Anime Pilgrimage: Tamako Market and Eccentric Family

I was introduced to the idea of anime pilgrimages earlier this year, and was impressed enough by the idea to want to try it myself during our visit.  Basically it's visiting the physical location of a place shown in an anime.  Sometimes the anime will have a fictional place name or buildings, but still maintain enough landmarks to pinpoint the show's location inspiration.  Other times, the anime will draw the locations as is.  True otaku can even take real life pictures in the exact same angle and frame as the animated drawing.

I'm not an expert otaku enough to take side by side shots, but I thought it would be cool to at least visit some of the places that inspired the anime we like so much.

We took a bus over to the Masugata shopping arcade, near the Demachiyanagi (出町柳) train station, which is the inspiration for the setting in KyoAni's Tamako Market.  But to get there you pass by the Kamo River, which is part of the setting for Eccentric Family! Two birds tanuki with one stone, haha.

The Kamo river is famous for it's stone turtles, and is overall just a really nice place to hang out. There's bike paths on either side too, would have been nice to ride along I think!

Under a bridge, reminds me of the lovey lovey scenes in Chunnibyo!

Eccentric Family, an anime about a family of Tanuki shape-shifters, is set in this area of Kyoto.

Same bridge huhuhu.

Ah! Here's the entrance for Masugata Market.

Tamako Market, for the unfamiliar, is a slice-of-life anime about people that work and live in a shopping arcarde.  It's cute with light humor, and there's a mochi-addicted talking bird named Dera. Just because.  Right at the onset we stood in the long line to get some of the famous red bean mochi, which Tamako sells at her family's mochi shop.

From the anime~

Everything in Japan comes nicely packaged.

mame mochi!

The mochi was interesting.  Super fresh, which was delicious, with semi-hard beans mixed in.  The firm beans were a little salty, and paired well with the soft, sweet mochi. Yum!

We walked through the shopping arcade, which had the standard neighborhood staples featured in the anime - fish shop, meat shop, toy shop, flower shop, etc. No onsen though that I could see.

A little brighter, but still has all the flags on the top of the street.

A plush Dera!

Big fish hanging in the middle

Same fish, from Eccentric Family

There were some posters up from different anime that use the market as a setting!

And also random things non-anime related :)

lame mirrors?

Watch bagels?

At the end of the long alley were otaku "guest books".  I was not confident enough to leave a drawing though, haha!

So cute!

There were also cute character "children crossing" signs nearby.

Tamako and Dera

Choi

Although it was really cool to see the real-life location of Tamako Market and Eccentric Family, I was a little dissapointed we did not find a real life Mochizo! He's such a cutie! Haha!

Levi Attack on Titan Tights

Living up to her title of the best cousin that ever was, Cousin T sent the MOST AWESOME tights in the mail. Levi from AOT! ::eyes roll back as I dissolve in happy fan-girl squeals and bouncy tap dancing::

Printed tattoo tights just might be the greatest trend ever.

Comes in Eren as well, but we all know Levi takes the cake :)

The big question is whether these awesome stockings would fit on my non-petite-asian-legs. My measurements were just on the upper limit listed on the package, huhu. No thigh gap here, just some thunder thighs. :P

Luckily I could squeeze in without them feeling like they'd break.

They are so cool! They look like I printed onto my leg, lol.

Levi did get a bit stretched out though.

Tights are so delicate though.  I don't think I've ever worn a pair a whole day without getting a run/snag or two.  So I'll have to be very careful with these and where I wear them.  I think they'd go great with a casual survey corp outfit - maybe if I just trade out my poofy skirt for a brown mini skirt?

Kinda looks like they are white tights, but no - that's just my pasty skin. @_@

 Big thanks to Cousin T - she always has the coolest finds! I forgot that we were supposed to try and make our own custom tattoo tights - maybe we should renew that effort!

J-Pop Summit Festival 2014

First of all, please take my "review" with a grain of salt, because we only stayed at the J-Pop Summit Festival in SF's Japantown for about 30 minutes before calling it quits.  We did not stop in union square to watch any of the concerts either.  So I'm sure we barely scratched the surface of things to do within our quick walk through, but I'll document it anyway for my own memory :P

Originally I had planned to go to the film festival portion of the event, mostly because saying that you're going to a film festival sounds super fancy to me. Haha! However, we decided not to since I wasn't really getting excited about any of the titles available during the times we'd be there.

So instead, Sak, Penga-Sis and I donned our casual-otaku wear and boarded the Caltrain/Muni to get to Japantown. From the minute we stepped off the wild 38 bus (that dropped us off in the middle of the street), the only word to describe the place would be "packed".  Booths were set up all around J-Town, at the square, inside the mall, out on the blocked-off street. And between the booths - a steady, constant flow of human bodies. 

Not the place to be if you don't like crowds.

Now, I don't typically mind crowds.  Crowds only mean something good is going on, right? But I don't like unorganized crowds.  And during the brief time we were there, I didn't see organized crowds.  It was very hard to see where lines stopped and started (or even what they were for), and unlike a convention which has clearly marked staff members, I didn't see anyone directing people where they should go for this or that.

As to what there was to do there?  In addition to the already great shops in Japantown, there were also artist booths, vendor booths, and food booths.  A lot of the food looked really, really good - but again, the lines were phenomenal. (Though I should note we did arrive around a normal lunch time.)  There was a full-on ramen event taking place, which seemed cool - but again, gigantic line.  Plus it was hot, a rare "nice day" for SF. I earned a lobster patch around my neck where I forgot to apply sunscreen.

Sak picked up some freebies from the crunchyroll booth, since we are premium members. We heard someone come up and ask if anime was popular here in the states. @_@

Which brings me to my next observation of why I didn't really enjoy the festival.  I didn't feel like it was a unified celebration.  At anime conventions - simple, you're celebrating anime with other people that like anime.  There are offshoots of course, but the majority of the people are there for that reason.  A chocolate festival - simple, you're there to sample chocolate.  But this one? Although it's called a JPop Festival, I felt like a lot of people were there just for the food.  Others were there to cosplay.  Not a bad thing, but I'm sure many people there don't know anything about JPop. (Myself partially included, I haven't followed the JPop/Rock scene since the early 2000's with L'arc and Gackt, Koda Kumi and M-Flo, etc.)   I don't think any of this is bad, but I don't think it makes for a very cohesive festival.  

Anyway, I enjoyed the art booths, and we picked up a couple things - the most adorable guinea pig card ever (check out her work, it's all SO CUTE), and a plastic laser cut tsundere necklace (Sis') (didn't catch the vendors name, unfortunately).

After our quick walk through, we decided to leave, mouths gaping at the sight of a line to get in the grocery store. Wow. We were hot, hungry, and didn't want to stand in some unknown line.  So we MUNI'd back down to the FiDi and ate some teri bentos at a very uncrowded restaurant down by the water. Relaxing!

Our friends went the day after (because I am horrible and FORGOT to update the plan), so I'll have to see how their trip was, but I doubt we'll be returning year after year to this festival. Not unless there's some major crowd control!

Hetalia America Cake

Like the past three years, we had a lovely family BBQ and fireworks show at our house for Independence Day.

But not to forget all my friends who were braving the crowds at Anime Expo in LA - I thought an APH America cake was in order!

"Watashi wa HERO!"

So for those of you who don't watch anime - Axis Powers Hetalia is a short (5 min episodes) show that portrays countries as different characters. Mainly WWII countries.  It's irreverent, funny and definitely cute. I think it's on Netflix and Hulu?

Anyway, America is my favorite, obviously.

He's so cute! And he has a hamburger! Alfred Jones!

I made him with whip cream and chocolate (for lines) using the same method as V-Day's Keroro cake (using Kawaii Kakkoii Sugoi's tutorial).  Since this was my second time, it came out a lot better - I made sure to make the cream even, so there weren't as many holes when I peeled it off onto the cake base.  However, I used a different box cake mix, a "moist pudding" type cake mix, and it was almost too soft.  Next time I will stick to a standard cake mix as it holds shape better.

You don't know how long it took me to mix red, green, blue and yellow food color into BROWN and KHAKI. Ugh. A lot of trial and error. But still, he's pretty cool!

Aside from cake, we also had BBQ and lots of other tasty food for the 4th.  Unfortunately our grill broke that day =_= so we ended up ordering BBQ from Armadillo Willy's. Kinda lame, haha. But it was still good so all's good.

At night, fireworks in Foster City.  We watched from our deck, with patriotic tunes blaring on Dad's ipod.

The 92 San Mateo Bridge in the background

Mom got some good shots this year!

'Murica!

Miss Manga Mascara

Cousin T, ever on the edge of otaku trends, told me about a Loreal mascara called Miss Manga! Whaaaat. I told my sister, and soon we were down at CVS buying the shiny, pink $8 tube.

Is the "manga effect" supposed to make one look like a big eyed panda? @_@

The brush itself is very springy.

Since my sister is the glamorous one in the family, here is her before/after modeling:

I guess I can see a difference! But I'm not convinced she looks like a manga panda.  It's good that she kept the tube, because mascara is like, my least favorite type of make-up.  I always seem to get a clumpy :P

So what's the point here? We are suckers for otaku-consumer-commercialization. Haha. Shaaame. :P

Lootcrate

Do you like monthly subscription services?  I've always been intrigued by birchbox, even though I rarely use make-up.  I bought my grandmother a tea-of-the-month subscription once - it was pretty cool but she ended up with way too much tea.

Anyway, Friend E/Cousin T told me about this monthly subscription for videogame/anime/pop culture paraphernalia, and I couldn't resist trying it out!

It's called Lootcrate, and each month they send out a box of goodies loosely based on a theme.  My first box, May, was "adventure" themed.  I signed up for the 3 month plan to try it out - each box is ~$12 +s/h, and they say each one has a retail value of at least $40.  Of course, it's all random stuff - so I guess you have to decide whether it's worth the price for a surprise.

They send a tracking code when it gets near the time of arrival (end of month) - luckily ours was delivered after we returned from the convention!

SQUEEE. GEEKY STUFF YAY.

Well, what have we got? A fancy word-art Link shirt? Keeping!  Minecraft and Adventure Time action figures? For Penga-Sis.  Stickers and a techno gamey music from a show I don't watch? Why not? Collectible Lootcrate pin too.

And a reallly cool bottle opener.

 I will give it to my brother, since he drinks more beer than I do.

Anyway, just my own estimates on stuff worth..

Shirt: $10-$20
Minecraft hanger: ~$8 on amazon
Adventure Time mystery tin: ~$8 on amazon
Zelda bottle opener, CD and stickers: ???

So I guess it's safe to say the box is worth at least the $12+ I paid! Haha.  I like this service a lot! It's a surprise present for every month! And no, I am not paid in boxes or otherwise for this 'review'. :P

I can start stockpiling Christmas/birthday presents for my friends and fam since between them all they represent the entire gamut of fandoms.  Except for Friend E, cause he already subscribed to his own boxes :P

Anyway, I think this would be a great present for that geeky friend/family member that is hard to buy for. I can't wait for our June box!