Post by Falcarius on Mar 5, 2018 10:41:10 GMT -5
As some of you already know, last month I went on a trip to Japan with my sister and a friend of ours. It was lots of fun and we saw heaps of stuff... and of course, there were also some Zoids involved!
On day 1 (I'm counting the night we arrived as "day 0", since we didn't really do anything besides find our Airbnb accommodation and take a few photos of the lunar eclipse), we took a walk around Tengachaya (a suburb of Osaka) to see what we could find near where we were staying. It didn't take long to find the usual facilities: convenience store, post office, Buddhist temple, dollar store... We also looked around a larger supermarket or two, and discovered that Kabaya is still making mini models packaged with chewing gum. They were a series called "Honehone Zaurus" rather than Zoids (it's been quite a while since anyone made mini Zoids), but we bought a couple anyway - and promptly realised we couldn't build them because we didn't bring anything to cut sprues with.
On day 2, we took a train out to Kobe to see Kobe Oji Zoo and Kobe Animal Kingdom. The zoo had a good range of animals (including some classic Australian ones like kangaroos and koalas), but the Animal Kingdom was the real highlight: many of the animals were in large rooms with no fences or glass, so they were free to mingle with the visitors. You're even allowed to pat some of the more docile ones, like capybaras and giant tortoises. We also got to see a bird flight show, feed some seals, pat some very fluffy domestic animals in a mini petting zoo, and witness the mighty shoebill. We still had some spare time on the way back, so we decided to investigate a sign we'd seen at Kobe-Sannomiya Station leading to an "otome and BL store" called Honey Heart in Centre Plaza West. Sure enough, it was a store full of otome/BL books, games, drama CDs, doujins and so on... but the entire floor was full of otaku-type shops, including the well-known doujin store Toranoana (where I bought Touhou 6), a secondhand games store (where I bought a couple of old Zoids games), and wall after wall of gacha machines. There was also a model store called Accel Work, but it seemed to be mostly cars and planes rather than Gundams and Zoids (and it also looked closed). Still, we were pretty satisfied with the unexpected discovery!
Day 3, on the other hand, was when we were fully expecting to buy merch. We were visiting Nipponbashi (the Osaka equivalent of Akihabara), and I'd been tipped off about a couple of good model stores in advance. Sure enough, Hobbyland Pochi had a small-ish but solid range of secondhand Zoids, including a couple of Memorial Boxes, a Command Wolf Midnight Blue, a Rayse Tiger (which I bought), a built Deathpion, and an HMM Rev Rapter garage kit. We stopped in at a maid café for lunch (where I was rather surprised to hear Bad Apple amongst the background music) before checking out Volks, which had various HMMs (including Gojulas The Ogre, Death Stinger, and the Berserk Führer that I bought), a couple of MSS and ZA kits, the Mr. Color Zoids-themed paint, and a display case of built Zoids (no photos allowed, sadly, but it included a greenish-gold Saber Tiger repaint and lots of pretty probably-unpainted kits). We then moved on to another secondhand store called Jungle, which had an impressive range of Zoids including NJR Ultra Saurus, RCZ King Gojulas, Yamato Shield Liger, HMM Storm Sworder Ala Barone Ver. and a gold chrome Blade Liger... but unfortunately we were running out of cash (and bag space) by that point, so we didn't get anything. We finished off a busy day by seeing as much of Osaka Castle as we could before it closed, watching a performance showcase at Yamamoto Noh Theatre, and walking through some impressive illuminations at Namba Parks shopping mall, before getting some much-needed sleep.
For days 4 and 5, we got a two-day Keihan rail pass and went sightseeing in Kyoto. On day 4 we visited Kinkaku-ji (a temple coated in gold leaf), Nijo-jo (a castle with wall paintings and bird-like squeaking floors) and Nishiki Market (a street full of food stalls and other shops), but decided it was getting too late to reach our other destinations, so we stopped in at a restaurant called Musoshin Gion for some ramen before heading back. On day 5 we took a cable car up to Iwashimizu Hachiman-gu shrine, then visited Kiyomizu-dera Temple (although the famous viewing platform was under renovations) and Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine (unfortunately we didn't make it to the top because it was getting dark, but we did go through plenty of torii gates). My sister loves foxes, so she got quite a few souvenirs in the markets near Fushimi Inari (we also found a small model store, but they didn't appear to have any Zoids). On the way back, we made use of our free rail pass to stop off for some more illuminations (which turned out to be closed that day) and a secondhand bookstore called Bookoff... which turned out to have shut down just a couple of days earlier. Not to be deterred, we tracked down another Bookoff outlet a couple of stations further on, and this one was open. As I expected, I couldn't find any Zoids stuff, but I did stumble across a manga adaptation of an obscure visual novel I'd read recently, so I grabbed that.
On day 6, we got up early to catch a flight from Osaka to Tokyo. There were a few specific locations we wanted to see in Tokyo, starting with the "scramble crossing" at Shibuya (which turned out to have a manga store in one corner) and followed by a visit to Japari Café, an official Kemono Friends-themed café that will only be open until this spring. Next we visited Animal Room Ikemofu, an animal café with some unusual animals to pat, including hedgehogs, prairie dogs, chinchillas and baby sugar gliders. Unfortunately the fennec fox (the biggest reason my sister wanted to visit) had to stay in its cage because it was in heat, but we still got to see it washing itself and generally being cute. Our next stop was a samurai museum, but it was more expensive than we were expecting and it was getting late, so we decided to skip it and head straight for Ninja Akasaka, a very impressive ninja-themed restaurant where we had an 11-course meal and learned some secret ninja techniques. Despite a couple of mishaps afterwards, we eventually made it to a traditional hostel called Guest House Toco where we crashed for the night.
We had some time before our flight back on day 7, so we took some photos of the Toco garden and visited Henn na Hotel (literally "Weird Hotel") to see the robotic dinosaur receptionists. However, we were getting low on cash again, and the post office (our usual ATM location) was closed by the time we got back to Osaka, so we had to make a detour to another post office that stayed open for longer. At that point, we realised that our booking for the next location was much sooner than we thought, so we rushed back to the train station so we could make it to our next stop: the Fukuro no Mise owl café! They had a variety of owls that you could stroke or put on your arms, shoulders or head (depending on size). For those who have watched Kemono Friends, they had both Northern White-Faced Owls (very small) and Eurasian Eagle Owls (very big) - Kemono Friends is also why I was so interested in the shoebills at Kobe Animal Kingdom. For dinner, we headed over to Dotonbori to check out the street stalls and billboards. Sadly the queue for melon-pan ice cream was too long for us to get some as dessert, so instead we decided to investigate a sign for "honey toast" nearby - only to discover that the place selling it was more of a sports bar than a café. Undeterred, we went straight for the dessert menu and ordered an impressive slab of honey toast, which (despite the staff's reaction) was easily enough for all three of us.
On day 8, we headed out to Nara Park to see (and feed) the deer... and then, for the first time on the trip (not counting accidents in Tokyo), we split up. The others stayed in Nara for most of the day to see more deer and visit more landmarks, including Kasuga Taisha shrine, Kofuku-ji temple and the remains of Heijo Palace. Meanwhile, I took a train out into the middle of nowhere (by which I mean Kizugawa) to visit the Kansai branch of the National Diet Library. It's an impressive building, but I wasn't there to sightsee... I was researching Zoids, of course! As long as you're over 18 and have some ID (preferably a passport), anyone can sign up for a 3-year membership card to use the library as much as you want for free. Their selection of Zoid books seemed rather limited from the quick catalogue search I tried, but what I was really there for was the "School Grade Magazines" (a collection of monthly magazines named Grade 1 to Grade 6, whose articles provided the basis for the OJR Battle Story books). The physical magazines are stored in Tokyo, but you can use the library computers to view high-quality scans of every issue up to the end of 2000 - and with six magazines running in parallel, that's a lot of issues. I'd been planning to head back early-ish to meet up with the others, but I ended up staying until closing time (6pm) and still didn't get through nearly as much as I would have liked. They also offer a printing service (14 yen for greyscale A4 or 46 yen for colour, but only to be used for "personal reference"), so I printed off 8 chapters of old Zoids manga that never made it into books of their own (I would have printed more, but I ran out of time). While I made my way back to Osaka, the others (who were already back by now) checked out the Mandarake store in Umeda, where they found a smallish selection of Zoids including OJR Gungyalado, Rez Tiger and Deadborder. They picked up a Guntiger and a Shellkarn for 1000 yen each before the store closed, and we met up at the train station nearby to go to Rock Star reptile café for dinner (and yet more animal handling). This time we got to hold corn snakes, iguanas, giant tegu lizards and tarantulas, and also saw chameleons, scorpions and even a bat, as well as some smaller reptiles that were for sale as pets. We nearly ran out of cash yet again, but we discovered that the ATMs at 7-Elevens would accept our Cash Passport cards, and seemed to have lower fees than the post office ones.
Our first scheduled stop for day 9 was the Nanko bird sanctuary, but we'd had a slow start and weren't sure if we'd see much there anyway, so we decided to skip it and head straight for Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan. We spent a while looking around Tempozan Marketplace next door, but decided the Legoland Discovery Centre was a bit too expensive, and were disappointed when "Mecha Tempozan" turned out to be a gaming arcade and nothing to do with giant robots. The aquarium itself was much more exciting, though, containing whale sharks, hammerheads, sunfish, spider crabs, and an exhibit full of fish with strange faces. We stayed there all afternoon so that we could watch the penguins and seals being fed, then went outside to see the sunset and yet more illuminations. We didn't have anything else planned for the day, so we decided to check out the second-last location on our list of prospective Zoids shops: the Mandarake "Grand Chaos" store. (Unfortunately we didn't get a good opportunity to visit the last and most exciting store, Samurai Toys, because it was too far away from everything else.) This Mandarake outlet had a decent range of Zoids, including Shieldy and Geno Blox, the silver and gold Matrix Blox, the white CP-04, the Custom Blox 5-pack and most of the KFMs, but there wasn't anything cheap that we were particularly interested in, so I didn't end up buying anything (except for volume 2 of the Higurashi manga, so I could complete the first arc).
On day 10, it was time to split up again. The others had been planning to go to some hot springs, but it was raining heavily and they weren't in the best condition for it, so they decided to head back to Nipponbashi for some more shopping (including a look at the Kotobukiya store, which we'd missed the first time round). Meanwhile, I'd organised something special... a visit to Sanshiki, a Japanese Zoider with possibly the biggest collection of Zoids lore in the world! Originally I was just planning to chat a little and look through his collection of old magazine articles, but Sanshiki thought to invite four other Zoiders: legendary customiser Muscle Zoid Bass, legendary photographer Fontana , legendary crab collector Siokara, and... someone whose name I didn't quite catch >_> I was a bit worried that my Japanese skills might not be good enough for proper conversations, but I think it went pretty well. We discussed a wide range of topics, including the recent Fangz/Ghost Zoid revelations, the Hasbro rarities, the Zoids games that made it overseas, our successes at accessing the recent mobile games, the changes to the Japanese version of Fuzors (I showed him Hanyoutai's comparisons and noticed the site was already in his history
), and the origins of early Zoids (the first three windups were definitely US-first and everything from 1984 onwards was definitely Japan-first, but Bigasauru, Mammoth, Gurantula and Aquadon are still unconfirmed). Zoid Bass brought along a few of his customs, which were quite a sight to behold - although pieces kept falling off every time he moved them around, which was a little alarming. My camera had the flash turned off, so my photos aren't very good, but Fontana got some very pretty ones using his own coat as a backdrop. I took the opportunity to show Zoid Bass Maethius's site, and he showed me some mini LED fishing lights (probably these) which he uses for CPC effects. Sanshiki also had an impressive collection of kits, including a Gustav that he'd wired up as a USB music player and was hoping to transform into a functional NES console! Needless to say, I spent quite a bit of time browsing his magazine cutouts (although a single day was nowhere near enough to see everything), and was surprised to discover that I own a few Zoids books that he doesn't (such as the painfully rare and expensive History of Zoids) and even a couple of items he'd never heard of (the magazine-bonus Cyberdrive walkthrough and the Italian anime opening). Meanwhile, among his items that I'd never seen before were an alternate version of Battle Story 2 (with Tomy branding instead of Shogakukan, possibly an event giveaway like the Tomy-branded version of Zoids Book 2002) and a thick folder of Concept Art documents that appeared to be internal Takara Tomy information! As thanks for the meetup, I gave him a USB containing all the Bonds of Steel files I managed to download back in 2014, and he gave me a copy of his latest doujinshi, "Zoids Battle Research 3" (unfortunately he didn't have any spare copies of volumes 1 and 2), along with an issue of Coro Coro from 1988, a couple of Official Fan Book EX volumes I was missing, a poster and some NJR catalogues (which it turns out I already had, but never mind). He also offered everyone some Iron Kong kites, but I pointed out I already had some! I returned home with a much heavier bag and several new bits of Zoids knowledge, but I'll probably put that information in a separate post to avoid making this one even longer than it already is.
Finally, day 11 was our checkout day... but we still had heaps of time before our flight left that evening and one more destination on our list, so we dropped off our bags in a couple of coin lockers and headed to Kyocera Dome Osaka for the winter 2018 World Hobby Fair. To be honest, it was a little disappointing, since it was clearly aimed at younger kids and we don't follow most of the series that were being advertised (such as Pokémon, Beyblade, Yo-kai Watch and Splatoon) - and there wasn't even a hint of Zoids Wild, since the rumours didn't start circulating until a couple of days later. My sister does like Detective Conan, though, so we picked up the first volume of a spinoff manga called Hannin no Hanzawa-san. On the way out, we had a look at the "Hug Museum" next door, but it was just a natural gas museum rather than anything amusing. Without much left to do, we grabbed a crêpe and some KFC for lunch at the nearby shopping centre before heading to the airport a couple of hours early. It was an anticlimactic ending to the trip, but we'd done so much over the last two weeks that we were pretty tired... and the flight times didn't help, as we landed in Australia (and had to go through customs) at about 4 am, and then had to catch a domestic flight at 9 am. Still, it was a great trip, and I'd love to go back some day (if I can afford it)!
On day 1 (I'm counting the night we arrived as "day 0", since we didn't really do anything besides find our Airbnb accommodation and take a few photos of the lunar eclipse), we took a walk around Tengachaya (a suburb of Osaka) to see what we could find near where we were staying. It didn't take long to find the usual facilities: convenience store, post office, Buddhist temple, dollar store... We also looked around a larger supermarket or two, and discovered that Kabaya is still making mini models packaged with chewing gum. They were a series called "Honehone Zaurus" rather than Zoids (it's been quite a while since anyone made mini Zoids), but we bought a couple anyway - and promptly realised we couldn't build them because we didn't bring anything to cut sprues with.
On day 2, we took a train out to Kobe to see Kobe Oji Zoo and Kobe Animal Kingdom. The zoo had a good range of animals (including some classic Australian ones like kangaroos and koalas), but the Animal Kingdom was the real highlight: many of the animals were in large rooms with no fences or glass, so they were free to mingle with the visitors. You're even allowed to pat some of the more docile ones, like capybaras and giant tortoises. We also got to see a bird flight show, feed some seals, pat some very fluffy domestic animals in a mini petting zoo, and witness the mighty shoebill. We still had some spare time on the way back, so we decided to investigate a sign we'd seen at Kobe-Sannomiya Station leading to an "otome and BL store" called Honey Heart in Centre Plaza West. Sure enough, it was a store full of otome/BL books, games, drama CDs, doujins and so on... but the entire floor was full of otaku-type shops, including the well-known doujin store Toranoana (where I bought Touhou 6), a secondhand games store (where I bought a couple of old Zoids games), and wall after wall of gacha machines. There was also a model store called Accel Work, but it seemed to be mostly cars and planes rather than Gundams and Zoids (and it also looked closed). Still, we were pretty satisfied with the unexpected discovery!
Day 3, on the other hand, was when we were fully expecting to buy merch. We were visiting Nipponbashi (the Osaka equivalent of Akihabara), and I'd been tipped off about a couple of good model stores in advance. Sure enough, Hobbyland Pochi had a small-ish but solid range of secondhand Zoids, including a couple of Memorial Boxes, a Command Wolf Midnight Blue, a Rayse Tiger (which I bought), a built Deathpion, and an HMM Rev Rapter garage kit. We stopped in at a maid café for lunch (where I was rather surprised to hear Bad Apple amongst the background music) before checking out Volks, which had various HMMs (including Gojulas The Ogre, Death Stinger, and the Berserk Führer that I bought), a couple of MSS and ZA kits, the Mr. Color Zoids-themed paint, and a display case of built Zoids (no photos allowed, sadly, but it included a greenish-gold Saber Tiger repaint and lots of pretty probably-unpainted kits). We then moved on to another secondhand store called Jungle, which had an impressive range of Zoids including NJR Ultra Saurus, RCZ King Gojulas, Yamato Shield Liger, HMM Storm Sworder Ala Barone Ver. and a gold chrome Blade Liger... but unfortunately we were running out of cash (and bag space) by that point, so we didn't get anything. We finished off a busy day by seeing as much of Osaka Castle as we could before it closed, watching a performance showcase at Yamamoto Noh Theatre, and walking through some impressive illuminations at Namba Parks shopping mall, before getting some much-needed sleep.
For days 4 and 5, we got a two-day Keihan rail pass and went sightseeing in Kyoto. On day 4 we visited Kinkaku-ji (a temple coated in gold leaf), Nijo-jo (a castle with wall paintings and bird-like squeaking floors) and Nishiki Market (a street full of food stalls and other shops), but decided it was getting too late to reach our other destinations, so we stopped in at a restaurant called Musoshin Gion for some ramen before heading back. On day 5 we took a cable car up to Iwashimizu Hachiman-gu shrine, then visited Kiyomizu-dera Temple (although the famous viewing platform was under renovations) and Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine (unfortunately we didn't make it to the top because it was getting dark, but we did go through plenty of torii gates). My sister loves foxes, so she got quite a few souvenirs in the markets near Fushimi Inari (we also found a small model store, but they didn't appear to have any Zoids). On the way back, we made use of our free rail pass to stop off for some more illuminations (which turned out to be closed that day) and a secondhand bookstore called Bookoff... which turned out to have shut down just a couple of days earlier. Not to be deterred, we tracked down another Bookoff outlet a couple of stations further on, and this one was open. As I expected, I couldn't find any Zoids stuff, but I did stumble across a manga adaptation of an obscure visual novel I'd read recently, so I grabbed that.
On day 6, we got up early to catch a flight from Osaka to Tokyo. There were a few specific locations we wanted to see in Tokyo, starting with the "scramble crossing" at Shibuya (which turned out to have a manga store in one corner) and followed by a visit to Japari Café, an official Kemono Friends-themed café that will only be open until this spring. Next we visited Animal Room Ikemofu, an animal café with some unusual animals to pat, including hedgehogs, prairie dogs, chinchillas and baby sugar gliders. Unfortunately the fennec fox (the biggest reason my sister wanted to visit) had to stay in its cage because it was in heat, but we still got to see it washing itself and generally being cute. Our next stop was a samurai museum, but it was more expensive than we were expecting and it was getting late, so we decided to skip it and head straight for Ninja Akasaka, a very impressive ninja-themed restaurant where we had an 11-course meal and learned some secret ninja techniques. Despite a couple of mishaps afterwards, we eventually made it to a traditional hostel called Guest House Toco where we crashed for the night.
We had some time before our flight back on day 7, so we took some photos of the Toco garden and visited Henn na Hotel (literally "Weird Hotel") to see the robotic dinosaur receptionists. However, we were getting low on cash again, and the post office (our usual ATM location) was closed by the time we got back to Osaka, so we had to make a detour to another post office that stayed open for longer. At that point, we realised that our booking for the next location was much sooner than we thought, so we rushed back to the train station so we could make it to our next stop: the Fukuro no Mise owl café! They had a variety of owls that you could stroke or put on your arms, shoulders or head (depending on size). For those who have watched Kemono Friends, they had both Northern White-Faced Owls (very small) and Eurasian Eagle Owls (very big) - Kemono Friends is also why I was so interested in the shoebills at Kobe Animal Kingdom. For dinner, we headed over to Dotonbori to check out the street stalls and billboards. Sadly the queue for melon-pan ice cream was too long for us to get some as dessert, so instead we decided to investigate a sign for "honey toast" nearby - only to discover that the place selling it was more of a sports bar than a café. Undeterred, we went straight for the dessert menu and ordered an impressive slab of honey toast, which (despite the staff's reaction) was easily enough for all three of us.
On day 8, we headed out to Nara Park to see (and feed) the deer... and then, for the first time on the trip (not counting accidents in Tokyo), we split up. The others stayed in Nara for most of the day to see more deer and visit more landmarks, including Kasuga Taisha shrine, Kofuku-ji temple and the remains of Heijo Palace. Meanwhile, I took a train out into the middle of nowhere (by which I mean Kizugawa) to visit the Kansai branch of the National Diet Library. It's an impressive building, but I wasn't there to sightsee... I was researching Zoids, of course! As long as you're over 18 and have some ID (preferably a passport), anyone can sign up for a 3-year membership card to use the library as much as you want for free. Their selection of Zoid books seemed rather limited from the quick catalogue search I tried, but what I was really there for was the "School Grade Magazines" (a collection of monthly magazines named Grade 1 to Grade 6, whose articles provided the basis for the OJR Battle Story books). The physical magazines are stored in Tokyo, but you can use the library computers to view high-quality scans of every issue up to the end of 2000 - and with six magazines running in parallel, that's a lot of issues. I'd been planning to head back early-ish to meet up with the others, but I ended up staying until closing time (6pm) and still didn't get through nearly as much as I would have liked. They also offer a printing service (14 yen for greyscale A4 or 46 yen for colour, but only to be used for "personal reference"), so I printed off 8 chapters of old Zoids manga that never made it into books of their own (I would have printed more, but I ran out of time). While I made my way back to Osaka, the others (who were already back by now) checked out the Mandarake store in Umeda, where they found a smallish selection of Zoids including OJR Gungyalado, Rez Tiger and Deadborder. They picked up a Guntiger and a Shellkarn for 1000 yen each before the store closed, and we met up at the train station nearby to go to Rock Star reptile café for dinner (and yet more animal handling). This time we got to hold corn snakes, iguanas, giant tegu lizards and tarantulas, and also saw chameleons, scorpions and even a bat, as well as some smaller reptiles that were for sale as pets. We nearly ran out of cash yet again, but we discovered that the ATMs at 7-Elevens would accept our Cash Passport cards, and seemed to have lower fees than the post office ones.
Our first scheduled stop for day 9 was the Nanko bird sanctuary, but we'd had a slow start and weren't sure if we'd see much there anyway, so we decided to skip it and head straight for Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan. We spent a while looking around Tempozan Marketplace next door, but decided the Legoland Discovery Centre was a bit too expensive, and were disappointed when "Mecha Tempozan" turned out to be a gaming arcade and nothing to do with giant robots. The aquarium itself was much more exciting, though, containing whale sharks, hammerheads, sunfish, spider crabs, and an exhibit full of fish with strange faces. We stayed there all afternoon so that we could watch the penguins and seals being fed, then went outside to see the sunset and yet more illuminations. We didn't have anything else planned for the day, so we decided to check out the second-last location on our list of prospective Zoids shops: the Mandarake "Grand Chaos" store. (Unfortunately we didn't get a good opportunity to visit the last and most exciting store, Samurai Toys, because it was too far away from everything else.) This Mandarake outlet had a decent range of Zoids, including Shieldy and Geno Blox, the silver and gold Matrix Blox, the white CP-04, the Custom Blox 5-pack and most of the KFMs, but there wasn't anything cheap that we were particularly interested in, so I didn't end up buying anything (except for volume 2 of the Higurashi manga, so I could complete the first arc).
On day 10, it was time to split up again. The others had been planning to go to some hot springs, but it was raining heavily and they weren't in the best condition for it, so they decided to head back to Nipponbashi for some more shopping (including a look at the Kotobukiya store, which we'd missed the first time round). Meanwhile, I'd organised something special... a visit to Sanshiki, a Japanese Zoider with possibly the biggest collection of Zoids lore in the world! Originally I was just planning to chat a little and look through his collection of old magazine articles, but Sanshiki thought to invite four other Zoiders: legendary customiser Muscle Zoid Bass, legendary photographer Fontana , legendary crab collector Siokara, and... someone whose name I didn't quite catch >_> I was a bit worried that my Japanese skills might not be good enough for proper conversations, but I think it went pretty well. We discussed a wide range of topics, including the recent Fangz/Ghost Zoid revelations, the Hasbro rarities, the Zoids games that made it overseas, our successes at accessing the recent mobile games, the changes to the Japanese version of Fuzors (I showed him Hanyoutai's comparisons and noticed the site was already in his history
), and the origins of early Zoids (the first three windups were definitely US-first and everything from 1984 onwards was definitely Japan-first, but Bigasauru, Mammoth, Gurantula and Aquadon are still unconfirmed). Zoid Bass brought along a few of his customs, which were quite a sight to behold - although pieces kept falling off every time he moved them around, which was a little alarming. My camera had the flash turned off, so my photos aren't very good, but Fontana got some very pretty ones using his own coat as a backdrop. I took the opportunity to show Zoid Bass Maethius's site, and he showed me some mini LED fishing lights (probably these) which he uses for CPC effects. Sanshiki also had an impressive collection of kits, including a Gustav that he'd wired up as a USB music player and was hoping to transform into a functional NES console! Needless to say, I spent quite a bit of time browsing his magazine cutouts (although a single day was nowhere near enough to see everything), and was surprised to discover that I own a few Zoids books that he doesn't (such as the painfully rare and expensive History of Zoids) and even a couple of items he'd never heard of (the magazine-bonus Cyberdrive walkthrough and the Italian anime opening). Meanwhile, among his items that I'd never seen before were an alternate version of Battle Story 2 (with Tomy branding instead of Shogakukan, possibly an event giveaway like the Tomy-branded version of Zoids Book 2002) and a thick folder of Concept Art documents that appeared to be internal Takara Tomy information! As thanks for the meetup, I gave him a USB containing all the Bonds of Steel files I managed to download back in 2014, and he gave me a copy of his latest doujinshi, "Zoids Battle Research 3" (unfortunately he didn't have any spare copies of volumes 1 and 2), along with an issue of Coro Coro from 1988, a couple of Official Fan Book EX volumes I was missing, a poster and some NJR catalogues (which it turns out I already had, but never mind). He also offered everyone some Iron Kong kites, but I pointed out I already had some! I returned home with a much heavier bag and several new bits of Zoids knowledge, but I'll probably put that information in a separate post to avoid making this one even longer than it already is.Finally, day 11 was our checkout day... but we still had heaps of time before our flight left that evening and one more destination on our list, so we dropped off our bags in a couple of coin lockers and headed to Kyocera Dome Osaka for the winter 2018 World Hobby Fair. To be honest, it was a little disappointing, since it was clearly aimed at younger kids and we don't follow most of the series that were being advertised (such as Pokémon, Beyblade, Yo-kai Watch and Splatoon) - and there wasn't even a hint of Zoids Wild, since the rumours didn't start circulating until a couple of days later. My sister does like Detective Conan, though, so we picked up the first volume of a spinoff manga called Hannin no Hanzawa-san. On the way out, we had a look at the "Hug Museum" next door, but it was just a natural gas museum rather than anything amusing. Without much left to do, we grabbed a crêpe and some KFC for lunch at the nearby shopping centre before heading to the airport a couple of hours early. It was an anticlimactic ending to the trip, but we'd done so much over the last two weeks that we were pretty tired... and the flight times didn't help, as we landed in Australia (and had to go through customs) at about 4 am, and then had to catch a domestic flight at 9 am. Still, it was a great trip, and I'd love to go back some day (if I can afford it)!
