[Blog] Kyoto Travels Part 3 (Patreon)

Let me start this blog entry with photos from the morning buffet I'm enjoying at my lodging. 

It's pretty simple but does the job since I've been craving for fresh salad. I suppose in fancier places, you might have gotten a traditional Japanese style Washoku. 

Oh willow tree o willow where would my adventures take me today? I passed by this beauty as I walked around with little plans but haven't the faintest idea where I was heading to. It was a beautiful morning and despite it being a bit chilly earlier, I was starting to warm up under the sun. 

I really took a lot of photos of Kyoto's streets. But you can see a lot of other tourists do the same as they wander around taking in the sights. But for this entry I think I'll hold back a little on the photos compared to my last entry. 

I actually thought this was a prop until I got real close and took snaps of it until it woke up to the camera sounds from below. 

Hello Karasu-san~!

I passed through the Torii and entered the grove that led to Shimogamo Shrine. 

Main entrance of Shimogamo Shrine and in the corner of my eyes I saw something that probably didn't quite fit in with the rest of the Shrine... 

Meet Sakura Miko, a Vtuber from Hololive. I don't know too much about Hololive Vtubers but I think she is placed here because she is formerly a Shrine Maiden at the Grand Virtual Sakura Shrine. I did try and google why she's placed here but there isn't any documents explaining that. 

I saw several groups of guys stand next to her to take commemorative photos. 

Finally found some real Miko in a Shinto Shrine!! This was in a Souvenir shop selling various charms. I think I probably would have bought some charms too had there been English tags explaining what each charm was for as there were numerous charms here. 

I... think this is a charm too. Took a photo because it looked like a cute kitty charm. 

I had a lot more photos of the shrine despite some areas being closed off to the public but I think I'll move on to the next part of this blog where I fully embrace the otaku culture that is anime and manga haha. 

Back to Teramachi-dori where I spotted both Animate and Melonbooks.

So now I've visited Animate in Taiwan, Korea and Japan. I'm sure in my younger days back in highschool, visiting this place would've been like Luffy and his pirate friends finding the REAL One Piece (which they still haven't found after 25 years). 

But now, the merch they sell here didn't seem to interest me as much if at all and you'll see what I mean. 

Just thought it was funny to see Ayato at the entrance. Not surprising at all since I highly suspected Animate in Japan to display Inazuma characters over the newer character from Sumeru and Fontaine. It's oddly very... Japanese in a sense. 

Glowsticks you frequently see from Idol anime like Oshi no Ko, Zombieland Saga, IM@S and so on. Though... I wonder why they're being sold here of all places. It's usually seen at live concerts though I suppose holographic concerts by Miku and Hololive spread them over into anime goods stores now. 

SPYxFamilly is still going strong and I see merch showing up not just in Animate. I wonder if I should draw Yor again. 

And I found the Genshin Merch corner. 

That's pretty much all the Genshin stuff but... for some reason there was a severe lack of Raiden Shogun merch. I often thought an Animate store located in Japan would probably sell a good number of Raiden Shogun merchandise since she is one of the most popular characters introduced in Inazuma. Yet I found staggeringly low number of Ei on the shelves. 

Which got me thinking... I wonder if Japanese Genshin community dislikes Raiden Shogun for some reason. 

Genshin perfume for those who desire to know what their favorite Genshin character smells like and wear their fragrance. And funnily enough, no Raiden Shogun perfume could be found. 

What the hell Japan? What's going on here?! xD 

After reading your comments from the last time I posted pictures of Animate in Busan I really looked around to see if there were anything at all I truly wanted to buy but despite spending what seemed like an hour spread across Animate and bunch of other anime goods stores, I really couldn't find anything at all. 

Maybe I grew out of it but it all seemed like beautiful trinkets that I'll probably place on my desk and forget about. 

If you were here, would you have gotten anything from the photos I shared? 

And just across the street was Melonbooks and a Figure store of which I forgot the name of. 

Since it's been a while I've checked out a proper figurine place, I decided to check it out. 

Funnily enough, I've never seen Dakimakura with my own eyes until I browsed through this store and saw them hanging next to the stairs as I went upstairs. Thinking back to the poll results on my twitter few days ago, it got me thinking about making one myself again. That will be a project for 2024 hopefully. 

Okay okay, I confess maybe I still haven't grown out of the allures of buying a figurine yet. I'm certain had I stayed any longer in that store, I would have bought like 5 figurines at least and not the small sort either like Nendoroids. 

Right after looking around, I head through the elevator and entered level 3 and into Melonbooks. I don't know if I told you guys but I actually released a Genshin fanart book through a dojin circle based in Japan and they've sold some of my books through Melonbooks so I wanted to check them out and see if I could spot anything different from the other anime goods store I've been to. 

Given that it's a bookstore of course they'd have a lot more books than any other places combined! They had a much wider range than Animate and good portion of it sold artbooks like this from independent artist like myself. 

I've found the Genshin corner but looks like they stopped selling my book haha. It was still fun to see pics of it floating around on the internet when it was released. 

I picked up one artbook from this place as both souvenir and because I thought the content would help me with finding inspirational ideas for future content regarding Alma and Sasha next year. 

Well, I think that's pretty much all the photos I wanted to share for my travels in Kyoto! Hope you guys enjoyed a glimpse of my journey, I might try this again another time if I visit another country.