… is the glorious sound of the crank being turned in a capsule toy machine. Much to my delight, there are whole stores dedicated to these humble contraptions in Japan. Kind of like a present-day automat for obsessive plastic toy collectors.

We fortuitously happened upon this tiny kacha-kacha store in Shibuya last week. It was just big enough for a few dozen capsule machines, a change machine, and one guy behind a curtain who read manga and handed out plastic bags to anyone who asked. (I asked.)

It was absolutely packed with kacha-kachas, each pregnant with glistening capsules containing a different series of toy.

The store included an entire collection of Hello Kitty goods, which came in their own special Hello Kitty capsules. Awww….

Some “gets”:

Kapibara-san was everywhere, of course. This little cell phone strap bobble is about as big as the tip of my pinky finger.

Characters from the series Robin and his 100 Friends from Pansonworks. (Robin is on the left.) At this time, there are only 7 of Robin’s friends that you can collect. Maybe more will come? Oh, and I just realized that the bases can be connected together – cool!

This wrinkled mushroom is a Nintendo DS case. My husband’s pretty excited about it.

And these sweet little Unazuki nesting dolls from Rainbow Spice are my favorites at 300 yen for one set. Now I’m kicking myself for just getting 2 of the 4 sets! Notice the very nice printing.

Kacha-kacha-kacha-kacha-kacha-kacha-kacha….

I really thought that the U.S. was the most litigious country in the world, but this deck of playing cards has convinced me otherwise.

This is an extra card that came with a deck of plastic Angel brand playing cards that we bought in Okinawa to while away the non-beach hours. In its entirety, it reads:

Warning
Before you begin playing with these cards, be sure to read this.
– Please do not use these cards for anything besides playing with the cards themselves.
– Please do not throw the cards, or engage in any other reckless play with them. They will cause injury if they hit the eyes or body.

I checked with a trusted Japanese friend, and she confirmed that this is not a joke. Now, I haven’t bought a deck of cards in a while, but I do believe this is an unprecedented degree of insanity.

Also, this is an especially creepy Joker:

We’re returning to New York today, much to my dismay, but I have so many Japan photos that I’ll probably keep posting about it for a bit more.

We’ve just returned to Tokyo from Okinawa, which was full of pristine beaches, amazing coral, and thankfully, no catastrophic sunburns this time.

Out of our five days in Okinawa, just one was a bit rainy and windy. We spent it on Takitomi, a tiny island that can be biked all the way around in under an hour. The island is also home to a delightful array of shishi, the protective lion-dog creatures that can be found at Shinto shrines across Japan, but are especially common to Okinawa, where they whimsically decorate rooftops and gates. So we spent some time on this rainy-windy day hunting for shishi in Taketomi.

Some are a bit scary, some are just cute, and a couple of them kind of resemble the Cheshire Cat from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Just to show that we aren’t complete losers at our beloved Japanese crane games, here is our modest pile of loot from the past few days:

And this isn’t all! We also won a few very lame things (pencil bag, scary teddy bear) that we decided to leave in the game chute for the next lucky player.

Some details:

This is Yawaraka-sensha (“Soft Tank” in English). He’s a little wimpy tank that is scared of getting hurt in war, so he’s always rolling away from the action. He and Gun Shy should really get together one of these days. You can see some animations of Yawaraka-sensha here.

This little seal is wearing a fish windsock on his tail. Don’t ask why.

And the prize for Most Weirdest goes to the Tarako Kewpie in a bubble keychain. Tarako is nasty fish eggs sauce that people put on their pasta, and the Kewpie Doll is its unwitting mascot. More impressive wierdness in the below video (warning: extremely long for a video of 9-year-olds dancing to a repetitive song).