A Non-Bishoujo Figure? Unpossible!

I was on the Waitlist for this figure at Sideshow Collectibles, but today I received an e-mail that “due to recent cancellations and credit card declines, one of these items has become available for fulfillment to you.” But wait, this isn’t an anime-related bishoujo figure! What madness could I have fallen victim to???

GET TO DAH CHOPPAH!

The Hot Toys Major Alan “Dutch” Schaefer from the movie Predator as portrayed by God Among Men Arnold Schwarzenegger himself. I was on the waitlist for the Sideshow Collectibles Exclusive with the headset.

WHASSAH MATTAH? CIA GOT YOU PUSHING TOO MANY PENCILS?

This figure was just too badass to pass up. Plus it’s exclusive, and thirdly, its from a non-anime source material, so I’m technically not breaking my personal rule of no male anime figures in my collection. He will go well with my HT Iron Man Mk III

If it bleeds, we can kill it

Personal Update: I just had my second lumbar puncture yesterday, and it seems my surgeries are going well. No complications except for a side splitting headache right after the op, but that has cleared up. We will have to see if any results come from this though, as its still experimental and too early to tell.

I Like My Figures Medium Rare, Mostly Rare

This is my first time trying out the Goody Japan deputy service to bid on a figure on Yahoo Japan Auctions. It was fairly painless, as I signed up, made an initial 100 yen deposit from my Paypal, and then went hunting on YJA for my Megahouse Ranka Lee Hobby Japan Limited Edition! Normally you would only be able to get this figure pre-ordering it through Hobby Japan magazine, and only one thousand will be made (or so they claim).

The reason I wanted the Hobby Japan edition is because I have an uncontrollable urge to get limited figures whenever I see them, and because I lurv Ranka, and because her hair in the regular version of this figure is some sort of snot/booger shade of green:

While the limited version is much closer to the deep green shade she sports in the Macross Frontier anime. Plus the white pantsu make her just seem so much more innocent and moe! So after finding an auction for this figure, I then filled out a Bidding form on the Goody Japan website. If you can’t read Japanese while browsing YJA, Google Translate is your friend! Because my bid was above 5000 yen, I had to make a deposit to Goody Japan’s PayPal account with my maximum bid before they would make the bid for me. After that, it was just the waiting game.

Victory was mine though, and now I am waiting for them to calculate the final cost from domestic and international shipping, as well as their commission fee. So far, Goody Japan has been quick with the e-mail notices, and everything has been generally painless. I will definitely use them again if I get my Ranka in my hands safe and sound.

I also saw that Banpresto was releasing another Ichiban Kuji line of figures, and this time around it was the Lucky Star gang cosplaying as the cast of Macross Frontier, with Konata as Alto-hime, Kagami as Clan, Tsukasa as Ranka, and Miyuki as Sheryl. After wiping the drool from my chin, I then went to Toys Logic as I knew they had the Macross Frontier set on pre-order before that I unfortunately missed, meaning I had to track down my Ichiban Kuji lovelies through auctions after they got released. This time, I was much faster on the draw and managed to snag the pre-order on Toys Logic.

There are still some pre-orders of Konata and the gang left too, so snag them before they are gone!

I also am trying out Joseph Tsai’s Tokyo Hunter service for this Dengeki Daioh-exclusive Aisaka Taiga from ToraDora!. Joseph is a fellow who lives in Tokyo who will order these exclusive magazine order figures for you if you don’t live in Japan and ship them too you, obviously with a commission tacked on. His asking price for Taiga here is 10,000 yen, and that’s without shipping, but I figure that it will still be cheaper than what I will see for her later on Yahoo Japan Auctions.

Joseph works through PayPal as well, and he is pretty fast on the e-mail responses, so I am confident here in my purchase.

I still have my regular pre-orders from HobbySearch on top of this rare stuff too, but I unfortunately won’t be getting around to them until next month, as I am still in the hospital going through my surgeries. My first lumbar puncture is tomorrow, wish me luck!

Obligatory Onsen Episode!

I can now say that my life has the obligatory onsen episode that you see in so many series. After murderizing my bank account in Akihabara, we rented a car (Toyota Belta), and drove down towards Kyoto, stopping by Hakone along the way, and staying at ryokan (Japanese-style hotel) with an onsen called Fujimen Inn for one night.

Third Day in Japan – In Before Loss of Internet

This will potentially be my last post on this blog during my stay in Japan as I will be checking out of the Remm Hotel in Akihabara that offers free Internet and traveling south towards Kyoto.

Woke up this morning and had a few convenience store goodies for breakfast, including a sushi pack, some sort of salted dried fish, and onigiri.

Second Day in Japan – My Wallet Weeps

As I said in my previous post of my first day in Japan before I conked out due to jet lag, I was going to hit Akihabara hard today. Although my merchandise buying spree was tempered by the fact that I already had a huge shipment from HobbySearch coming in this month, I found myself a nice set of rare figures to take home with me.

This is the view out of my hotel room. Day started off a little overcast, but no real precipitation occurred, and it never got too unbearably hot either. A very nice day to go a-pillaging the unsuspecting stores of Akihabara.