This blog has been a long time in the making, which is ironic as it will be my least read given that it's about a bit of a niche subject; Gachapon.
Gachapon are capsule machines each containing a series of toys, gadgets or phone/console accessories. The name is onomatopoeiac - 'gacha' being the sound made when you crank the handle and 'pon' being the sound made when the capsule drops down.
There will typically be six prizes in any given Gachapon series with some being harder to get than others, so you can end up with loads of duplicates in the search for the one you want. However at only 100/200 Yen a go, it's no big deal, and as we discovered on our last trip to Japan, if you go to a collector store in Akihabara you can sell them straight back. People can then trawl the racks looking for the one they're missing:
When we go to Japan, we always end up wandering around the huge Gachapon floors of stores like Yodabashi at length...
Partly to buy a few interesting ones and partly to just browse the weirder stuff on offer:
Like dog wigs...
...Dangling cats
...Cat's paws - perfect for businessmen's top pockets (?)
...Cat's bum hand mirrors
...Pigs in boots
...Polar bears dressed as men (and other bears)
Actually, that's the one thing we made an effort to get the full set of (plus a couple from the panda version) We just found them amusing:
Some of the best ones we've picked up include:
A Doraemon gacha ball which turns into a standing figure
A Super Mario pipe attachment for the DS
A Super Mario egg projector
Super Mario light up mushrooms
Mini games consoles and controllers
And arguably the best one, a Rilakkuma mini planter, which I have grown from seed and which is now in the back garden
(Waiting for that plant to grow is the reason this blog has been a long time coming!)
And finally, the icing on the cake. On our last trip we picked up a toy Gachapon machine
A toy of a toy machine. Meta.
Here ends my geekiest blog to date.
