3 weeks

I'm both super excited and scared at the same time, because after three weeks I'm going to Tokyo for the first time in my life (with my mom)! I've been trying to save money like crazy, I even worked two jobs at one point. I have also sold away a bunch of old stuff I have no use for in order to get some extra income.

While I am mostly excited, I am still a little worried over some things.

• First off, the flight itself. It takes 9-10 hours to fly to Tokyo from Helsinki. How the heck am I going to get the time to pass?
• The time difference. Japan is seven hours ahead of Finland. Like when it's the middle of the night in Finland, but in Japan it's already next morning. I hope I won't be too tired to function.
• The language barrier. I don't speak or understand Japanese except for the few words here and there you'll eventually learn if you watch enough anime. 
• The amount of people in Tokyo, the thought alone scares me.

***

We're going to stay in Tokyo for eleven days and I'm having a real hard time to decide what to pack with me. I'm going to need my bags as empty as possible when we go there, because they are going to be filled when I come back. I'm not going to lie, I'm probably going to shop like crazy!

I probably will buy a bunch of random stuff just because "they looked nice" and such, but I have created a shopping list of things I want to buy, that should take top priority above any impulse buys.

Wish list/Stuff to buy, in no particular order :

-Dragonball Z, on the top of my wish list is a character I don't have in my collection, (or I do, but not in the form I want) and that is COOLA!!  I need to find at least one! And of course I can't say no, if I happen to find a Freeza figure I like. I'd also like to pick up some of the new characters from Dragonball Super such as Beerus, Monaka, Hit, Caulifla, Zen-oh and so forward!

- Moomin figures, Finnish Moomin toys/figures aren't really the greatest looking, I'm looking forward to finding something super cute and perhaps a Japanese moomin mug would also be a nice.

-Pokémon, I've been thinking  3 plushies would be nice and lots and lots of TOMY figures! The plushies have a high chance of being Eeveelutions, because they are one of the cutest things in plush form. As for the TOMY figures, anything goes! 

 -Star Wars, I find anything Darth Maul, I'm buying it! If I were to pretend to limit my shopping, SW would be the first to get off my shopping list, but since you never know what you'll find....

-Yakuza (Ryu ga Gotoku), This is getting kind of specific, but I want to find the Japanese version of the game Yakuza 3 for the PS3, because the western release had so much unnecessarily cut content. Oh! And I also want a Kazuma Kiryuu figure!

 -Doujinshi, I have a small collection of doujins, but what I'm missing is a DBZ doujin! I might be wrong, but to my understanding all doujins are in the adult section of the shops regardless if they contain riské stuff or not. I like my doujins as parodies or light romances and not straight up porn, thank you very much. The worst thing is, you have to judge the comic by its cover, since you aren't allowed to open the plastic pockets they put the comics in. So you might get hentai, or maybe not. I hate it when there is an innocent looking cover, but the inside is anything but innocent.

 -Gachapon, Capsule toys! I LOVE gachapon, any coins I get are going into these machines!

 -As I was writing this, the idea came to me. Wouldn't it be awesome If I found some Dragon Quest 8 figures as well? Especially that Jessica figure that would complete my collection...

Aside from shopping, the other things we've planned to do in Tokyo, we're still a bit undecided. We've talked about the Natural History museum, Madame Tussauds, Tokyo Disney Resort, Ueno Zoo and much much more. Luckily, there is still time to finalize our plans. One thing is sure, we are going to the permanent Pokémon Cafe! That should be fun! I also want to check out the Moomin Bakery & Café. At first, eleven days sounded plentiful, but as you research things to do in Tokyo you realize how short that time actually is. The main point is to have fun and not getting stressed over running around the city trying to visit EVERYTHING. We'll just have to decide the few key things which sound the most fun and just enjoy our time there. 

On a final note, I got myself this journal that originally had horribly pink covers. I went a little arty and crafty on it and covered most of the pink with this, I dunno, collage? of pictures I clipped from different magazines. As the cover says now it's my little guide book! I've been writing down information about anything I wish to see & do in Tokyo, useful phrases and everything important regarding our reservations. Once we get there, it will also serve me as a journal. 

I can't wait! (/^▽^)/

Ginga Custom pt. 11

Wow! Has it really been two years since I last made a Ginga custom? I can hardly believe it!

I bought these two Husky appearing ceramic figurines (or whatever the correct term for them would be) at a flea market.  I'm remembering that they cost only 0,70€ each, very cheap indeed! The lying down posed dog reminded me immediately of Fuji, so I really had no other choice but to paint that dog in Fuji's likeness. About the sitting dog, it only made sense to me to paint that one into Riki. 

I painted their eyes in the same style I did Buck's (The Call of the Wild), just because I wanted to try something different. I finished Fuji first, before I moved on to Riki. I ended up painting Riki twice, because the first coat of paint looked wrong. The belly side was far too yellow (this is like the 3rd time I've done that) and the backside too dark. For some reason Riki game me a hard time, I always messed something up! Fuji on the other hand went really smoothly.

I did something extra and made those collars. I folded some masking tape sticky side to sticky side and then painted it. I'm not sure if I like them or not...

"Lapland, Finland" engraved on the backside of both dogs

Barbie - the Icon exhibition

A temporary exhibition in the National Museum of Finland.

From 27. April  till 26. August 2018

I was looking forward to visit this exhibition, but I had a hard time finding the time to do so! Finally, when I found the time and energy, I dragged my mom with me to the museum. We went there on the 18th of August (Saturday) which is to say one week before the exhibition would end.

I don't know about you, but when I think about a museum, I don't imagine there being big crowds and waiting in line involved that much, rather almost empty rooms and a quiet place. Once we stepped through the main entrance  we were in for a shock. There was a huge damn line of people going across the room! The cost of the entry tickets (which are stickers actually) was 15€ per person, we got them without having to wait for too long.  We asked the cashier if there's been this kind of crowd here before and she was like "I've never seen anything like this" and she also told us she had to give a refund to someone who got tired of waiting in line and left the museum without seeing the exhibition. Yikes! Never expected to hear something like this happening in a museum! My mom and me ended up waiting around 20-30 minutes before we got inside the exhibition hall. Little did we realize our waiting had only just begun!

Obviously the dolls where inside glass cabinets so people wouldn't be able to touch them. There were literally queue's of people to every glass case in sight! If you tried to free roam your way through the exhibition you were without exception blocked by a wall of people. If you wanted a chance to actually SEE the dolls you had to get in line, otherwise the best view you were going to get was a peek.

Maybe they designed the show with mainly children in mind, because there is no other excuse for the display cases for being so damn low. If I wanted to take a closer look at any doll's details, I had to bend half way over to be able to see anything. I can imagine a person with any sort of back pain trying to enjoy this exhibition.  For f*ck's sake at least few of the dolls could have been placed closer to the eye level of an adult person.

And then there were the children..... the place was swarming with them. And not with the good mannered -kind of children. I lost the track of time, but I think we were in the museum something around 1,5 -2 hours, and for that ENTIRE TIME  there was this one kid crying and screaming her lungs out. I can tolerate babies and toddlers crying, but this kid looked like a six year old and she was screaming that she's hurting the ENTIRE TIME and (I'm assuming) the mother did absolutely nothing. Based on the lack of any reaction from the mother, maybe then the kid was just having a tantrum of epic proportions, but for common decency's sake I wish the mom could have at least tried to calm her kid down.

And then there was this other little girl who banged her hands against the display case with this single wedding dress doll inside it till the point the doll was shaking and I was afraid the doll was going to fall over. Again, the kid's mother stood right next to her and did absolutely nothing.

On the brighter side of things, while we were still waiting in line for the entry, there was this young boy with his mother and grandmother standing behind us. Now that kid was really nice and calm! He seemed to be actually interested and didn't appear to have been dragged there against his will.

As I mentioned before, I imagine museums to be these quiet and peaceful places, but hell no, that wasn't the case this time. There was this constant background noise of people talking VERY LOUDLY and I could still hear them even if I covered my ears. I swear, I have been to anime conventions quieter than this zoo!

Despite that the whole experience was very uncomfortable to say the least, what did I think of the exhibition itself? The dolls they had on display were really beautiful, but overall I think it was pretty small and (in lack of a better word) shallow and not worth the price of 15€ entry fee. I've only recently gotten interested in fashion dolls again, and even I know that too many things about the history of Barbie were glossed over or nonexistent in the exhibition. All things considered, I was expecting more and this particular museum trip just felt like a let down. Still.... I'm still happy I saw the exhibit and all the pretty dolls, despite everything I just said.

I definitely liked the modern dolls more! I didn't really feel anything towards the earlier Barbie dolls, most of them just look a little creepy to be honest! It's hard to pick one favorite above all the other dolls, but some of my favorites were the dolls based on paintings and real life people/movie characters. Oh! And the "Goddess" dolls with their extravagant costumes were a real treat for the eyes! I really loved the designer illustrations on the wall also, shame there were so few of them.
I did try to snap a photo of any doll I really liked or any with details I found interesting, but there was always this feeling that I need to hurry up and move along because there was always people behind me waiting in line.

random little details

AvP Box

Pretty self explanatory, but anyway, I made a storage/display box for my Aliens, Predator and Aliens vs. Predator comic albums.

I salvaged the materials for the box itself from and old furniture we were getting rid of. My dad helped me with this by cutting the pieces and building the box. I painted the whole thing black and then I decorated each side of the box with a picture collage.

topside & backside

I started making the collages by taking hundreds of pictures of pages/panels from the comics (these books are way too thick to fit in a scanner) and then putting it all together using Photoshop. I printed out the collages and laminated them. I used spray glue to attach them to the sides of the box.

The inside of the box is covered with marble patterned contact film (D-C-Fix). I really would have wanted to use black marble pattern, but I couldn't find it in any shop at the time.

I have to mention how HEAVY this thing is. The books by themselves already weigh 8,6 kg and with the added weight of the box, it comes to a total of 11,2 kg all together. That's crazy!

Here below are the collages I made for better viewing as they didn't register well on my photographs above. As always, right click and open the image in a new tab for full size view.

side 1

side 2

Topside 

Backside