As you all may be aware, Buster Beam of Plamo Addiction has decided to make his next move in life, and head back to Canada. Having met with him twice last year, in Akiba and the 1/1 Gundam in Shizuoka, I knew how much of a great guy he was, and couldn’t just let him head home without getting together one more time. A quick email to GaiGun of Gaijin Gunpla to see if he was on board as well, which he was, and the ball started rolling for a Gunplar Meet-up. This past weekend was a three day holiday in Japan, and we used that to get together one last time in Japan for drinking, gaming, and of course Gunpla!
I just happened to be in Tokyo on business on Friday, so I used that to stay in Akiba for the night and catch up with people before meeting up with GaiGun in Akiba Saturday evening at our usual pub, to get the party started. After hitting back a few rum & cokes to get us nicely toasted, we headed off to Yodobashi Camera and Asobi City before jumping on the bullet train to head back to my new stomping grounds, Osaka. Upon arriving in Osaka, we proceeded to my place to continue the drinking combined with online split-screen COD: Black Ops, until about 4:30 in the morning. The plans for sight seeing a little before Buster arrived were put aside for the more needed sleep, and after sleeping most of the day away, we headed off to Namba to pick up Buster. We did some quick sight seeing around Nipponbashi, the Akiba of Osaka, but soon moved to the drinking.
After some drinking at Namba, we moved back to Tennoji to hit up a local izakaya, or Japanese style pub/restaurant to continue the drinking. All three of us just happen to be fans of Z’s posts about food, so we thought we’d share with you some similar shots.
The 270 yen Izakaya, everything is 270 yen!
Starting out with beer and edamame
Cucumbers covered with eatable raiyu sauce
Don’t forget yakitori and takoyaki!
Several beers, cocktails, and sake bottles later…
Of course, we didn’t just get together to drink, we got together to game and gunpla as well, and we got together a bunch of kits to work on. At least to the best of our drunken ability, we had been drinking for about five hours…
And don’t forget about Call of Duty!
But still, we’re here to build gunpla (while drinking)
Gundam UC in the background while we build.
The results of the gaming, drinking and gunpla
You could say the excessive drinking, along with Call of Duty, Gundam Musou 3, and Gran Turismo 5 kept the number of completed Gunpla down to 3, but we all had a hell of a time doing it. We really got to work off each others synergy this weekend, and had a hell of a time. Gunpla is great, but Gunpla mixed with alcohol, gaming, and friends at the same time is priceless. While Buster will be missed as he takes his next step back in his home country, his spirit will still be with us as one of the original 3 foreign Gunplars in Japan.