Harajuku + Doll Point Akihabara with Mel and Mei

Continuing the tale of my (and Mei's) adventure in Japan, we move on to the day after Dolpa!

 

I have a lot of general travel pictures showing various sights and also quite a lot of food, but I'll just post doll photos here for the sake of topicality. If there is interest I might make a separate travelogue thread in off-topic, or something such.

 

In any case, I was lucky enough to be able to spend the day after Dolpa39 hanging out with Torino! We visited the Miraikan, a science & technology museum which is near the giant Gundam. Then we went to Harajuku, and I got to eat something called a "stamina set", a set meal with a large, delicious plate of beef. True to its name, the stamina set gave me plenty of stamina for exploring the very large Yoyogi Park right near Harajuku.

 

Here are some of my shots from Yoyogi Park!

 

Mei is leading Mel on a Kanto-Pokemon-hunting expedition, but he seems a little less than enthusiastic about what might lurk in the depths of the forest...

 

 

Mel looks out into the shadows with concern.

 

Mel: "...Uh...are you -sure- this is a good idea?"

 

Mei: *sighs*

 

Next, we went to Doll Point!

 

I took a picture of this extremely cute Dream Choice DDH13.

If SWS had been available then, I probably would have gone ahead and made a Dream Choice MDD...but SWS and brown switch out seasonally, and right now (and during my trip) brown is available and SWS is not.

 

After looking around, we made a reservation to use one of the photo spaces. You just have to give your name and choose which of the three spaces that you'd like to use. The one we used was the biggest. I came back later in the week to do a photostory at one of the others, so you will see that...eventually...when I get around to editing the photos...

 

This is the Tale of the Vanishing Eevee.

 

Mei, having just arrived in the Kanto region, is excitedly pondering her strategy for finding regional Pokemon. Eevee, who came with her all the way from her home region of Unova, is by her side.

 

Ah, this garden seems to be in one of the hipster parts of the city! The young man tending to the plants certainly has an art-student look to him, with a graffiti-print top and skinny jeans.

 

Mei looks more closely at her map of Kanto to figure out exactly where she is...when suddenly she looks down to find...

 

...her Eevee has disappeared!

 

The arty-looking young man has by now finished his gardening duties and has sat down to enjoy a spot of handheld gaming (although unfortunately his console is not quite as retro as he would like...).

 

Since he seems to be familiar with the area, Mei calls out to him and asks if he might have any ideas where Eevee might have gotten to.

 

 

Mel: "You know, Eevee might have gone...here..."

 

Mei looks at where he's pointing on the map.

 

 

Mei: "Th--that's...Lavender...Town..."

 

-end-

 

No, Eevee didn't actually go to Lavender Town (the graveyard town in the Kanto region of the Pokemon world): what happened is that, apparently because Eevee is too recognizable as a Pokemon, one of the employees came over and asked us to put Eevee away. Nintendo apparently is prone to lawsuits, so Volks doesn't want it to look like Volks was unlawfully using one of Nintendo's properties. We decided to roll with the 'disappearance of Eevee' idea, though

 

Mei belongs to me, and Mel belongs to Torino.

I'll put some of my pics in here too! But I really like all the ones we got in the photo space.

Some people may already know that Volks are pretty strict when it comes to only using their dolls in their photo spaces and at their events (...which, didn't stop me from seeing someone smuggle a Smartdoll into Dolpa, which annoyed me a lot tbh, although I dont know how long they had her out for and am curious if any of the staff noticed...) but I didn't know that it extended to smaller toys like the Eevee. I'm still not sure if it was more the 'not volks' part or the 'very obviously a famous IP with a big scary license-holder' part that made them react...but probably more likely the latter, because there's plenty of non-Volks stuff they do allow (like clothing, wigs, small props, and small toys/plushies where the IP isnt so blatantly obvious)

For those reasons the pics where Eevee is visible might be ok on here but maybe not on social media. Sharing pics in Doll Point on twitter/etc also doubles as advertising for Volks after all, so having nintendo stuff in the pic poses problems for them that after thinking about I understand why they'd not want to risk.

 

That said, Eevee being BANNED AND BANISHED was still really funny to me.

 

Some of my (very similar) pics...this closeup makes Mel look even more nervous, and Mei look even more exasperated at him.

DSC_1228 by torinomh mh, on Flickr

(I had wanted to take photos in Yoyogi Park since its very pretty but I did not foresee how utterly crowded it was going to be.. I know it was Golden Week at all, but even though I've been there in GW multiple times, I have never seen it like that. So we were sadly limited in places we could take photos that wouldnt have a bunch of people in the background. But the sunlight looked lovely in Mei's new eyes)

DSC_1220 by torinomh mh, on Flickr

Woops, she left him by himself.

DSC_1221 by torinomh mh, on Flickr

'just be cool'

 

Some different angles:

DSC_1238 by torinomh mh, on Flickr

DSC_1239 by torinomh mh, on Flickr

[/url]DSC_1243 by torinomh mh, on Flickr

 

These are also the first pics I've uploaded to the forum of Mel's new faceup that Subaru did! I'm really glad he actually looks like Mel now (...and that I can do closeups of his face without getting annoyed about the yellow eyeshadow on Len's default).

 

(that pic of the DCH13, the bokeh lights around her look like magical glowing shojo bubbles or some kind of holy light 8D)

This looked fun! I love pro trainer mode!Mei raring to find Kanto-exclusive Pokémon with an anxious Mel following close by.

 

And I’m surprised that Eevee was banned from Volks! Poor Eevee. I had no idea that using easily recognizable Pokémon in the photo spaces weren’t allowed! I didn’t think the hybrid DD I brought would have been allowed in the first place so I didn’t try(not to mention, she ended up getting a horrible stain on their face of all places during the flight or while en-route to the airbnb somehow that couldn’t be gently wiped or magic eraser’d off.. so she was out of commission the whole trip orz) but it’s too bad that she could have also been flagged down for her Pikachu backpack and partner Clefairy.

 

Also: Mel’s new faceup is gorgeous! Subaru did a great job~

Oh, poor Evee! haha, so embarrassed about being banned from Volks she ran all the way to Lavender Town

 

Great photos from both of you, looks like a great time. Mel's new faceup looks really good too!

What fun photo set. At least only Evee was asked to be hidden, and not the rest of you for bringing her. I am surprised that Nintendo has such a rep that they would bother to ask you to put her away in a very clearly guest space. But it is Volks' store, so they do what they must.

I also have to say I love Mei's pants, the pillow shorts, or whatever they call them. I want to find some for my girls.

Thank you so much, everyone!

 

Torino, thanks for posting your shots as well! I really like the ones you got of Mel in the park. They show off his faceup very well.

 

Elianti, I'm sorry to hear your girl got a stain on her face! That sounds frightening.

And yeah, part of what pushed me to finally get the DDP for Mei was that I wanted to take photos in the Volks photo spaces. I managed to do so in both two of the Akihabara ones and the Sapporo one, so I'm glad I was able to do so!

 

Sinclair, I'm also very glad we were not booted out of the photo space :p

Thanks about the shorts-- I got them as part of a set at Dolpa from a dealer called "JET RUNNER ;D". Their work shows up second hand on Y!JA sometimes, so it may be worth looking out for it. Though I don't yet have any shots of the tee that came with the set, it's also very cute and has an appliqué design.

These photos are so adorable! The sets at doll point are super cute

These photos are so adorable! The sets at doll point are super cute

 

Thanks so much!

I agree, I like the sets a great deal. They're mostly constructed out of pretty simple items (wood, cardboard, fake foliage, things you could find at Daiso or probably a US craft store) but the way those simple elements are crafted and combined into a diorama shows a great deal of skill and creativity. It's amazing how much having a to-scale backdrop like that enlivens doll photos, too.