japantown shenanigans...

I haven't been to San Francisco's Japantown for a year or more now, so it was interesting to wander over there and check out some of the cooler stuff, apart from the obvious (one of the stores has just about the best game soundtrack section I've ever seen, including the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles OST - impressive!)

On the weird/wacky end of things, there were some beautiful Japanese metal puzzles called the Hanayama Newtype Puzzle Ring. They all involved objects you needed to prise apart, re-arrange, or otherwise manipulate physically - here's some of the ones they were selling in Japantown, for about 15 bucks each. The workmanship really stands out on them, although they may be 'solve and forget' in terms of playability :)

There was also some cool Japanese-language magazines in the Kinokuniya bookstore, particularly Cosmo magazine, which is a cosplay (dressing up like your favorite anime/videogame character) magazine that really looks to be aimed at girls, complete with make-up and costume tips, as well as lots of glossy fashion shoots. Most of the featured costumes seemed to be from videogames, too, which was definitely intriguing. I knew cosplay was massive in Japan (the amount of cosplayers hanging out when I visited the Tokyo Game Show in '99 was insane), but I hadn't seen any of the really high-end publications devoted to it.