Well it’s been over a year since my Japan trip. “I’ll blog daily!” I thought. I didn’t take into account just how tired I’d be from jetlag and a whole ton of walking that we were doing daily. Or just how often I’d get pissed drinking Strong Zero, a cheeky canned tipple sold in convenience stores (for American readers, pissed is a term we Brits use to mean drunk). Anyway, a year on, I’ll finally finish this post from notes I made during my trip.
Day 2! Ueno Park and Nakano Broadway!
I woke up stupidly early, as seems to be the norm for foreigners who have just arrived in Japan. Jade managed to sleep a little longer than me, whilst I watched Japanese TV in the hotel and tried to work out what was being said. The thing about Japanese TV is it’s very “reactionary”. In the show I was watching, some woman went to a noodle bar on a waterfront, and it was evidently the best meal that had ever been produced anywhere on the planet, judging by her enthusiastic approving noises. Japanese people tend to be overly enthusiastic when it comes to food, regularly declaring things to be “oishii” which means “tasty” or “delicious”. However they are such a polite bunch, that as a Brit, I’m not sure if it’s said with much sincerity. We as a nation are quite the opposite, in the sense that in my experience, we act incredibly nonchalant regardless of the food quality. We’ll say “that was alright wasn’t it?” if we enjoyed a meal out. If something is well and truly fucking abysmal, we might say “Well, that wasn’t the best”. So I can’t judge Japan harshly for their overly enthusiastic attitude towards mediocre meals. However, I can happily say that there wasn’t much food in Japan I disliked, and a year later, I’m still missing certain food and drinks that I had over there.
We had plans to visit Nakano Broadway on our first full day in Tokyo. However something a little different in Japan is that many stores don’t open until around midday. If you’re not a morning person and work in retail, I imagine this is quite a blessing, but if you’re trying to catch a specific shop for something just before work, you’re probably shit out of luck. But most stores are open later than here in the UK. Everything here seems to shut down at 5pm. But Japan, or at least Tokyo, stores were open until at least 8pm at night. Having a few hours to kill before Nakano Broadway opened, we had our complimentary breakfast at the hotel before heading out to the train station to visit Ueno Park. But first I want to talk about breakfast.
I don’t know what divine secrets or extraterrestrial methods have been given to the Japanese for them to utilise in the cooking of eggs, but Japanese eggs are insanely good. I can’t remember my previous post, if I’d mentioned the egg sandwiches in the convenience stores, which had a bit of a legendary reputation. Well they were alright, but they paled in comparison to the eggs available at breakfast time.
The presentation isn’t the best as it’s served in a disposable plastic tray (Japan seemingly love their single use plastics. They even have bananas in the store wrapped in plastic, as noone seems to have told them that bananas already come pre-wrapped off the tree). Also, as it was a buffet, it was self service. I went for the eggs, some little sausages which I think were chicken, and some sweet little bread-like things. But the eggs! Oh my god the eggs, the scrambled eggs! They were wetter that scrambled eggs in the UK- a sort of macaroni cheese consistency, and they were heavenly! I’ve spent the past year in my special egg laboratory trying to replicate the eggs I had in Japan, and I’ve really come close to some breakthroughs a few times, using Japanese egg scrambling methods. I wish I’d asked the bloody hotel how to make them as it would’ve saved me a lot of time.
It was actually on my friend James’s suggestion we go to Ueno Park, as it was prime time to see Japanese cherry blossoms which were blooming that week. Cherry blossoms (sakura) in Japan don’t last for long, so there is a culture built around enjoying them whilst they are here. We set off for the train station in Kanda, in the district of Tokyo that we were staying, and I bought a bottle of Pocari Sweat to drink from a vending machine. I’m still not entirely sure what a Pocari is, or how exactly the Japanese are extracting sweat from these unidentified beings. But the end result is a pleasant beverage which tasted slightly fruity. Google suggests it tastes like grapefruit, and if it did, it certainly wasn’t as bitter as grapefruit usually tastes.
Anyway, we were off to Ueno Park!
It didn’t take long on the train to get to Ueno Park. It must’ve been a good idea going to Ueno Park on this warm spring day, as it seemed like every other resident of Japan also had the same idea. We hadn’t realised that the day was actually a public holiday, so families had all taken themselves off to sit on blankets to drink beer and saké under the blooming blossoms. It was barely 10am and people were cracking open cans of beer in the park. I’d truly found my people!
Even on the way into the park you could tell it was going to be utterly rammed.
The thing is though, despite it being busy, for the most part, all the Japanese people we encountered were very spatially aware. Perhaps it was down to them still being in the frame of mind that Covid-19 was a real threat, as the country hadn’t been opened up again for very long at that point, whereas us Western countries had fallen back into the usual old pre-pandemic practices, doing things like licking door handles and playing spit tennis. But Japan, everyone wore masks still in public, and everyone seemed to keep their distance if it was possible.
One thing I noticed pretty quickly whilst walking around the park was all the little differences between the UK and Japan. I text my friend residing in Japan to tell him that the crows sound different over there. He told me I was mad. But they absolutely sounded different! When you’re aware of a specific sound in your country, you can easily pickup on differences, and these crows were definitely different. There was also a small insect I’d never seen before, crawling up my sleeve at one point. I’m sure that even if the muggy heat and the many Japanese faces surrounding me weren’t something of a clue, I’d have been able to tell I wasn’t in the UK just because of that bug.
Ueno was very beautiful, with a large pond almost like a mirror, which had Koi fish swimming around in it. There was also a little temple which we’d have spent more time at if it wasn’t insanely busy. A little further on in the park, I found what seemed to be Japan’s version of a car boot sale!
I was eyeing up a battered looking Bandai Wonderswan, a video game console released in the late ’90s exclusively to Japan. It was only cheap, but I didn’t need to be buying stuff so early in the day before our trip to Nakano Broadway! I did find it funny, in the UK, you often find car boot sales on Bank Holiday Mondays, and it seems Japan does similar on their national holiday.
I didn’t buy any retro consoles but I did buy Takoyaki from a foodstand!
Takoyaki is octopus, fried in batter and topped with bonito flakes, mayonnaise and Okonomiyaki sauce. It’s utterly delicious, and my advice to anyone who eats fish yet has reservations about eating an octopus, you should probably dismiss those reservations and try Takoyaki. I tried it in Yo Sushi here in the UK, and was initially hesitant owing to the fact the octopus is basically aquatic alien. But it was so tasty, even coming from a chain restaurant. So to try it in Japan was high on my list of things I wanted to do, and I got to do it on my first full day in Tokyo! I burnt my mouth on it, which seems to be the done thing whenever I eat Takoyaki. Anyway, after Jade bought a sakura flavour ice cream, it was time for a short train ride to Nakano Broadway!
Nakano Broadway was high up on my list of places I wanted to visit whilst in Japan. Essentially, Nakano is a large shopping mall which dates back to the 1960s, and since the 1980s it’s been a home to numerous Mandarake stores, each themed around a different thing, from manga, movie posters, vintage soft vinyl toys, keshi (small rubber minifigures like M.U.S.C.L.E and Monster in my Pocket) and even Western toys. There’s also tons of other shops in their selling all sorts of goodness.
On the way into the main shopping centre the walkway is lined with all sorts of shops, pet stores with the cutest puppies, newsagents, gashapon stores (entire stores filled with capsule toy machines). But one of my favourite places was a bakery near the entrance, which sold a lot of European style stuff, bread, cakes and pastries.
I ate something that translation apps told me was “German bread”. It was almost like a quiche containing potatoes and sausage. It was amazing and I wish I had at least found a proper name for it so I could try to replicate it back here. The few Germans I’ve spoken to since then haven’t been able to help a great deal. If you’re German and can help identify what that heavenly food was, give me a comment or a message. I miss that delightful, potatoey goodness.
After lunch, we made our way into the main centre of Nakano. I can’t remember exactly how many floors there are (at least six) but they all had tons and tons of shops full of vintage toys, robots, Godzilla, Ultraman monsters, art toys, obscure toylines from obscure Japanese TV shows, anime and posters. It was honestly unbelievable. I’d never had and never will ever find a set of retail stores that felt so tailored to my interests! Over the past decade, I really fell in love with vintage Japanese cinema. (I’d watched Kurosawa movies when much younger due to their having inspired George Lucas with Star Wars, but in the past decade I’d been discovering Japanese Kaiju movies. With my love of American sci-fi/horror B-movies, this seemed a natural extention of that genre, with both giant monsters being prevalent in films from both countries.
Subsequently, I dove into series like Toho’s Showa-era “Godzilla-verse” movies, as well as Toho’s rival studio Daiei and their answer to Godzilla- Gamera the giant turtle! I’d also spent a lot of time binging the Ultraman shows over the pandemic, and trying to remember the names of every “monster of the week”. So I was ready to be let loose in stores dedicated to all this amazing monster-based goodness!
Here’s a few pics of cabinets of various monster toys:
As slightly underwhelming as Akihibara had been, Nakano Broadway more than lived up to expectations! It was one of my favourite retail experiences I’d ever had! The hours flew by as we made our way around each colourful store, lured in by the colours of keshi, or detailed looking Godzilla monster statues.
One of the coolest was the Henya Mandarake, selling only the rarest, oldest most expensive collectibles and toys, mostly from the ’60s and ’70s.
Although there were some noteable gems as soon as you stepped into the store through the red archway, there wasn’t really anything for me. As cool as it would be to be able to drop £300-500 on some vintage robots or monster toys, I had for the past few years been picking up modern soft vinyl reproductions of classic kaiju toys. Much more affordable than original toys (but still, by no means a cheap endeavour!). Nakano had this kind of things in spades!
I spotted something in the window of one shop, something I knew my pal Tom from Pizarro’s Pieces had been looking for.
A colourful, soft vinyl 8″ version of Gorgo, a giant monster from a British film of the same name from 1961! The film is fun, a bit slow in places, and undeniably trying to cash in on Godzilla’a popularity. But it has more of a “sheen” to it than some of the other monster movies of the time, definitely feeling a little better produced.
Anyway, this toy Gorgo was originally released by M1号 in 2002, and is just one of three of a set of toys based on giant monsters from foreign (non-Japanese) movies, the others being Reptilicus from the Danish 1961 movie of the same name, and the Ratbat Spider from 1959’s Angry Red Planet.
I probably should just do a post on this site about sofubi (soft vinyl toys) one day as they’re an interesting aspect of the toy world. Despite their often simple designs, they can command a high price, and this Gorgo was no exception (approximately £150). But it did come with a little toy version of it’s offspring as well. I couldn’t actually get hold of Tom to see if he wanted it due to the time difference, although I did try. Ultimately, he did want it and I ended up going back for it a day or so later.
But what about my haul? What treasures did I get? Unurprisingly, most of my pickups were monster toys. I did however get a little polygonal Cloud Strife figure from the PlayStation game Final Fantasy VII, in the dress he wears to seduce Don Corneo to rescue Tifa.
The figure was actually rare and was part of a set I bought a year or so before, only this was one was a scarcer “chase” figure. It cost about £30 but for a figure based on an iconic and humorous scene, and looking like it’d had been pulled off the screen with it looking like those retro PS1 polygonal graphics, £30 seemed a steal.
I also picked up these tiny M.U.S.C.L.E style Star Wars figures. I love tiny figures and when they’re also Star Wars themed, it’s even better.
And for the monster toys-
My haul consisted of Bullmark reproductions of Dodongo from Ultraman, Kanegon from Ultra-Q, Bemstar from The Return of Ultraman, Garamon from Ultra-Q, and Namegon from Ultra-Q, as well as a bunch of CCP mini Godzilla sofubi. Overall, definitely a good day of monster hunting!
So after being utterly exhausted, we headed back to our hotel in Kanda, and Jade fell asleep whilst I stayed up and watched spandex-clad female Japanese wrestlers knocking the shite out of each other on a late night wrestling show. A good second day in Japan indeed!
The Forgotten Starship 