{"id":461,"date":"2005-01-23T17:58:13","date_gmt":"2005-01-23T17:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wheresdrew.com\/blog\/?p=461"},"modified":"2006-05-07T12:44:37","modified_gmt":"2006-05-07T03:44:37","slug":"2000-well-spent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/2005\/01\/23\/2000-well-spent\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00a52,000 Well Spent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(In my opinion, that is. Yours may differ.)<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nIf you recall, during last summer&#8217;s trip to Tokyo I went to something called the &#8220;Amusing Collections Flea Market.&#8221; Mainly a lot of people selling odd bits of collectable junk, but there were a few good finds. Not something you&#8217;d go to every weekend, but for a once-in-a-while bit of browsing and shopping, it&#8217;s a lot of fun. Why do I bring this up?<\/p>\n<p><b>There was another one today.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>I think I only spent about \u00a51,000 last summer, but still got some decent stuff (posters, plush and keychains &#8211; some of it for me, some for others). I spent double that today, and man did I clean up!<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wheresdrew.com\/blogpics\/goodhaul.jpg\" ><\/p>\n<p><b>Yes, it&#8217;s all game-related.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>The best find was definitely the two guys at the top. What are they? The taiko drums from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.namco.co.jp\/donderpage\/index.php\" target=\"NewWindow\">Taiko no Tatsujin<\/a>. I got them as a set for \u00a5500. What&#8217;s so great about that? To <a href=\"http:\/\/www.toysnjoys.com\/taikonotatsujin_plush.html\" target=\"NewWindow\">buy them online<\/a> you&#8217;re looking at about $60.<\/p>\n<p><b>O.o<\/b><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve never actually played the game, but for some reason it really amuses me. I&#8217;ll have to pick it up at some point. Hanging onto one of the drums is one of the monkeys from Super Monkey Ball &#8211; another game I&#8217;ve never played. (But that&#8217;s only because TJ hasn&#8217;t sent me my games yet&#8230;) Even though I&#8217;ve not played them yet, he is a monkey, and how can you not buy a monkey when given the chance?Speaking of monkeys, the big disc in the middle is a hanging store display for the Ape Escape game for Eye Toy. (No, haven&#8217;t played that yet either, but it does star my favorite videogame monkeys and therefore had to be purchased.)<\/p>\n<p>The four squares around the monkey disc are game demos, three for PS2 and one for PS1. The PS2 ones are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.us.playstation.com\/Content\/OGS\/scus-97198\/Site\/\" target=\"NewWindow\">Sly Cooper<\/a> (played it before, but don&#8217;t have it now. Thought the demo would be fun to toy with), <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apeescapetwo.com\/intro.php\" target=\"NewWindow\">Ape Escape 2<\/a> (not played it yet) and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.taito.co.jp\/d3\/cp\/dengofinal\/index.htm\" target=\"NewWindow\">Densha de Go! Final<\/a>, the game where you drive a commuter train around Tokyo. No, there&#8217;s nothing more about it &#8211; you just drive the train, open and close the doors and get people to where they&#8217;re going. For some reason, it strikes me as really cool, but that may just be because you can buy a special controller that looks like the control panel a real train operator has. The PS1 demo is a game called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vib-ribbon.com\/#\" target=\"NewWindow\">Vib Ribbon<\/a>, which is an odd little music game. I&#8217;ve seen it in shops here, but wasn&#8217;t willing to go and plunk down $17 on it. Now I can try it out on the cheap.The item at the bottom is especially nifty. It&#8217;s a McDonald&#8217;s giveaway from 2001. A little hand (or keitai) strap with four interchangeable characters. The only one I was keen on was, of course, the monkey from Piposaru 2001 (you know, the monkey pants stealing game). But I&#8217;m not going to complain about getting Parappa and a Chocobo in there as well.Not pictured but also purchased today were three little toys from a 3\/\u00a5100 pile. I got a <i>chibi<\/i> sumo wrestler (currently standing on my TV), a monster hand with a suction cup base (now stuck to my fridge) and a Donkey Kong figure who&#8217;s pulling duty as a lighter holder:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wheresdrew.com\/blogpics\/dklighter.jpg\" ><\/p>\n<p>Yeah, it&#8217;s not really a challenge for him, but the transforming lighter wasn&#8217;t up to the task, so somebody&#8217;s gotta do it.I realize to some people this may appear to be nothing more than a bunch of old junk, so maybe it&#8217;s some <i>otaku<\/i> sense of mine (or something) that makes me really dig it. I&#8217;m especially pleased with all the monkey finds today, but I need more monkeys. I think I&#8217;m going to take my sister&#8217;s advice and go for a whole &#8220;monkey decor&#8221; theme in my apartment.<\/p>\n<p><b>After all, it <i>is<\/i> the Year of the Monkey! ^.^<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(In my opinion, that is. Yours may differ.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}