We’re in Japan now. Yesterday was spent hunting down aquarium stores, visiting Junie Moon and debating if I’ll finally get a Blythe doll (conclusion: maybe) and shopping in Shibuya. While in Shibuya (the epicenter of youth and shopping and creepy nationalist demonstrations), we had to check out a couple of game centers. One of which inexplicably smelled like poop, but overall they get a B+.

creepycupie

To recap my obsession with crane games in Japan, I love them because their toys are actually really good, their toys reflect the current popular characters, and depending on the game center, the employees may open up the game and move the toys around so that they’re easier to win.

We were happy to see that Rirakkuma is still a favorite offering in these games of luck and skill.

rirakkumab

These little Rirakkumas are each bearing chicks that have different birthdays printed on their stomachs.

And yesterday we were introduced to Kapibara-san, the new guinea pig character from Try Works, which is like San-x, except with a guinea pig character.

bigkapibara

We were especially impressed by the animation on this slick TV monitor in a seemingly completely unsupervised and un-security-guarded center:

kapibaratv

We tried our darndest (about 1,000 yen worth) to grab one of these little guys, but in the end, we had to give up and purchase the very same toy at the Loft department store for 800 yen.

kapibarakun

Crane game: 1
Us: 0

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