Adabana is one of mine!
Hope you enjoy, despite the grisly subject matter 😅

other minor but cherished finds:

-diecast Bulma bike from Tomica
-sniper in fake earphones gachapon
-3D Hiroshige dioramas
-to-scale Gold and Typhlosion

me: naw, I shouldn't... we already have to break out the Jaoan Trip Spare Duffel(TM) for everything else...
gf: vacuum it.
me: but
gf: vakoom

I coveted giant Pory every time I saw it in a crane game (impossible to win; never tried) then found it secondhand in a Book-Off for 1500 yen (< 10 USD) right at the end of the trip

poor thing had to come home in a vacuum bag

"but they live on a giant, planet-esque mothership that doesn't orbit a star!" I point out.
"how are they calculating years, and age? what's their average lifespan? is a forty-year old like a child?!" I shout.

My questions go unanswered by the gaping void where rigorous worldbuilding would belong.

it's really a loc issue, since there's no way a reader without that specific bg knowledge about JPN society could connect the dots.

I'll handwave with:
"Without a lifelong job like everyone else, all they can do is [etc.]"

this is key, b/c it reveals something implicit about the alien society too!

I wish I'd taken some gross pictures but the right half of my body was covered in sickly purple bruises for two weeks after that (still worth it) pillar crawl. life as someone made of glass and paper ain't easy

*sees Japan install a female Trump whose whole agenda is making immigration way more restrictive/grueling and blaming immigrants for the woes of a populace suffering from problems entirely home-baked by the right wing*

surely now is a good time to muse on living in Japan again yeah

good thing, too, since one of them will have to be my visa guarantor and submit an appraisal of me to the increasingly nationalistic/anti-移民/hateful JPN govt, if/when we go that route :)

tangential:
every Horikoshi post where he did a doodle and said アニメこのあとすぐ (ubiquitous stock phrase) is auto-TL'd as
"Anime right after this!"

after "this"? after what?
no, it means "airing soon"

everything produced by LLMs is contemptible, sub-amateur-grade garbage, as is anyone who uses them

and the auto-translate does "Ochako," which has always been a dead giveaway of piracy/unofficial releases. as opposed to the author's own chosen spelling, Ochaco

implicitly undermines the author's agency, with no solution, since these are posts from years ago, grandfathered into auto-LLM bullshit

grok deepfake revengeporn CSAM is number one bad thing, lest anyone be like "so you hate waffles??"

many things are bad at once, to varying degrees

Permanent, I think!
Half the stuff in the gift shop was based around those two haniwa

Costco hot dog, eat your heart (and other assorted animal parts) out

food court locations too, obviously.

I appreciated the drink bar option, so one can try the lingonberry soda, pear soda, and a self-serve cappucino for only 200 yen