I won’t bore you with the details, but our recent trip to Japan was super fun! We both have some familiarity with the language, which made it much easier than it could have been. I’ll just recount a few gaming-related anecdotes.

Pretty much the first thing we did was visit the Capcom store, in a trendy part of Tokyo. The mall had two different promotions running at the time, a Pokemon one and a Monster Hunter 4 one. The store itself was disappointing, small and mostly seeming to sell merchandise of a minor cat character from Monster Hunter.

The big Kobun was one of few Megaman items present. This brings up an interesting point about merchandising in Japan: certain things seemed to be very popular for seemingly no reason, such as a mushroom character called Nameko, and the cat I mentioned. Pokemon was also absolutely huge. I feel like Nintendo should promote their own things a little more heavily, if only for my sake, as any non-Pokemon gaming merch was hard to come by.

Having said that, of course I’m not against Pokemon. I even sought out the Pokemon Centre in Sendai, and it was pretty cool, if a little kid-focused. Understandable, really. They also were heavily promoting the new movie with tons of Genesect stuff (what an ugly design) and the Eeveelutions for the accompanying short (too many toys then with similar designs). You didn’t have to venture to a Pokemon Centre to find any of this stuff though, it was everywhere. But I managed to find a few choice items there and elsewhere, which you can see in my assembled loot once I’d got home:

The other thing about Japan was the abundance of 3DSs. You’d see people playing them but the Streetpasses were going off! Just walking through any city station was liable to get you your full ten in just a few minutes. In Disney Sea especially, tourists from all over Japan came with their 3DS and as long as I kept checking it, I was able to get over 100 hits in a single day! Over the course of the trip, I managed to get every single panel tile! Amazing! That’s the kind of exciting experience Streetpass was made for, and it just doesn’t work in any other country.

It’s a combination of the population density and more game-y culture, by which I mean a broader audience has the interest. Of course, that broad audience could be seen in the most played titles: Animal Crossing and Tomodachi Collection. I also saw lots of Ace Attorney 5, I think it just came out. The abundance of AC players convinced my wife to get the game when we got home, and she’s loving it! It’s good to see.

As for actually playing games, well mostly it was Streetpass for me. At other times, in the hotel room, on trains or planes, I also played my Megaman Zero Collection. It’s such a great package. With my leet skillz, I bested all four games over the whole trip! It was a blast. I don’t think there’s too much to say, but I noticed one or two things I might save for a lore-focused post later.

The only other gaming I really did was a brief stint at Taiko no Tatsujin with my sis-in-law (you know, the Namco drum game), and a shot at the new Mario Kart Arcade machine, GP DX. Coincidentally it features said drum as a playable character, but I picked DK. I can say that the course designs and game overall are as boring as ever for the Arcade sub-series, not much has changed. It looks real pretty, though. In the same arcade I also spotted the rare Capcom-produced medal game, Super Mario Fushigi no Janjan Land. I wanted to try it, but it’s pretty static and I coudln’t figure out how to acquire the necessary medals anyway.

So all in all, I managed to do some very interesting gaming-related things. There was also the awesome retro gaming store in Akihabara, Super Potato, and me taking every opportunity to find a second-hand bookstore to search for game manga (I found some too, see my loot photo). Apart from that, there were tons of great things we got to do and see. Disney Sea, the Ghibli museum, temples and historic castles, the prehistoric village, traditional crafts, and also seeing my sister-in-law and her (now) hometown. It was a great trip and my lovely wife did such a terrific job organising it. Hopefully we can go back someday, and maybe next time I can find some sets from the Donkey Kong trading card game!