Korean Otakuism
June 14th, 2007 by Soda
My hotel room, no otakuism yet.
An occasional post from the guy doing the background work of AniAri, I remind you that I’m actually alive =0 For most of this summer, I’ll be spending my time at Hong Kong, as I am now. Which pretty much means I won’t be able to see any ongoing/new anime series or anything like that ;_; I’m anime deprived right now, but I’m surviving. And in the past few days, I’ve spent my time in Korea, and it was quite the experience. I’ll share some of the more otaku parts of my adventure with you. Oh, and I apologize in advance, all my pictures were taken with my camera phone…
Tsukamoto Tenma in the background, but I want my Yakumo!!
One of the things I got to see at Korea was a store with a huge section of it devoted to anime figurines. I don’t know about elsewhere, but where I live in Canada, it’s rare to find such a store. Whole lotta Gundam models, as to be expected, but I wasn’t that interested in them. I didn’t think that the employees appreciated this otaku taking pictures, so I only snapped a few, semi-discreetly. Smooth, real smooth.
I took this picture really far away, since it was really close to the cashier counter. Sorry for the QUALITY =S
As I make my way to the back of the store, I see this display, having many F/SN characters. There’s Rin, Lancer, and Garcher, but none other than Seiba takes the spotlight. There’s Swimsuit Seiba, Meido Seiba, Armoured Seiba, and Casual Seiba. Bunnygirl Haruhi is giving us the thumbs up, while Swimsuit Mizuho is showing off her stuff. Disappointingly, THIS Mizuho isn’t a trap =(
A collection of junk
A little further down, we see some Junk hanging out at the back. She might not be a complete Rozen Maiden, but she certainly is big! If you look closely, you’ll see that she completely towers over little Desu in the background. No Boku, but at least there’s that… uhh, strange dancing guy back there. And a Swimsuit Naru, if I’m not mistaken.
Wall to wall, full of figurines
Here we hit some more F/SN, but zomg. I didn’t notice it when I was at the store, but looking at the picture now… is that.. SADER!?!? The very top right of the picture, I’m almost certain that’s Sader. I don’t know about her packaging, but that certainly looks like her pose. Can anybody confirm or deny? To come across such a rare gem, I truly am blessed. I can die a fulfilled life =D
Mi-Mi-Mikuru Beamu!
A few Haruhi related figurines. Beside the Beaming Mikuru is a figurine with HOT plastered on it. Pfft, that’s no Shana! And I kept an eye out for Shirukii’s beloved Alter Fate, but alas, I did not see. That figurine continues to elude him, and I would’ve considered buying it and bringing it back to Canada for him had it been there =0 But so concludes my walk around the store. As I said before, it was bigger, but I didn’t take that many pictures. Perhaps I’m getting excited over nothing, and this is nothing special for the rest of you, but I never get to see figurine stores, so it was a nice experience for me. Otakuism++
About stealing lolicon
While shopping, I saw this little sign inside the store that was discouraging shoplifting. I thought it was interesting, so I took a picture of it, then spent over nine thousand hours in mspaint to make an edit. It’s interesting how lolicon shares so many things with stealing. And I love reason number 7, that even small things count. Oh don’t worry, we lolicons know that all too well =p
That’s my sister in the background, and I think siscon is VERY wrong.
On the way back to the hotel, I bought some Korean alcohol. This is some plum wine or something weird like that. It was… interesting. I bought other Korean drinks, they were equally.. interesting. All the drinks were 14-20% alcohol, cept for the cooler I never got to drink =( And you know, you can just pop into any convenience store and pick up said 20% alcohol? It’s pretty awesome.
What, you never saw a sink before?
Now THIS was an interesting thing. Oh sure, it’s a sink, I’ve seen plenty of those. But how many sinks have you seen that had a JOYSTICK to control the water? Yes, that little joystick to the right of the sink controls the water temperature and pressure. If THAT’S not awesomely nerdy, I don’t know what is. In addition to that, I saw quite a few busses with Ragnarok 2 advertisements on it, and I watched a Starcraft tournament on tv. Sadly, there was a lack of zerg rushes and kekeke-ing.
And finally, to close up, a nighttime scene of the beach. Korea was pretty fun, but now I’m back to experiencing HK. 1.5 more months until I return back to Canada, and 1.5 more months until I can get back to watching anime once again. Think I can hold out? I guess we’ll see x.X
//Soda
18 Responses to “Korean Otakuism”
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lol @ siscon thing, I have a younger sister myself and I don’t find it funny either.
What are/were you doing in Korea with your sis, though? And what’s with the sudden relocation to HK?
I’m a Canadian born Chinese, so going to HK for the summer has never been a rarity for me. As for Korea, my sister was interested in going [I’m sure after watching all her K-dramas and the such], so we took a tour around there. We started at Seoul, then travelled to the East coast, then came back to Seoul, all in 5 days.
Now, all I need to do is go to Japan again =D
I don’t think that’s Sader. The katakana says Saber and it’s got the shiny sticker on the box.
I was stationed in Korea when I was i n the army. Where are you at? I f you are in Seoul, then you are going to have a blast.
It seems siscon only appeals to those who don’t have sisters D= myself being one of those people, I’m safe.
And I think zanarky is right, I browsed around and it seems like that is the proper Saber, not the knockoff Sader.
Great looking loli sign lol…I know how you feel about being deprived from anime, when I went away for a week I felt so deprived, especially since I left my charger for my video player at home…I got really depressed lol not really. But hey that Korean figure shop should have got your anime fill for a bit..they even have the latest figures based on what I can see. I know how you feel, I want a Yakumo figure too lol and too bad theres no Shana.
gah! you’re in the far east? And you can’t get anime? Are you disabled?
Why don’t you just goto a anime shop in HK? I pretty sure theres a few scattered around Mong Kok…. (not that I remember where! :-P)
Buy a few DVDs - anime problem solved!
@teeif-When I went to Hong Kong there were not many anime related items and this was just about a month ago. All I saw that was anime related were manga books at most magazine stands and a few posters related shops. Nothing hardcore like what Shirukii found in in Korea. Of course I didn’t see all of Hong Kong so there maybe an anime store somewhere.
@ Teeif: What Soda’s missing so much is more so the ongoing anime of this season, so no dice on getting any of that over there in stores.
@ AS:
>> Nothing hardcore like what Shirukii found in in Korea
It’s not me over there =P It’s Soda, contrary to popular belief, there are actually TWO authors here =O
@zanarky: Aww, popping my bubble of a dream =( I guess it may be real, if both you and Shirukii think so. But is the name “Sader” real? I always thought the English otakus just nicknamed that to make fun of it, and that it wasn’t officially named Sader. But indeed, if it was fake, I’d expect it to have a slightly misspelled name.
@Big Wheezy: I was part of a tour group, and we started off in Seoul, then worked our way to the East coast, and then came back to Seoul. It was pretty fun, and really intense once we got to the coast. Lets just say, eating live octopus was a new experience for me, lol. How long did you stay at Korea?
@Shirukii: Yes, all that have sisters realize how wrong it is. So it seems like siscon will always only be an impossible fantasy to those who want it. I guess this world isn’t TOTALLY messed up.
@AS: Yesss, a fellow Yakumo supporter. Let us roam the streets and take down every Eri supporter out there. Their precious ojou-sama won’t stand a chance.
@Teef: I’ve actually brought with me a whole lotta burned dvds crammed with anime episodes. The thing is that I haven’t been able to get to them, I’ve been too busy. But with a break in the action just yesterday, I caught around 3 episodes of School Rumble. Yakumoooooooooooo!!!!!!!!! <3 But yes, my ongoing series are all stalled.
And I’m not Shirukii ;_;
Have a blast on your vacation Soda! :)
Huh, I thought Korea’d have more otaku related stuff than just that.
@Soda and Shirukii-Ooops my bad, gomen gomen on my part, forgive me.
@Kanon_fan82: Thanks, I most definitely will. Are you planning on doing anything for the summer?
@Zeroblade: Well I only spent a few days in Korea, and I wasn’t there for the sole purpose of finding otakuism. It was just a pleasant surprise to come across. Besides, they may be too busy with their anticipation of SC2 =0
@AS: It’s quite alright, don’t worry about it. I’m used to that happening by now. I’m not anon, I forgive =p
I’m going to Japan (2nd time this year). last time i spent 12 days just in Tokyo, it’s a great city and i like it there…most of the time :D
This time my girlfriend and me will take a little Tiur through Japan to see some other cities. And, i’m really looking forward to it, we will also have a trip to South Korea for 4-5 days, hoping to meet some old friends there. YA-HA!
PS: forget about grammar and stuff like that… :D
@ Soda:
No not really…….I went to Prince Edward Island to visit my grandparents over the May 2-4, but that’s about it….
I got accepted to grad school this week (Trinity College @ U of T) :)…I’m still waiting to hear back from Huron (in London, ON) which is my first choice……
Needles to say, I’m saving up my pennies this summer :P…..School is expensive OTZ……..
I WANT THOSE DOLLS!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOLZ (>O
I don’t think EVERYONE who has a sister realizes how wrong it is, they just won’t say it if they don’t. I don’t have a sister so I can’t disprove it (yet) but I’m pretty sure there’s nothing wrong with it. As long as there is love!