★2012 Lucky Bags 福袋★

New Years celebrations in Japan last for a pretty long. And when I say celebrations, I really mean bargains!! :D

Bargains in Japan usually run for one week (from Jan. 2nd - Jan. 9th) but I've also seen post-bargain bargains go on until the end of the month. But I'm not really one to wait, and got most of my bargain shopping done on the first of the year..!★

The two bags I picked up on the first were from the brands W♥C and Glad News. These styles look like they're completely opposite of one another (bright yellow bag with a bear and the dark skull covered one :>) but you can actually wear them together easily, yay :D

Lucky bags that start around 100USD can have anywhere from 5 items to 9 items inside, while smaller bags like the GN one run for around 50USD and usually have one complete outfit.


To the right, a sweater from the W♥C (Wakatsuki Chinatsu) bag. That bag was actually pretty random. You could even end up with shoes, but thank goodness I didn't..! I can't fit into Japanese shoe sizes D: But I did get two sweaters (one was guaranteed I think), some jeans, a t-shirt, a hat, headband, and underwear.





An item from the Glad News bag. This is my second time with a GN bag. Their items aren't so random I think (maybe only the t-shirt?) so I guess GN is the constant in the sea of lucky bags. :p
Awesome-ly, I was able to get a leather skirt out of the bag, which I'd been on the look-out for anyway. Woot :]






A few days later, I was shopping with a friend in OPA, and Monkey Bite had a few left-over lucky bags, but this time they were advertising what was inside. I've passed by this shop a couple times, and I've always kind of liked their stuff but felt like it was too expensive and probably not worth it quality wise.
But since they were advertising what was inside and making the outerwear optional (you can have too many jackets), I figured it would be a good deal. :>

This year was a pretty good for lucky bags, and I think I should be able to wear everything I got. There's nothing worse than getting a lucky bag and hardly wearing anything from it (I'm looking at you Cecil McBee), but I guess that's where secondhand shops come in :D

After clothing shopping, it was time to get to business though. I headed over to Nipponbashi (the "Akihabara" of Osaka) in search either a tablet PC or a DSLR to replace my point and shoot. It being the equivalent of the Christmas season in terms of sales in Japan, I thought it would be eaaasy.

It was not. D: Nipponbashi is sometimes frustratingly complicated to navigate through. All the shops on the main street are either PC/electronic hardware, used video games/manga, or toys, but finding used computers or electronic devices is surprisingly hard. Most of them are near Doguyasuiji, so eventually we made it that way to hover in a few shops. PC selections are pretty slim, but they did have a nice display of cameras, including the three that I had my eyes on (Nikon J1, Olympus PEN EPL3 and the Pentax Q). Is that lucky? Or some kind of omen?? I'm not sure..

All three of these cameras function like lightweight DSLRs. They have interchangeable lenses with similar manual focus options, RAW support (like I'll ever use it :/), HD video, shake reduction, etc. But the thing that was really drawing me toward Olympus and Pentax were the optional filters set-up inside the cameras. Jenny from Sushi Cat has an awesome Olympus, and that almost forced my hand, but I waited a little more, and found a booklet on the Pentax Q. It has similar filters, but, from what I'd read review wise, the video quality was better and plus it was a little lighter. Downside?? Pentax was newer and therefore, not going to be dropping in price anytime soon while Olympus had several camera in the PEN series to choose from, each offer more reasonable prices.

But in the end..
I ended up with the Pentax. When I found all three at the small used shop, they were about the same in price, but I was really drawn to the Pentax (it ended up around 540USD which is much better than the original of 750USD). I like the retro design, it's compact and light like a point-and-shoot but with the power of a DSLR. Plus, a little bonus I found out when reading up on it later, I transfer files from the camera to my phone via infrared, which is useful if I want to do some on the spot editing and uploading. Here's a few shots from the past few days:

I think the flash was on in this one :] Snacking with my best friend while.. watching something? I think BBC's Merlin.
I think this was shot on Blur Control with a filter... I don't remember which one though..!
I looove controlling the focus on the foreground. Makes this coke look delicious :D
This is another Blur control shot. It doesn't seem to be focusing on anything, but I like how it blurred that guys face.

Unfortunately, this means I might have to drop my addiction to camera apps on my phone.. Naah, I probably won't :p But it'll be nice to actually take some decent photos and videos for all my projects I'd like to work on for this year.

So I got the wardrobe, I got the camera. Just one more piece and I'm gonna be a fashionable, photo snapping, digital animating traveler..? Person of the world..? I don't even know, but now that I've got the means, there's gotta be a way. :)

★Peaces★