My Room is an Otaku Museum Part 3

Half a year later, I bring you all my 3rd revision to "My Room is an Otaku Museum" where once again my room has undergone reorganization to accommodate such a large collection. I returned from Japan 2 weeks ago with more stuff than ever and didn't have the space in my now-6-month-old glass cabinet for any of it.

Click here to see the loot.

For those of you unfamiliar with my older posts:
My Room is an Otaku Museum Part 1 (May 5, 2008 - One year ago!)
My Room is an Otaku Museum Part 2 (Oct. 6, 2008)


The top picture is the new bookcase and dresser unit I bought from IKEA. It's a dresser, a small bookcase, and a tall book case. I planned this arrangement out myself and made sure I got glass doors to go along with it. The glass is VITAL for my collection as my room collects more dust than is naturally possible. Since the installation of my first glass cabinet (seen in the bottom picture) I haven't had to dust anything in that cabinet. It makes all the difference.

If there are any questions, I'll address them in the comments section of this post. It's doubtful at the moment I'll be doing another one of these half a year from now as I don't have very much I plan on ordering. Maybe in a year though you'll see part 4.

I'd also like to extend a "thank you" to our beloved Danny Choo for recognizing my efforts to make myself poor by posting my loot over at his site. It's really helped me gain a lot of visitors.

See below for more detailed shots:

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Reminiscence of Japan

I'm back from Japan as you may or may not have noticed. I've actually been back almost 2 weeks but have failed to find the time and motivation to write a blog post about my trip. For those of you stumbling upon this, these are my previous blog posts regarding my trip:

Tokyo Arrival
Akihabara 2-Day Extravaganza (Including loot photos)
Ghibli Museum Outing
School Girls Meet the Gaijin (Girls finding out I'm a VOCALOID cosplayer)
To Kyoto and Back Again (Tourism and a trip to the Pokémon Center)
Washinomiya - Lucky Star Town
Kaito Explores Tokyo (Cosplaying in public!)
Kaito Explores Tokyo Part II (More cosplay...in Akihabara again)

See below for my reminiscence and photos of the best vacation ever:


Arcades were always fun for us. We went to one I'd say 2/3 of the nights we were in Japan. From the arcades by our hostel in Asakusa all the way to the big multi-floor game centers of Shibuya. I played beat games like Taiko and Beatmania of course...


I enjoyed being a tourist...here's me in Kyoto at Kiyomizu-dera temple.


Don't fall down. That's the floor of the Tokyo Tower observatory.


Food was consistently good. In this place we got to choose 5 varieties of meat/veggies on a stick and put it on hot coals ourselves. Other popular selections of food included ramen, Mos Burger, curry katsu, and more ramen...
Oh, don't forget we had Denny's about 5 times for breakfast. Japanese Denny's is simply amazing in my opinion.


One of the best parts - actually THE best part - would have to be dressing up as VOCALOID Kaito and running around Akihabara. Meeting all sorts of people who either knew who I was or found me interesting anyways. I found out that I'm more of an attention whore than I thought I could be: waving to random people I saw looking at me, stopping for photos with anyone who asked. Still, it was great.


Vending machines of all sorts of drinks...I'd say one of my favourite things about this country is that, by my estimation, there is about 50 vending machines per square kilometer in some places. This one was selling TouHou-themed tea in a can~


More TouHou stuff. None of it was for sale...they just like to tease us. TouHou has become more popular than it was when I was there last year, and anything TouHou-related is instantly extremely pricey or not for sale (but on display for some reason).


This is our 2-Day loot picture. After 2 days in Akihabara this is how much stuff there was between *mostly* Tyson and myself. There are a few books and stickers in this that belonged to Jon and Billy.




What kind of otaku would I be if I didn't visit otaku locations? Above can be seen Washinomiya Shrine (of Lucky Star fame), the Ghibli Museum, and the Pokémon Center~



I take some amount of satisfaction in the fact that when the biggest wooden structure in the world starts losing tiles, they'll be replacing them with what you see above. I drew the Konata and the "shoop-da-whoop".


Finally, I don't know how I did it, but this is my loot picture. I came home with THIS much stuff. $300 or so for friends, but most of the boxes there are for me...and are now on display. I spend this week assembling stuff from Ikea and organizing my room. I'll be posting about that tomorrow. So until then...

I had a fabulous trip. In fact, I wish I could still be there now. But boy Japan is expensive. Maybe I'll go back next year and do it all again. Did I mention that this is my third year doing it...and staying in the same area of Tokyo too?

This blog was actually founded a year ago for my last Japan trip. See my April 2008 posts for coverage of that escapade: April 2008 Archive

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Kaito Explores Tokyo Part II

A continuation of images from the last post: Kaito Explores Tokyo

The last post was a bit of a featurette on me exploring Tokyo in cosplay. I've got a continuation here now because the morning I was leaving I decided to do it ONE more time. I put on the costume and went right back to Akihabara for more cosplay antics! I even got to enjoy a maid café one more time before departure. The maid was European and spoke English to us, thankfully. We were also seated to some female Norwegian exchange students who seemed interested in my cosplay as well. Maid cafés can be quite expensive though...I paid about $15 to sit down and have a melon cream soda float.

See the rest of the images here:

This is the maid that was jumping up and down going, "Kaito! Kaito!" and wanted to get a picture. Really cute...


The above two are curious passersby who wanted to get a picture with me. The girls outside of KFC honestly stood there staring at me for 5 minutes while I was hanging around the colonel...when an old woman was passing by and took a picture of me (just because she found it interesting I suppose), the girls finally came over and got a picture as well.

This maid was out most of the day. I actually saw her quite a bit after this, waved to her and smiled.

These girls are a fond memory to me. I was heading into the store behind us, and they were heading in as well, but looking away from me. When I walked in front of them one of them saw me, and then tapped the others to take a look. One of them was very surprised and said, to my face, "Ah, Gaijin-da!"...which I found to be quite endearing because they all wanted a picture. That's nine girls you see...NINE. I still wonder how I managed that.



Of course, what kind of KAITO would I be if I didn't get an ice cream at first opportunity.


Of course I need a break some time...I went into an alley to get a drink and some fellow approached me asking for a picture...IN AN ALLEY. Like, wow.

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