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A big acquisition of Macross models!

So when I went to the Winter Wonder Festival in February, my friend Adrian who works for Big West told me that they have a stash of Macross models that model companies give them as free samples. He said that I was welcome to as many as I’d like, as long as I just pay for shipping cash on delivery.

I was hoping that I might be able to meet up with Adrian when I visited Yokohama a few weeks ago, but that wasn’t possible. Instead though, he told me that day that he’d take pictures of the contents of those three big boxes of Macross kits and give me first dibs on what I’d like. So I gave him a list of models for me and some friends of mine and on August 25th, I got a big-ass box of Macross neatness.

So all of these kits are by Wave. On top is the 1:100 VF-1S Strike Valkyrie. The next row down is the 1:100 VF-1S/A Super Valkyrie “Multiplex” (it can be built as the Valkyries flown by Roy, Hikaru, and Max) and VF-1S/A Super Valkyrie Battroid Multiplex. Under that is the 1:72 VF-171EX Nightmare Plus and under that is the VF-171EX Armored Nightmare Plus. I’ve never seen Macross Frontier, but the VF-171EX Nightmare is such an incredible fighter jet, and I now have both versions! When I first saw this Nightmare kit at the All-Japan Hobby Show, I really liked it but I figured that I’d never get this kit because it’s so expensive.

This is what I sent to my friend Gary in the USA. He got another of the VF-1S/A Multiplexes, a VF-171EX Nightmare kit as well, and Hasegawa’s Miria resin garage kit figure, Bandai’s 1:100 YF-21, and a Hasegawa decal sheet for 1:72 scale Valkyries.

I’m sure that the Big West employees are welcome to take what they like for themselves. These are kits that are leftover and I figure that since they’re just taking up space at their office, I did a favor by letting Adrian offload so many onto me!

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A family summer barbecue in the cool forest of Katashina, Gunma Prefecture

Getting away from the city and into the cool mountains of Gunma Prefecture, once again we rented a barbecue at the trout farm in Katashina. I think this is our fourth time doing so. When you rent a BBQ there, they provide you with the coal logs and some burning coals to get you started.

I’d posted earlier about how Ulan is a master at catching dragonflies. So as always, she caught more.

The best time to visit the trout farm is in summertime, when it’s pleasantly a couple of degrees cooler. This time, it was raining in the morning but when we arrived there after noon, the skies were clear and the air felt cool. But even if it rains, the picnic tables and barbecues are under tents.

As always, we brought a lot of food with us and slowly barbecued it over the span of a few hours. Chicken, pork ribs, lamb chops, steak, shiitake and king oyster mushrooms, red/yellow/green peppers, zucchini, corn, eggplant and more. We slowly cooked the eggplant over a long time to make it soft and juicy. We had to wrap it up before 4pm though, as that is when the trout farm starts to close.

When you catch trout at the trout farm, they’ll clean the fish for you and you could have them roast the fish for you right there if you’d like. A couple of years ago, they used to have a playground but this area is what they transformed into the rental barbecue area. Since we live in an apartment, we can’t just barbecue food on our balcony lest we get in trouble.

We brought home plenty of cooked food and slowly ate it over the next several days. It was a beautiful day.

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A road trip to Yokohama, August 2026

I had 9 days off during the summer, from 8th to the 16th. There were a couple of open campus events at colleges my daughter Ulan is interested in attending in the Tokyo area. For the first weekend, we drove to Yokohama. The car navi took us through the Tokyo area. I’ve always been scared of driving Tokyo’s Shutokou (首都高) expressway system in Tokyo because it’s complicated like a spider web, like concentric circles with spokes. I made one mistake and took an exit instead of merging onto an interchange ramp. The car navi recalculated how to get back onto the expressway. We ended up drive past the imperial palace and Tokyo Station in the Ginza area before getting back on. 

In Yokohama, we parked the car in a big parking garage in the Minato Mirai 21 area. Mayu and Ulan went to the college campus nearby while I took the subway up to Yokohama Station. I went to Yellow Submarine, a hobby store. There are actually two locations, but the first one is just card games and Warhammer stuff. At the second location I bought some neat supplies.

I saw these Evangelion figure model kits by Blokees for the first time. They also had several Hasegawa resin anime figure garage kits. (Click the pictures for close-up views.)

Lots of Macross model kits there too!

I went to a pizza place called Shakey’s. They had a buffet for lunch, so it was all-you-can-eat food and all-you-can-drink booze. I had macaroni and cheese with plenty of pizza slices, plus some beers and gin and sodas. Pretty nice.

When I met back up with the two lunatics, we went to the Cup Noodle museum. That was pretty interesting. Admission is only about 500 yen.

There are walls of noodle products, featuring so many limited edition versions. Here are some Hokuto no Ken (Fist of the North Star) cup ramen products.

After this, you watch an animated documentary about Momofuku Ando, the inventor of instant ramen. He went from being a down-on-his-luck inventor to becoming world-famous. I didn’t know this, but Chicken Ramen was his first invention. He created instant ramen by frying the noodles (and I assume freeze drying them). Later while visiting America, he got the suggestion from Americans to put the instant ramen into a cup because they put it into cups and eat it with forks. Thus, Cup Noodle was invented. Before he died, he invented space ramen for astronauts to enjoy.

Ramen-inspired modern art. Pretty wild.

So here is Mr. Ando, pictured with geniuses like Plato, Beethoven, Charlie Chaplain (?), that SOB Thomas Edison, and Albert Einstein. OK, so where is Nikolai Tesla? They have that rotten bastard Edison but no Tesla? Ridonk.

After that, we went across the street to Yokohama World Porters. When I first visited World Porters 26 years ago, the first floor was a giant import foods grocery store. It’s now a multinational food court with Indian curry, Vietnamese pho, and so on. I had a Hawaiian style avocado hamburger.

The floors upstairs consist of a typical shopping mall. There’s a Village Vanguard there! (I madea post about Village Vanguard on my Greg’s Life section.) Look at the neat video game stuff! And as always, there are handmade displays made by employees. Thus, each of these stores have their own unique displays. I bought a Pac-Man keychain for my car.

So after shopping and eating, we decided to head home. Here is Landmark Tower, standing tall in the early evening sky. It was a nice day.

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Neat Puyo Puyo stuff found at Daiso

Neat Puyo Puyo loot from Daiso! I was at Daiso this week and noticed that they had these items. I’ve seen Puyo Puyo items at Daiso before, but these are new. I didn’t buy everything, but this is what I got.

First up, let’s look at these sticky notes. I bought both varieties. On the left is a drop pattern of Puyo Puyos and on the right it’s like a plastic model with Arle, Carbunkle, and Puyos on a sprue! Retrogaming + plastic models = awesome.

This is “design paper,” so basically origami paper. Here below are the designs:

This is “mini design paper,” which is small origami paper. Here you see the same plamo motif as before, but with darker colors since these aren’t sticky notes meant to be written upon. Neat stuff is neat.

EDIT August 12th: I saw even more Puyo Puyo stuff at another Daiso and got these items.

Letter paper, which comes with envelopes. Cute!

Stickers, masking tape, and a mini letter/envelope set. Neat.

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Numata Matsuri 2026

Last night was the final night for the Numata Matsuri. Seeing so many people I know and talking to them makes me feel good. Cheerful greetings from students who are excited to see me. It’s always a great time. The funny thing is that since I really only know these kids in the context of school and them wearing their school uniforms, the girls especially can be difficult to recognize because they dress up so beautifully with their hair done differently, wearing makeup, and wearing summer yukata robes. This year, my daughter Ulan and I discovered cheese balls. Oh man, those were so good with ketchup and Korean-style honey mustard. I think I’d like to visit the Takasaki Matsuri at the end of this month.

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Radiant Silvergun on Steam with an 8BitDo M30 gamepad

Last summer I posted a video on my YouTube and Odysee channels of testing out this LE Earthion Saturn-style gamepad by 8BitDo on Steam via Linux Mint as well as RetroPie. I recently bought Radiant Silvergun on Steam and it works great on Bazzite (I couldn’t get it to work on my Mint desktop). My desktop computer does not have built-in Bluetooth, so I bought a USB Bluetooth dongle. The results were a bit crappy. The controller works fine using the USB cable, but I have had many problems with my install of Steam on my desktop ever since I upgraded to a bigger HD. After a while, Steam forgets that the controller is connected and I have to reboot. When using the Bluetooth, the controls are floaty and is not very responsive. Fortunately with my Optiplex minicomputer with Bazzite as its OS. I am relieved, because I thought that the controller had some compatibility issue with Linux. The problem is either with the USB dongle or (most likely) the bad install of Steam I have on the Mint desktop.

RSG on Steam features English subtitles! I was not expecting this. Mayu-chan bought this game for my Saturn back in 1997 for only 3,000 yen, when she was still my pen-pal! (Or was that in 1999?) It’s one of my most-prized Saturn games in my collection.

However, the game is too awkward playing on a Playstation-style controller (I have a Logitech F310), but if you’ve played the game on the Saturn then an 8BitDo M30 Saturn-style retro gamepad works exactly as you’d expect. After nearly 3 decades of playing RSG, I know the buttons by heart and I was expecting that I’d have to configure the buttons to get it to feel normal to me. It turns out that it wasn’t necessary at all!

I’ve tried this M30 controller out on many games and even when Steam says that the controller may not work, it actually works fine most of the time. So this is great news as it works on nearly all of the shmups I’ve played it on so far, as well as Saturn games I own that I’ve repurchased on Steam. King of Fighters, Metal Slug, Time Gal, Gunbird, Twinkle Star Sprites, Gradius Origins and many other games.

Unfortunately, not all of the Saturn Tribute (“S-Tribute”) games by City Connection do not automatically support the M30, which is a real shame. Elevator Action Returns, Layer Section and Cotton Boomerang work with this controller, but unfortunately Cleopatra Fortune and Metal Black do not. I haven’t tried reconfiguring the Steam Input on such games yet.

I bought several discounted games on Steam’s summer sale, which is unfortunately now over. (Although it’s probably for the best as I already have so many games as it is.) I mostly bought a lot of shmups and other retro games.

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Raimais, a late-’80s arcade game by Taito

Here’s a late-’80s Taito arcade game I stumbled upon while browsing Final Burn Alpha titles. I guess I could describe it as a cross between Pac-Man and Rally-X, yet with a Taito aesthetic. Navigate the maze to collect the dots while avoiding enemies. You can collect power-ups like one to slow down the enemies, one that will kill one enemy as soon as it touches you, or a laser (similar to Arkanoid). When you clear a screen, several exits open up and the next level will be different depending on which exit you take. Give it a shot or else you suck.

According to Wikipedia, it was released as Youmais for the Famicom Disk System.

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Checking out Hard Off/Hobby Off stores in Souka, Saitama Prefecture

We went on a drive down to Souka City in Saitama Prefecture on Sunday. While the two ladies had their thing to do, I checked out a couple of Hard Off/Hobby Off locations. The street I was driving on said that Ueno was just 13km ahead, so I really was right on the border of Tokyo. I’ve never driven to Tokyo before and the expressway system is a bit confusing in the middle of the city, but at least it was a straight drive along the Kan-etsu Expressway to Souka.

The first place I went to had these expensive Arii Macross kits. The stickers on these say 掲載商品 (keisai shouhin) which means an advertised product. That Spartan for 27,500 yen confuses me… That’s an Imai kit, right? It says it’s 1/72 scale, which would make it by Imai because Arii made the 1/100 version, but the white price tag says that it’s Arii. It’s also a “Macross diorama” kit. The stack on the right are 1/100 variable Valkyrie kits. I didn’t know they go for so much these days.

More obscure Macross kits. “System Fortress” diorama kits. Weird.

I proceeded on to another store location, and it wasn’t very far away.

Lots of legacy Gundam kits from the ’80s at this location.

Here are B-Club resin aftermarket detail parts for 0083 kits. I ended up not really finding anything of interest. I stumbled upon a Surugaya by chance, but there wasn’t anything particularly interesting there either. Lastly I went to the Book Off Super Bazaar in that town, but it was boring.

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A trip to Mandai in Takasaki, May 2026

This is the building with Gunma Leisure Land game center and Mandai Shoten in Takasaki. We went down to Takasaki last Saturday. Mandai doesn’t open until 10, so I spent some time at the game center where I played some shmups like Senjin Aleste, which I wrote about in an earlier post. Then later I checked out Mandai.

Plenty of Macross model kits, old and new.

The Nautilus double set from Nadia. I have the regular submarine Nautilus, but not the nu-Nautilus starship.

The flag of Zeon was hanging overhead. Nice touch.

Several of these kits are pictured in the last post I made about going to Mandai.

I didn’t notice these Eggplane Girl resin kits the last time I was here.

The high prices of Saturn games (and all retro games in general) is sad. I really need to sell a bunch of games now hat Ulan is getting braces. It’ll be a tough decision to make which ones I want to keep. I really can’t play any retro games anymore since my new TV has no S-Video inputs. I’d have to see if I have the regular composite inputs, but it looks like ass on a high-def TV. Rats.

There’s a new Neo Geo console coming out that features HDMI output. Neat stuff, but I won’t be buying one. I also found a boxed Sakura Taisen Dreamcast. I bought mine when I first lived in Japan, in December 2000, IIRC. Unfortunately, the plastic has yellowed and the pretty pink color has been ruined. Rats.

Oh yes, and when I was at the game center in the basement level, I got to play Cotton: Rock with You for the first time. You can play as Izuna, the unemployed ninja! I played those two games like crazy on the DS. Her shots are shuriken, and you can slash your sword for up-close damage and to swat enemy bullets away.