Star Wars Action Figure Shopping with Sean and Ena

Ena and I were in town yesterday, it was a really great warm day with sunny skies. We biked into town and then parked to just walk around a bit. We don't do that often enough, when you are on a bike the city just whizzes past. Not as fast as if you are in a car, but still pretty fast. It is nice to wander around on foot at a slow pace sometimes.
We ended up at Canal City. This could very well be the only mall in the world that I will admit to liking. It is outdoor and an interesting place for a stroll. A lot of people hate it for the tacky pastel colors they did it in. Personally I think there is a time and place for tacky pastel colors and somehow Canal City manages to squeeze into that perfectly.

One of the things I like about the place is that if you go on a weekend they will probably have some sort of free entertainment going on in the amphitheatre. Yesterday they had some acrobats putting on a show, which we spent about half an hour watching:
We had lunch there and then wandered around downtown a bit, strolling through Tenjin. We came to my favorite store in all of the world, Mandarake:
Mandarake is kind of a nerd paradise. Its a big store that sells comics, video games, toys and other nerd-related paraphernalia. They just moved to this new location last month. Most of the stuff is of no interest to me, but what I really like (mostly just to look at) is the old toys that they have. They remind me a lot of stuff I had when I was a kid, most of which is now considered "vintage" and most of which I threw out or sold back in the late 80s.

Since Ena got a dog she's been letting me make some guilt-free purchases of the sort of useless stuff that pleases me to no end just to have. So I convinced her to let me pop in for a look for any such items that might catch my eye.

As we were wandering the aisles I spotted this in a glass case:
I then suffered an event that medical researchers call "Nerd Breakdown" right there in the store. My conversation with Ena went something like:

Me: "Oh my god! Empire Strikes Back!! Look Ena! Its an Empire Strikes Back action figure! Oh my god oh my god oh my god! Yes! This is awesome! Look, Ena! Look!"

Ena: "Uh-huh."
Me: "Yay! I want it I want it I want it! Gimme gimme! Ooooooh look! It says "Revenge of the Jedi" on it! Oh my god! That is like, what the original title for Return of the Jedi was going to be but then they changed it cuz they, like, thought the word Revenge wasn't appropriate for the Jedi. Anyway, long story, not important. Oh my god oh my god, look at it, Ena, look!"

Ena: (flashing embarrassed smile at passersby) "Mmmmh, yeah."

Me: "OK! Yay! I want it I want it I want it I want it. Yes. YES!"

Ena: (looking at watch) "Fine."

This went on for a few minutes until I calmed down and came out of it.

I think the world of North American males born in the early to mid 70s can generally be divided into two broad categories. Those who still have their childhood Star Wars action figures and those who lost them decades ago. I'm pretty sure that covers everybody as I've never met a guy my age who didn't have Star Wars action figures as a kid. I fall into the latter category.

For us, life since the 80s has largely been spent reminiscing about our lost childhood possessions and thinking about how awesome it would be to have them again. Its something the kids who still have their childhood Star Wars action figures just can't understand because they've never been there.

I think this explains my nerd breakdown at Mandarake. And the fact that this thing really is cool. I had him when I was a kid. He is a robot bounty hunter who appears briefly in the Empire Strikes Back for about 2 seconds in the background and has no spoken lines. Due to the peculiar logic of the collective Star Wars nerd mind, this means that he is deserving of about 745 different toys, comics, video games, full length novels and an Off-Broadway production devoted just to him.

I like the back of the box. It has a picture of the other Star Wars action figures out there:
I remember looking at this exact same picture about 28 or 29 years ago and picking out the ones I wanted (I consistently concluded that I wanted all of them). Somebody had cut out the proof of purchase on this one, which you could send in 6 of to get an Admiral Ackbhar figure. I remember doing this as a kid with my Dad too. We accumulated enough of them to order three figures in total (4-Lom, the Emperor and Niem Numbh - I can't remember my own phone number but somehow my brain has seen fit to store this useless fact for almost 3 decades).
I'm not sure why this thing still exists in its box. It really should have been played with by someone back in the day rather than just sitting there for all these years.

Anyway, I went a bit overboard and bought more than just the one:
I may be developing a problem here.

Dazaifu

It was a really nice, sunny Sunday today so Ena and I rode our bikes all the way down to Dazaifu, the ancient capital of Kyushu. I cycled down there by myself last fall, but Ena has been pretty excited to give her new bicycle a spin so we made the big trip.

It is actually not a particularly nice bike ride to get to Dazaifu, through a lot of ugly urban sprawl, but once you get there it is a great place to go for a bike around.

We stopped at the ruins of the old government headquarters from the 7th century, its in a really beautiful setting with a lot of trees and flowers:
There isn't much left of the buildings, just the foundation stones. Ena thought the lotus flowers were the best part:

After that we went to the two neighboring temples, which are really nice and also date from the 7th century. Because they are a bit off the beaten path they get spared the crush of the tourist buses that hit the main shrine in town and are pretty pleasant, quiet places even on a beautiful Sunday:
Our bikes out front:
We also stopped at a little hilltop shrine:
After that we went into central Daziafu and stopped at Komyozenji, a really beautiful little Zen temple with one of the most beautiful gardens I have ever seen. Its a pretty quiet place despite being in central Dazaifu and you can just sit and enjoy the tranquil garden:
Wouldn't you like to have a room with a view like this in your home:

One of my favorite things about Dazaifu is that everywhere you go there are these tremendous ancient camphor trees with massive trunks. Some of these must be close to a thousand years old. This is Ena in front of one of the bigger ones:
We made an obligatory stop by the main shrine, Dazaifu Tenmangu, which was packed with people. I really like the gate to the shrine:
Through which you can see the main building at the other end of a big courtyard:
This guy is in the gate's guardhouse:
There are some picturesque arched bridges on the way in to the shrine:
After a day cycling around Dazaifu we came back to Fukuoka and decided to have dinner in town. We stopped by Canal City, which we hadn't been to in a while. We went in through an entrance we hadn't used before and saw something really cool: 200 TVs displaying a bunch of random crap:
And we had a camera, AND we had sunglasses! Oh the fun we had posing for pictures:
Great way to end a great day!

Meeting friends

Our former student Akiyo from Himeji was in Fukuoka with her friend Hoyo so we spent the day with them. Akiyo and her relatives were some of our closest friends in Himeji and we haven't seen them for a few years so it was cool to catch up. We met them at Canal City (seems we always end up there):


We stopped for coffee and cake in a cafe:
And posed behind a Ramen stand:
Finally we went and had Motsu nabe. "Motsu" means "cow's colon" so you can guess how much I enjoyed the meal, but we had a really good time:

Downtown Fukuoka - rained out

We had a day off together on Sunday and tried spending it downtown. Unfortunately it stated pouring rain in the afternoon, but not before we had done a few things. First we took a walk along one of the rivers near Nakasu Kawabata station:
Then we happened along a shrine which had this absolutely massive float (a portable shrine basically) that they use in festivals:
Then off to Canal City to escape the rain (I think my expression is "nonplussed"):
We stopped at a cafe on one of the upper floors for a drink and cake:
And then we went to see nearby Sumiyoshi shrine and get our fortune told. Thats where the rain started to come down pretty hard so we called it a day after that:

Canal City and Downtown Fukuoka

Yesterday we went to Canal City, which is one of Japan's modern architectural wonders. Its a bunch of buildings centred around a small canal that together form a huge outdoor shopping mall with a lot of interesting vistas. Its a fairly photogenic place.

We also biked around downtown Fukuoka, which is a bustling urban centre. These are some pictures taken from a bridge in the Nakasu district near Canal City:



I'd like to go there sometime at night to see what it looks like when all those signs are lit up. Must be quite the site.