This is a really cute friggin’ book!  I mentioned it to a co-worker yesterday and she said her grandkids liked making crafts so she’d be interested in seeing it.  One look at the cover today and she was handing me $$ to buy it for her without even cracking it open.

It’s such an awesome book!  There are patterns to make little (cute) stuffed toys, like cats, squirrels, bunnies and sheep.  Towards the back of the book the patterns get a little darker - you can stitch together a kidnapper, alien or your very own bad guy.   The kidnapper is carrying a little white sack which makes him look more like a robber, but perhaps he kidnaps very small people.   Today I bought some felt on the way home and I’m going to make a little kitty first.  I will let you all know how it turns out.

I also wanted to get The Bad Book, but the wonderfully bright head office people at a certain unnamed, national Canadian bookstore chain apparently decided it was a graphic novel, because it has scenes of the figures talking to each other.  When it arrives in stores, staff can tell it’s a craft book.  I’m told there’s some sort of conflict about this.  What it means for me is that I’ve been to three different stores now that are supposed to have this book… but no one can find it.  Including my own store.  grr!

Well, I had a lovely day out, and my trip to the Silver Snail was semi-successful.  I didn't find the little DC action figures I was looking for (I just found out they're not being released until the end of the month, which explains the amount of confusion when I asked about them at the store), but DID get a Human Disguise Invader Zim figure.  Now I can build the house!  Yay! 

Now I just need the j-pop cd and I'll feel better about missing the convention.  I'm going to try to get to Anime Xtreme this week, which is where I got my Nami Tamaki cd at the last convention I went to… which was two years ago, I think.  I'll see if they sell cds in the store, I guess.  (They had this thing where if you bought three volumes of manga you'd get a free bag, which I wanted.  So, I bought two manga, one of which was the first Tramps Like Us volume that I had previously scorned, and asked if I could sub the cd for the third book.  And no, I've never used the bag.  But it was free with purchase, so I was compelled to buy more to get it.)

Yes, that's how I started reading Tramps Like Us.  I was padding my purchase to get a free bag so I bought something I didn't really want.  Now it's one of my go-without-food titles.  Go figure.

I had some feedback about some manga titles/volumes missing from my Not Yet Released page, which was lovely.  It also reminded me that I've had a huge list of updates I hadn't done yet.  Sooo… I spent an hour doing blog maintenance and… the freaking editor glitched on my save and I lost all my work.  Which is what happened the last time I tried this update, darn it, which is why it hadn't been done.  I only have so much energy.  So, I guess I'll try a different method next time.  I'm certainly not about to try again tonight.  sigh.  Should have finished up the review entry I'm working on instead I guess.

Off to bed. 

I'm in the process of downloading the first episode of the Ouran High School Host Club anime. I seem to be wanting to say awake until it's done, so what the heck, I might as well blog. I'm tired and it's 2:30 but I'm going to stick with the basics here, and try not to go off topic.

It was so lovely to go to the comic store on Friday since it's my first visit now that my 5-manga-a-week rule has expired. I was still good though, and only bought 8. I left Crimson Hero #2 and Kage Tora #1 behind. I'm still capable of being sensible after all.

I bought:

Almost Crying
Ghost Hunt #3
Aishiteruze Baby #1
MeruPuri #4 (last volume)
Ultra Cute #2
Tokyo Boys and Girls #4
Full Moon #5
Cafe Kichijouji de #2

Woot! It's done! I'm off to watch! More about all my new manga later, but in the meantime, check out the uber-cute plush Boo from Megatokyo. I soooo want one!