Today’s our last full day in Kyoto. Last night we came up with a plan to make a mad dash by shinkansen to Tokyo to look for a particular JR souvenir that Adam thinks he saw somewhere in Tokyo Station. This morning, however, the notion of spending six hours (round-trip) on a train the day before spending 13 or so hours on an airplane seemed much less appealing, even considering that shinkansen are far more comfortable than airplanes are. So instead we elected to just hang around the Kyoto Station area, do a little bit of last-minute shopping and a lot of sitting around and relaxing. I also took the opportunity to construct a time-lapse movie of the main floor of the station. It came out quite well; I’ll post it once I’m home and have access to an editor and a good compressor.
While exploring the side of the station that’s less familiar to us (the side nearer the tracks, if you’re familiar with it), I noticed that the nearby Avanti department store had a bookstore. We hadn’t been to the department store at all, so we ventured over. Somewhat by accident we came upon the computers/electronics/DVDs/games/hobbies floor. (Yes, by accident. Really.) It was a small slice of geek heaven, tightly packed with shiny PCs, laptops, cameras, and so on. The laptop computers were particularly striking; Tracie was quite enamoured of an elegant Sony model in sakura pink. There was a small section of plastic figures where we oohed and aahed over the Mobile Suit Gundam figures while dodging a stereotypically clumsy otaku who managed to kick Tracie’s cane three times.
I found a small SD Hatsune Miku figure in a leek-shaped car which was unanimously voted to be a must-have. Then I noticed a stack of these boxes:
Now, look at that box and pretend (if necessary) that you don’t read Japanese. Would you not arrive at the conclusion that I did, which is that it contains a Hatsune Miku figure? I mean, yes, there are photos of her Vocaloid friends, but there she is both on the top and prominently featured in the foreground. So I bought one of those along with the leek-car figure and we made our way back to the Mister Donut in the basement for some refreshments.
[Digression: if you have no idea who/what I’m talking about, see the Wikipedia entry here and an entry from my blog of last year’s visit to Japan here.]
Something triggered my suspicions, though, so I opened the box and found to my slight dismay that it did not contain Miku-chan. Inside instead was a figure of Len. (No, I don’t know them by name, but they’re named on the box.) It was clear that the Nendoroid company are no fools and that you have no way of knowing which figure you’re getting when you buy the box. We considered the issue over orange juice and donuts and decided that at least two more should be purchased to see whether we might be lucky, and possibly more if we weren’t. I went back up to the sixth floor while Tracie waited. The second and third boxes proved to contain Rin and the blue-haired one which is not Miku. (Her name is obscured on the box.)
While the rest of the story defies logic, I need to explain something about Japanese retail transactions. Any purchase in Japan is almost always treated with surprising politeness and grace. Relative to American standards it’s astonishing. I’ve bought about $5 worth of snacks from a tired young clerk in a convenience store at night in a small town and have been treated better than when making several-hundred-dollar purchases at mainstream stores in the U.S.A. Anything you buy will be treated with respect, packaged carefully, bagged, presented to you with both hands and a bow, and your thanks will be returned with at least one more bow.
However, what this means is that if you find yourself considering making several purchases of the same small item in rapid succession in the same store, you’ll realize that you’re going to end up looking pretty silly by the third purchase at the latest. I’m sure that the clerks in that particular establishment are entirely accustomed to people making strange and obsessive purchases–it is, as I said, a slice of geek heaven. However, I couldn’t quite bring myself to stand there buying one small box after another, ripping them open, until I came up with one containing one particular specific plastic figure of a person that sings with a synthetic voice, wields a leek, and yet doesn’t actually exist. I mean, I do try to consider that I contribute to the impressions of Americans held by the Japanese with which I interact. Besides, it seemed rude to make one of them feel compelled to execute their sales ritual over and over again on my behalf. So I did the polite thing and bought another six of them at once. I did manage to buy them from a clerk at a counter on the other side of the store.
I trundled them all back down to Mister Donut and Tracie and I opened them one by one, somewhat to the puzzlement and then amusement of a young Japanese woman who was trying to eat her lunch and not stare at the foreigners with oddly juvenile interests.
To our dismay, we still were without Miku-chan. We ended up with a few duplicates and hence have six of the 10-person collection.
At least they’re cute, and with duplicates some of them can reside in other sections of the house. Tracie thinks we should go back for the rest of the display; I think they had at least 12 more in stock. And I thought Chris was the obsessive collector.
