SEGA Shop, Capcom Shop. Tets goes to these as well.

 On the same day that I went to the Transformers meets Japan popup shop, I decided to hit up the newly opened SEGA shop, as it also happens to be in Shibuya, hiding within the Parco building, which was just around the corner.

Incidentally, on the same floor was the also relatively newly opened Nintendo shop, a Capcom shop and a Godzilla shop.

Tourists were everywhere!

Tets goes to Transformers Pop-up Store (again) Aug 2025

 

As you can tell by the title, there was another pop-up store made for the wonderful money vacuum we call the Transformers.  I went to it and will now share what I have.

This one was cleverly called: 

"Transformers Meets Japan"

Tets goes to "Transformers Pop-up shop" 2025

There was a pop up shop placed in the Modi OIOI (Marui) building in Shibuya during the time of 21st February until the 2nd of March 2025.    Above is the artwork advertising it.  I went there to check it out.  The primary purpose of this pop up shop is to sell credit cards.  Actually the whole building has a very CC selling focus... Just check out this escalator.

Every escalator is like that... It's almost cult-like...

A slight rant

The EPOS card is a Japanese credit card that often has cool artwork on the cards in a variety of flavours and they have just started producing 2 types of Transformers credit card.  One features the comic artwork above and the other is a black card with the Autobot and Decepticon logos on them.  To be honest, the cards looking bloody great.  However the problem with EPOS and other Japanese CC companies is they don't have the reach that companies like VISA/Mastercard have, so really there is no point (They are also kind of expensive with monthly fees and whatnot).  

Obviously I was not so interested in getting a card, already having a few and need only one.  Plus, they are hesitant to offer them to non-Japanese people.  They were offering some freebies if you applied, but you had to be successfully approved and I believe you also had to actually use the card before getting them.  That's a few too many hoops for me to be bothered jumping through, so I didn't bother.  Enough ranting about companies capitalistic tendencies...

 I went to another pop up shop a bunch of years ago, and that one was just a tiny stand, so I wasn't expecting much.

Tets goes to T-Spark Zone 2025

 

 I don't like going to the Tokyo holy trinity of tourism; Shinjuku, Shibuya and Akihabara because aside from Akiba, there isn't much going on (for me).  The previous weekend I hit all three with a friend form overseas and it was enjoyable enough, but I rather wasn't all that excited about having to hit Akiba again on another weekend.  

Sundays are always worse than Saturdays, so for this wonderful T-spark Zone trip, I chose Saturday.

But what is T-spark?  Well, it is a celebration event of Takaratomy and they have various collaboration products going on, which makes it kind of exciting.  Their very own promotional materials say:

“T-SPARK” is the unified brand name for hobby products for adults developed by TOMY Company. As a hobby brand that offers an experience of boundless energy, the name T-SPARK means innovative and sophisticated adventure. 

I will now chronicle my adventure.

Tets Goes to: Summer Wonderfest 2019

and completely changes his mind on something…


I’ve always wondered about Wonderfest and kind of wanted to go, but normally I find out about too late, or something that’s really not a good excuse to go comes up and I don’t go.  This year I decided to go and here’s the report.

Tets goes to "The World of Transformers"

A Transformers 35th Anniversary Exhibition.



15th of March 2019 Opening day!

Today I hauled my butt out to Ikebukurou (twice in 1 week!) to go to the Parco Museum to see this gallery they had set up.  It only really grabbed my attention when I saw the (catchy) artwork advertising it in the elevator when I went to the Bumblebee cafe.   Boy am I glad I went!

Once again preparations began early, with pants selection:

Luckily the morning wasn't as bed comfy as before, so I was able to arise and wander off a little earlier from my house.

Knowing the gallery is in the same building as the BB cafe, I had no trouble finding it and when I first spied it, I was a little disappointed.



It cost 700 yen and at the counter looked a little sad. I prepared myself for feelings equal to my BB cafe experience. i.e nice but not exciting.

Luckily it was
More than meets the eye!  (Collective groans go here)

Tets goes to the Bumblebee Cafe, 2019

With the long awaited release of the Bumblebee movie here in Japan (the wait for movies here is nuts!), comes the push for promotion.  This time we have a Bumblebee themed cafe.  NOICE.

The cafe is a normal cafe that adopts a theme for a certain while and has some novelty food and drinks set up.  There was  one that did a Sonic theme a while ago that I kind of wanted to go to, but couldn't be that bothered to.  

Anyway, I got up and got my lay butt outta bed and made my way there today!  Just for the record, it was windy and stormy the night before and my bed was extra comfy this morning.

However, preparations started long before!

Tets goes to Tokyo Comic-Con 2018

As the title suggest, I went to the Comic convention in Tokyo this year.  I went along last year too, as Stan Lee was there and got a photo taken with him.   This year, I was eyeing Peter Weller, AKA RoboCop and other roles, but as I was feeling kinda cheap, I opted out.  I’m sure I’ll regret that later….
The comic con is in its third year I think and doesn’t seem to take up much room at the Mukuhari Messe hall.  Between the comic con, and Toy Show, I seem to be getting pretty familiar with that place now.
However the Comic con also has a stand for TakaraTomy, and they usually have some interesting stuff to look at.  This year they certainly did.   I am sure that all the news and surprises are flooded all over the net before I even got there, so all I intend to do is blabble on about my thoughts of the day and slap some (Possibly blurry) photos up. 
Read on if you dare.

Going as south east as I have ever been.

Generally every February/Marchish time of year I try and take the better half for a little getaway.  We’d been to Busselton a number of times and this time decided for a change.  We settled on going to Esperance as neither of us had been there before.

Last day of too much food.

And here we are, on the final day of the holiday and desperately trying to cram in a few final bits of fun before I head back home to the unorganised drudgery of Australia again.  Whenever I go to Japan, there are three foods that I really looks for:

• Melon Pan
• Mr Donuts
• Mos Burger

Ok. Only one of those is a food.  The other are food chains…  oh well.

Thus commences the adventures of :

6th August 2012

Forgetting stuff, traditional food and Thermae Romae.

In my amazing, feverish fervour, I managed to forget to include some photos that should have been included in the August the 4th post…  The most annoying thing of all though was that I was actually looking for the these particular photos….

So I will carry on.  In my last post I mentioned briefly fireworks and children.  A winning combination in anyone’s language.  On a side note, I have an extra gig of ram in my little lap top and it’s running like a dream.    Anyway, back to the photos!!

After the jump.

Cup Noodles, Afros and Yokohama

So, after quite a long while of distractions, I have finally decided to pull my finger out and finish off the holiday I had in Japan last year.

>_>

Yearp, you heard right.

August the 4th 2012

Happy New Year

Yes, I realise it's late, but sadly my ongoing internet/phone connection issues are still in full swing.  That's a blog post in itself....

So for now I am satiating myself with these little video posts which I can do by abusing my position at work (and more to the point their internet).

I went down to the beach on NYE to watch the sun set for the last time.  And in typical nobby fashion forgot to take my camera, so these are on the better half's camera.  And I had the settings on lowish quality video.

Nevertheless, enjoy the photos.

Weird sandwiches, bizarre hotels and more people than I have ever seen before!

1st and 2nd of August.

Oh my, the previous day’s practise with my new camera was all for now.  Let’s just hope that the controls are under my understanding…  For a trip to Niigata was on the cards.  Why, for some impressive fireworks.  We were booked onto a tour bus and had to meet in Tokyo with the guide for another shinkansen ride to the hotel.

Shopping and Cowboys. Way to go!

1st August.

Forgot to mention on the way back from the Dinosaurs and mabodofu, I dropped by Yodobashi camera and made the purchase to replace my humble camera.  Sure, I only mentioned the failings of my camera yesterday but I have been aware of these issues before, so I have been looking into new cameras and decided upon one.  So today’s adventures are full of photos with my new camera.  Huzzah!  It has a heap of different photo shooting filters, one of which I am very happy about and a slow motion video option!  Niiiice.  More on my new camera later.

Um, so today was my day to myself until the afternoon, so I headed out to check out Toys R Us as I usually do, hopefully to make me think that Toys R Us is actually a decent toy store somewhere.  I also ventured out to a family restaurant that was ALWAYS packed whenever we walked by.  A good sign of decent food surely?

Iron Chef, Dinosaurs and old friends showing their age.

31 July.

Quite a bit to do today.  Once I managed to get motivated we headed off to Landmark Tower in Yokohama for a Dinosaur exhibition.  We started out kind of late and so by the time we got to Yokohama it was time for lunch. 

Random walks to nowhere and The Birds!!

30 July.

Can’t remember what exactly happened on this day.  I think I was off to visit the local Book Off store in my desperate search for Sega Saturn Software.  I went to it, found nothing, decided I would go for a stroll.  Which ended up being a HECK of a lot longer than I initially envisioned.  But that’s fine, it was muggy inside the house and if you could find a bit of shade, was actually quite pleasant.  Which I managed to find.  As well as a ‘Royal Milk tea’ drink that I have to have.  It’s disgusting, much like can-coffee, but I always want some when I arrive in Japan and actually look forward to whingeing about how bad it tastes.

Boozing and Power Rangers??????

28th-29th July.

So here we were catching up with some family and off to a Yakitori place, it involved booze, laughs and food  what more could you want? 

Oh, expensive dessert places and local matsuris?  Yeh we covered that as well.

Another Lazy day and sunsets.

26th July

 

Well, really that should be sunset, as there can only be one per day, unless you do some tricky flying or time travel shenanigans.  Buuuut Whatever.  The end result is I had some damn amazing sushi and spied a rather nice Japanese sunset, which ended with me running around the suburb looking for a good vantage point.  I think I found one eventually.

 

Flowers and shopping.

25th July

 

A bit of a lazy day after the travel of the previous ones.  So not much to report here.  I amused myself by taking some shots of the flowers blooming rather nicely in the garden and we went to Yodobashi camera for a bit of omiyage (or maybe not ) shopping.