My Japan Haul

[got_quiet]

I am kind of mostly recovered from my trip to Japan by this point. I'm currently getting to sleep at a reasonable time so I'm trying to keep that up, but very rapidly that time is getting later and later and I'm pretty sure I'll be seeing 1AM on the regular again.

Anyway, I took some pictures of the little souvenirs i brought back. Lots of picspam below.
 

 

Stickers are my main frivolous item of choice. I have a space to put them in my bullet journal, one a month. The little samurai and Fuji stickers I got to share with a stationary group, because they're very Japanese and less likely to be found at your average stationary shop in the US. They're kind of cheesy, but that's ok. The ones I got for myself were Zenitsu and Batz Maru, and the ceiling Inosuke came out of a little snack thing you get at Lawsons. It had a random sticker (Inosuke) and a wafer cookie! All in all I feel like I was very disciplined with my sticker buying this trip lol. There was a lot of Sanrio stuff luring me in. Luckily, everyone is all about the acrylics and standees now, and I don't like those, so I didn't feel tempted. There were also a ton of pins, probably for ita bags. In fact I saw about 4 or 5 ita bags during the trip, even though we only spent a couple days in the "nerd" centers of Japan. I'm wondering if I should frame a sheet of cloth and buy some pins next time, but nah, too much work and too much space.

The fact that I'm pretty out of the loop with anime also helped me save. IDK anything about Jujutsu Kaisen and it was everywhere. Now if I had run into Nozaki Kun merch or something.. I probably would have bought more hard otaku merch but my friends went to places like Mandrake before I arrived, and I will have other trips to buy my yaoi doujins without my bros looking over my shoulder lol.

Anyway, I digress. I also keep myself restricted to one gatcha pull, maybe two if something comes up that's overwhelmingly up my alley. I inspect every wall of gatcha closely, looking for the right candidate, and this time found a collection of dokusho (reading) figures which was a variety of animals reading. I kiiiind of wanted all 5 but I was good and only pulled once, and got the cutest one anyway.

Although there are a lot more places that take cards in Japan now, it's just habit of mine to pay for almost everything in cash, which means a lot of coins. I bought this coin purse on a previous trip, but it's cute so I took a picture of it anyway lol. I filled it up multiple times and then emptied it out just as fast. The 1 yen coins are the worst though. They get offered to the gods and temples (along with a 100) and then at the airport there is a donation box for a charity where you can dump the rest because really no one wants to bring those home, even though they weigh nothing.

I also got some stationary stuff, because I'm an absolute sucker for stationary. Look at that pigeon! how can you say no to that! plus look at those prices! That's 3 bucks. It'd be 15 in the US or something stupid like that. The little item on the right is a small booklet of cat postcards for the four seasons. I have a big pile of postcards that I like to collect and then send out to my friends, so that was a great buy. (BTW if you want a postcard from me just shoot me a PM!)

Speaking of postcards, these are all called for already, I bought them intending to send them while in Japan so my friends would get a Japanese postmark, but our group got sick while we were traveling and I was both feeling a bit too bad to put in the effort, and a little worried about sending germs in the mail. I'm sure it would be ok but I was anxious about it. So I kept them and am sending them out there.

When I was doing some buying for work I came across a vendor selling very nice bookplates. Eiichi Hirose was a prolific bookplate designer. He just couldn't stop making them it seems, but I didn't have any examples in my collection so I got this set of four. They aren't particularly rare. The guy buying them had hundreds in these 4 packs. But that's just means they were easy buys.  The other bookplates are by different artists that I haven't done research on yet. The architectural ones I will probably keep and the ship I will probably try to trade. Can you tell I have a thing for buildings yet? 

Finally I picked up some things for my tea group that don't really count as souvenirs, but these kaishi are still very nice. We use cheap plain kaishi for most of our practice and presentations to the public, but for our internal events I'll present this kaishi to the group so that we can enjoy them with our sweets. It's crazy how common tea items are in Japan. One of the packages I bought in a department store shop for sustainable cleaning fabrics (?!) and the other two were sold at the Shimogamo shrine shop, next to the omamori.

 

 

Comments

[shadowbliss]

They look so cute

[got_quiet]

Japan has got cuteness down to a fine art!

[got_quiet]

I think he's my favorite out everything lol. That and the reading hamster.

[autumndaze]

These are all awesome but the Fuji stickers in particular are so adorable.

[got_quiet]

There a pleasant little flock of mountains lol

[kissed]

sounds like you had a great trip! also i love the bookplates, i had to look them up for more information and i really dig them. i do love the one with cherry blossoms!

[got_quiet]

We had a lot of fun! And some people get really intense about bookplates. There's a lot of research and stuff done about them and the prices for some are kinda nuts.