Today started off with me being reticent to go outside after seeing that Tokyo was still under an "Excessive Heat Warning" according to Google Maps. The high was still in the 90s today and I thought pretty humid so I didn't really feel up to doing much.

I had gone on Twitter to see if anyone else was musing about it and ended up finding an illustrator (I think) mentioning the heat and when I checked their personal blog/diary site, they had posted a few times this summer about the heat along with their illustrations and their most recent post from yesterday was actually like "I'm sick of writing “it's hot” in my diary lol" (thanks DeepL!). I apologize for complaining!! The people actually living here giving it their best have been suffering all summer I can handle it for a few days! Please forgive me for my insolence! Unrelated but this person has been blogging pretty consistently it seems like on their online blog since 2005! That's amazing! If I'm still doing the blog in 20 years I will be pretty impressed with myself so hopefully they are proud of themselves too.

I decided I would rather not ride on the train in the heat because it would be even worse when the train was packed. Tht limited my options a bit but Akihabara is a walkable distance for me. Oh no spending another day in Akiba, what a tragedy

I made my way over and stopped by Kanda Myojin, which was pretty much empty compared to how it's been when I've visited in the past. To its credit though, I almost always somehow manage to visit during a festival.

For me, I personally feel like Akihabara is basically a place to go to absorb the otaku atmosphere and buy things. Technically there is the scary maid cafe side too but the maids intimidate me and maid cafes seem like they would give me crazy secondhand embarassment (not their fault) so we'll ignore that. The reason I bring this all up to put it out there that I actually only intended to buy 1 specific thing on my outing (we'll get to that later) and that it was only supposed to be one small item.

With that in mind, I figured I would basically be window shopping all day. Luckily that's easy when you have rock steady willpower like me. It also helps if you impulsively buy everything you want already so there are no anime figure wants left to fulfill, but I digress.

At the first store I went to I browsed for a while and then actually found an unoped Girls Band Cry figure that I wanted. The original MSRP was like ¥9,900 compared to the current price of ¥16,800 so I decided I would wait and see if any other stores had it cheaper. Amazing! Perfect behavior!

But unfortunately, not everything can last. I stopped by the AmiAmi Figure Tower, a behemoth with 7 floors of anime figures. A true paradise for a very specific type of individual LOL Although it was not the specific item I wanted to buy today, I did want to see if they had the Anby Demara 1/7 Scale Figure in stock. This had been advertised pretty heavily when I was here last year but I somehow missed the preorder window or forgot or something

My poor attempt to capture an image of the poster while on the escalator last year

So obviously when I saw them brand new and in stock at basically MSRP, of course I had to buy it! And then another (cheap at least) prize figure for good measure. I actually don't even know why I got the prize figure since it's for a character I'm not mega familiar with. I think the character (Kotone Fujita) is pretty popular but she's from an Idolmaster mobile game. I actually don't even think the game is available outside of Japan either! But somehow I have a ton of her merch because I think her character design is good but luckily it's not on the level of Miku or something

After making my purchase at AmiAmi, I actually felt like I had enough stuff that it would be annoying walking through crowded aisles in stores or anything so I popped in for a quick bit of Sushi (you know where) before walking home to drop off my stuff. Imagine my surprise when I got my collab item and it was Mizuki again!! I know she's the main visual's primary character, but there are 3 other characters in the collab!

The collab sushi was good! I also took the chance to get the rerun collab items (from last year I think) since there was a Kokomi-specific parfait (C6 BTW).

I just realized my entire blog is basically turning into some weird food blog with only pictures from Sushiro

The parfait was also good, especially considering it was only ¥400 (like $2.75). Something like that would be $10 easy in Seattle lol Also all the smaller collab Genshin goods that came with little pictures (instead of like figures etc.) came with codes that I was able to redeem in Genshin for some samll rewards. I already had all of the food items before but any primogems are nice. I also found out that if you redeem the code while the redeem page is set to a different language, the in-game mail will also be in a different language

After eating, I walked home, deposited my goods and sat down to cool off for a bit. By the time I made it back, it was already getting dark and I still hadn't bought the item I had intended to!! Actually in the first place, I wasn't sure where I could get it specifically.

Ok I'll stop being cryptic lol It's just the new Frieren Daily Planner that was released today. Big shoutout to the Frieren PR Twitter Account that you can follow for daily goofy posts of the Frieren plush (you'll recognize my code review helper from the other day) but also for notifications for when it's time to open your wallet for new merch!

In this case, I saw this post a while back and recently they made another that reminded me so I figured I could just go grab it. I wasn't sure if it was limited to a few bookstore chains that would have it so I figured there had to be somewhere in Akihabara with it in stock.

I ended up going to the Shosen Book Tower which has 8 or 9 levels of books to peruse through. And I did eventually find the planner (on floor 7 IIRC) after asking for help locating it (twice lol)! Surprisingly, I think I witnessed a crime too while I was there (˶°ㅁ°)!!

I was riding the escalator back down to the first floor to checkout and at this particular store, the escalator is the pretty narrow so people couldn't really easily pass you side-by-side like on the bigger ones. As I was halfway down one of the levels, I heard some like yell behind me and steps rushing down the stairs so I instictively moved to the side and looked back and the dude ran past me and then started down the next escalator. I had quickly noticed that a staff had been chasing him but I wonder if I should have tried to stop him or anything. I'm not sure I could have reacted fast enough to know what was happening anyway but it really was a shock. The staff didn't pass me on the escalator and I was a bit shocked so I think I was in her way but another staff on the level below began following the guy anyway.

I didn't see anything weird on the bottom floor so I guess he got away? Or maybe he was just being weird and didn't steal anything but running down the stairs made people think he did? I'll probably never know lol

The planner is nice because it lets me write down my hopes and plans for the next 1000 years as if I were going to live as long as Frieren

The pages have illustrations throughout so you'd get to see Frieren, Fern, Stark, and everyone else as you make your plans. So maybe that would keep people motivated to actually plan properly!

It's a 2026 planner so I won't get to make use of it right away but I am glad to be prepared (not that I used a planner previously!)

Once I got home I actually realized it was looking like I actually had quite a lot of stuff. I decided to pre-emptively re-pack everything that would potentially go into my luggage (all my clothes and daily stuff can go into my carry-on) and wow that was a great idea. It turns out I'm literally out of space. Once I fit in all the figures I bought today and a few crane game ones from the other day and a few books and collab merch and my backpack and things I can't fit in my carry-on, it's basically the exact volume of my luggage

Well this is a little problematic since I literally have 30 more days of being here. Maybe having no space will prevent me from making frivolous purchases? I did think of one possible solution though. If I buy a home here in the next 30 days I can just store all of this stuff there?? On the bright side I've packed one month early.

But now I definitely can't buy the figure in the first picture. Or this other cool figure I saw today

But at 1/4 scale I'm doubtful there is any luggage that could contain such magesty