Hey Hive!
Sorry for the hiatus last week but we went on another trip recently, this time to Chengdu, China!
We've never been there before since we just started visiting China and everything was surprisingly affordable! We also saw soo many animals, mostly dogs but also cats and pandas! We had such a good time and I can't wait to share more about that trip in the future!
In the meantime, let's resume with our anniversary trip to Tokyo back in Feb 2023! It'd been at least 3 years since we visited Tokyo and the last time was pre-covid so we decided to go back and find some new places to explore while revisiting our favourite hot-spots.
Last time, we started a new day with late lunch before going for a walk to the famous Ginza shopping street! It's full of luxury goods stores so it's not really our scene, and the only store we would visit there is the biggest UNIQLO in the world!
We killed some time walking through the various floors in this 12-storey UNIQLO and undoubtedly also did some shopping here since they had some comfortable pants and I needed some.
After that we went to the nearby department store supermarket for some fruits and by the time we came out the sun was already setting. We made our way to Shibuya after we were done shopping to get ahead of the peak hour train crowd.
Unfortunately Shibuya is not a good place to avoid crowds since it's probably the most populated place in Tokyo because of the infamous Shibuya crossing.
I'm sure everyone knows about it but it's one of the first diagonal crossings in the world and became world famous for pioneering it I guess. It's honestly not that big of a deal irl especially since it's always ridiculously crowded there.
Source: CNN
Thankfully the other parts of Shibuya are not as brutal as this crossing, because we were heading to a special place a little ways from the main area.
Specifically, we were going to this PARCO building which is about a 10 minutes walk from the station.
From the guide it just looks like any other department store building, but this particular building has a very special floor perfect for gamers just like us!
We didn't really bother with any of the other floors and just made a beeline for the 6th floor, called Cyberspace Shibuya! The first thing we noticed was this esports cafe called GG Shibuya which was pretty cool!
I guess it's mostly for mobile gamers so it's not really our style but it seemed like a cool concept, for mobile gamers to hang out and play games together I guess.
But it was weird that they were showing a Valorant match on the screen outside the cafe though since it's a PC game (even though Riot has been teasing a mobile version for a long time).
It was also quite ironic since we just saw some Genshin Impact merchandise the other day and now we see Valorant stuff. It's as if I can't get a break from streaming. 😅
There was so much gaming and anime stuff to see here we didn't know where to start! If I thought it was crazy seeing all that Genshin Impact merchandise the other day this whole floor blew my mind!
I wasn't super familiar with the anime stuff though and I think this was a different anime game but it looked more Chinese than Genshin.
There were some shops just selling general merchandise as well, like this one that had the cute cat mofusand plushies.
But then we got to the really good stuff with the CAPCOM store!
We're pretty big fans of CAPCOM games, most prominently the Ace Attorney series. Ever since we started watching the playthroughs by one of my favourite youtubers named Lucahjin, we've been hooked on the series. So we were really excited to see what merchandise they had here!
CAPCOM is famous for quite a few game series like Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Ace Attorney, Devil May Cry, Megaman and Monster Hunter which I guess is the biggest thing here since they had a big MH section.
I've never played the games before so I'm not really familiar, but I do recognise the style of gameplay and the famous dragon Rathalos since he's also in Super Smash Bros. as a map obstacle.
Just beside the MH area was a whole wall of plushies and tsum tsums of the various characters across CAPCOM franchises.
There was a list of all the Tsum Tsums available and unfortunately they were sold out on Phoenix and Edgeworths so I was a little disappointed but it was understandable since they're the most popular characters in Ace Attorney.
They only had these left from AA; which are Godot, Maya, Apollo and Gavin, which are okay I guess.
In the main part of the store we did manage to find quite a bit of Ace Attorney merchandise!
Some were from the CAPCOM Cafe pop-up they had a while ago also somewhere in Tokyo but unfortunately we didn't even know about it until the event was almost over. It was quite unfortunate that we missed the period they made it Ace Attorney-themed since it looked so cool!
They did have some of the leftover merchandise which was nice I guess but I think the better stuff must've sold out in the cafe already.
They did have quite a decent selection I suppose, even including items from the Great Ace Attorney.
I thought this notebook looked quite cool, if I still used notebooks. But I don't know what I would write in here that would be worthy of this epic cover.
I thought this banner looked quite cool since it included characters across all their series. Most of them I recognised but there were a few I didn't.
They had some general CAPCOM stuff like stickers, badges and some blind box keychains.
The Megaman and Street Fighter goods were quite limited which was surprising, but then again the store isn't very big to begin with so I'm sure they tried to accommodate as much as they could.
It was so cool to see all these characters though because we don't have anything like this in Singapore.
I was super surprised to see an Okami section! It's definitely quite an underrated series of CAPCOM but I loved this game so much. I first discovered it when another one of my favourite youtubers played it then when I started streaming I played it for myself too!
I thought this ceramic plate was so cool since it depicted all the gods in Okami that you seek help from, and it actually resembles some traditional Chinese plates.
There was some merchandise from a series called Sengoku Basara which I've never heard of but I guess it's one of those series that were mainly big in Japan.
I didn't know what this was from either, but apparently this is from Capcom's mobile romance game called “Toraware no Paruma”, or “Incarcerated Palm”. In the game, players must find clues to a crime by spying on an incarcerated mega-hottie with amnesia… It sounds a little sketchy but that explains the husbandos I guess.
The Devil May Cry section was a little small and I'm not very familiar with this series either other than Dante.
They had a decent Resident Evil section but there were some questionable-looking products like a box of "tablet candies" made by Umbrella Corporation, which in the series made a virus that created zombies so it's a little sus.
They also had some expensive looking figures and items on display but it was really cool to see.
The store had a decent amount of merchandise across all the series but I think they definitely deserved a bigger space for how big all their series are.
I feel like this glass is supposed to be referencing Resident Evil but I'm not sure.
There was a big Ryu statue in front that looked very fierce and epic though, and perfect for their store front.
Just beside the CAPCOM store was the Jump Shop which is more based on anime. I only know of them because they made the game Jump Force last time, which is basically a fighting game incorporating all their anime characters like Goku.
This place was a lot more packed and it didn't really have a lot of things that I recognised since I haven't watched much anime.
They did have a lot of cute stickers from B-Side Label though which we're familiar with.
I did know a few characters like these ones from Chainsaw Man though!
There were a lot of OG anime stuff from Naruto and Dragonball, both of which I know of but haven't really watched much.
I think if you're a big anime fan you'd definitely love this shop although it does cater to more of the mainstream ones.
I liked that they put incorporated some of the manga stills into the decor of the store though.
They even had some signatures on display by the voice actors from the anime I assume.
There were definitely a lot of fans in the shop.
I just liked admiring the stickers since they looked really cute.
There was also a special stamp you could get at the store with all the One Piece characters! I guess One Piece is their biggest series.
If you're an anime fan I bet this store is a godsend, but then again there are a lot of anime shops around especially in Akihabara so I'm not sure what makes this one special. Maybe it's because it's the official store?
There was also an anime restaurant, that I guess is also based on an anime about a restaurant but I haven't seen it before.
Anyway that's going to be it for today! Sorry for all the geeking out about the gaming merchandise but we were really excited, understandably. 😅
Thanks so much for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
Check out my previous post in this series!
TacoCat’s Travels #272 (Tokyo): Yummy Rice Bowls and Giant UNIQLO 👕