Tokyo Day 13
Today I headed out to hunt down the mythical Square Enix showcase. For those of you who are not total nerds, Square Enix made the epic Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Kingdom Hearts series of games, among others. Their showcase is really hard to find, on a street kind of in the middle of nowhere. That wasn’t going to stop me though.
A large mechanical man, singing in the courtyard of the Tokyo Opera House.
Found it! They’re showing off posters for Advent Children, the Final Fantasy 7 movie that’s been doing pretty well on DVD.
They love their slimes. Slimes are annoying when you fight them in the game, but they’re fun when they’re toys.
Final Fantasy themed coffee mugs. I got a Sephiroth one. Aww yeah.
Slimes galore!
All the games and soundtracks you could ever want. Mostly in Japanese only.
Enormous Sephiroth emtombed in glass inside the showcase. Pictures don’t do it justice, it’s pretty badass.
You can have a miniature of Cloud riding his motorcycle for just a few hundred dollars.
I went for the cheaper model, shown here.
Yeay!
Twice a day, they show trailers for all their upcoming games. We checked it out, but NO PHOTO NO MOVIE sadly.
The upper level of the showcase with all the expensive stuff. T-shirts are off to the left.
More themed toys.
That is one happy nerd.
Later on, I snuck some pictures in the arcade, despite lots of signs telling me not to.
This whole thing is a “medal” game, where you insert useless tokens and try to win more useless tokens. Last time I was here, these things were rinky shit, like they are in Vegas. They’ve gotten a lot bigger and more elaborate.
The bottom floor was all fighting games.
Shinjuku at night is a sight to behold.
We met up with TokyoCooney by accident, he was walking into the metro station and I screamed at him. He was actually surprisingly cool, and gave us a walking tour of the seedier parts of town. This is a love hotel, where you pay by the hour for a bit of privacy.
An entire street full of love hotels, actually.
The rates. Apparently they charge 100 yen to clean up your “love”, plus $36 for a little bit of love, $55 for a lot of love, and $109 for… well, you’re probably all by yourself and have missed the last train. I’m surprised I didn’t take more pictures of the seedy shit we saw, but there was also a lot of drinking.
epic!
haha dude that’s the classiest lovehotel i’ve seen yet.
The ones in Shibuya look shadier, and funnier too with the ones that look like a disney land reject with a 1001 nights style going for it.
Happy to hear you met up with Kevin Cooney !
That guy ROCKS !
On my last night in Tokyo last year I saw his stand-up performance near Roppongi.
I absolutly love his dry sense of humor !
Had to catch the last bus to Shibuya afterwards so I didn’t meet & greet but maybe next time
I never knew about the existance of that Square Enix “Temple” (must be Squeenix fanboy heaven) but damn it sure looks tight.
I’ll have to harass you for it’s location next time i’m in Tokyo
AND I’m shocked your still blogging .
I remember going ” Yeah i’ll blog every day when i’m in Tokyo” but noooooo ..
I was too busy doing shit, drinking shit, photographing shit, eating shit and i guess sleeping a little bit every now and then
Gwenster - I’ve been trying like a bastard to keep up with the blogging because I know full well I’ll never do it when I get back. I’m doing pretty well, I think!
How the hell do you randomly spot somebody that you’ve ever only seen on youtube in a city with SOOO many people?
Cooney didn’t happen to be wearing that yellow bruce lee / kill bill suit when you ran into him did he?
Or do skinny white comedians just stick out or something?
It was really weird, I was just standing in the station and I saw him walking by. I think white people stick out enough that it’s a higher probability of noticing them here.