By Tim Eldred

18 hours, compressed into two photos. If only real life could be like that sometimes.

Day 1: July 16/17

When it was announced that REBEL 3199 Chapter 1 would be released on July 19, I knew exactly what this trip would be like. I hadn’t been to Japan in July yet, but I’ve gone in May and I’ve gone in August, and July is the sweaty swamp sandwich that fits in between them.

That, along with various unknowns and a few first-time plans gives me a healthy dose of travel anxiety despite the many times I’ve made this trip before. Some things become routine, but I can’t shake the feeling that there’s always a yokai peering around the corner, ready to jump me. It keeps me on my toes.

Getting to Tokyo this time requires two flights, the first from LA to San Francisco (about an hour) and the second from there to Haneda airport (11 hours). Those long flights fill me with dread, because there’s a certain point where I just can’t sit comfortably any more. A couple days before flying I saw an online ad for a contour pillow that would help with that, and it turned out my fiancée Alissa already had one. And it worked wonders. I deplane at Haneda airport with a happy bottom to show for it.

Hello Kitty! And Hatsune Miku. And good old…uh…YOU!

I mention Haneda because that is one of the “firsts.” Every previous trip landed in Narita Airport, but this time the air fare was through the roof. My pal Daniel George has been bugging me to switch to Haneda for years, and this time the economics made the decision for me. Dan didn’t steer me wrong; it’s smaller and busier, but the service points are closer together and the train ride into the city is under an hour. For the first time ever, I arrive with substantial shopping hours available.

On the other hand, a yokai is indeed waiting for me. I step off the train in Shinjuku where a whole series of unpleasant surprises is lined up for me to trip over. It’s been five years since last trip, but I still have a mental map of how to get the hell out of Shinjuku station. (Which is the thing you MOST want to do as soon as you step inside; it’s famously complex and is referenced locally as the “Shinjuku dungeon.”) That mental map is completely obsolete this time, since the interior has been remodeled and the pathway to my desired exit only slightly overlaps with the new reality. With a minute or two, I’m already repeating a familiar phrase to myself. “Lost in the maze again.”

When I figure it out, I get the full-throated exhale of Tokyo humidity right in the face and am instantly drenched with sweat. It gets worse as I drag my massive suitcase through Kabukicho (with a smaller suitcase inside it) where the familiar APA Hotel is waiting. At last, I can imagine relief.

The check-in line is long, but moves rapidly enough. I get to the front to find not a clerk waiting, but a row of huge touchscreens to register. Don’t remember seeing those last time. It’s my first brush with post-pandemic Tokyo. This must have been done for distancing purposes. Okay, fine, in goes the reservation number. Not recognized. Maybe a typo, try again. Not recognized. Okay, put in my name. Not recognized. Try a different config. Not recognized. Try the number again. Not recognized. What. The. Hell.

An attendee notices my trouble and steps in to help. He asks for my passport and goes to his own screen for a while. I scroll helplessly through the Expedia website looking in vain for a support number to call. This is the last time I use Expedia. Finally, the attendee comes back and says, “I found it. Your reservation is in a different building.”

“There’s another building?”

He offers a QR code, which I scan to get a walking map. Seven minutes away is a second APA Hotel I never even knew about. So…back out into the swamp to add sweat layer #3. Seriously, I had no idea there was another APA here. I find it, go to their touch screen, and run into the same damn problem again. Not recognized. Not recognized. Not recognized. Attendee shows up, enters my passport info, and there I am. For Godsake.

When I figure out how to find my room, I look at the door and the number on it tells me everything: 444. The unluckiest number you can get. It might as well have been room 1313.

Many of us first learned Japanese numbers by listening to the Wave-Motion Gun countdown in Yamato. There, the number 4 is pronounced “yon” (long O). But another way to pronounce 4 is “shin,” which is how you also pronounce “death.” It’s a bad omen. Traditionally, your 40s is the hardest decade. Andromeda is 444 meters long, which means it’s cursed. And here I am now, typing these words in room 444. Hopefully their dark magic has already been used up.

Not much, but it beats no room at all.

After a desperately-needed shower and change out of my travelin’ threads, I make the hike back to the station. On the way, I pass a third APA Hotel right around the corner from mine. They all look exactly the same, and their names vary only slightly. The only thing that obviously differentiates them is a number on the front. This information was not communicated by Expedia when I made the reservation. I had no reason to expect that APA had expanded like a Starbucks since 2019. This will more than double the length of my daily walk through the steambath, which is extremely unwelcome. Otherwise accommodations are pretty much the same as before.

That’s the O.G. Mandarake store on the right. Now it’s the manga specialty branch.

As I said earlier, this is the earliest I’ve ever arrived in Tokyo, with enough time to actually hit some stores before they close at 8pm. I choose my favorite, Nakano Broadway; the original home of Mandarake and a whole mall of fantasy delivery devices (to borrow a phrase from Matt Alt).

Honestly, I don’t expect to find a whole lot there to buy (my shopping list this time is narrow and deep), but it’s a perfect method for immersion, the analogue version of my morning romp through Yahoo Japan Auctions. With no shipping delay. It makes all the difference when you ship yourself.

Of course, the main reason to be here is to attend the REBEL 3199 Chapter 1 premiere on Friday the 19th and capture the merch traveling in its wake. But the secondary reason is to go spelunking in used book and magazine stores. The motivation for this is, of course, the website you’re reading right now.

Over two years ago I started writing the Vintage Report series (something I’d been wanting to do for a while) and since then it’s become one of my top five reasons for living. Nobody has ever put the entire Yamato timeline into chronological order this way. When I made it my personal mission I thought it was going to be easy; just take everything I’ve produced over the last 20 years and put it in order. The real work is done, right?

Wrong. That was epically wrong. That was sun-orbits-the-Earth wrong.

I’d already found and translated a lot, and thought there wasn’t much more to be uncovered. But when I pulled up the floorboards of Yamato history, I found more sub-levels than I could count underneath. The more I dug, the more artifacts I found (the most important of which were antique doujinshis that gave me directions to dig in). The aforementioned Yahoo Japan Auction site was one pathway down the rabbit hole, but I found others as well. And now I’m in Japan with a 3-page shopping list of things I’ve only seen in photos or mentioned in print. No idea how successful I will be. But I love a crazy mission.

All the Mandarake branch stores are still in their familiar places. I know which one to visit for anime magazines, and I walk out a few minutes later with several early issues of The Anime. (That’s another thing about the Vintage Report series; it motivates me to fill the gaps in my collection.)

Nearby is a “regular” book/magazine store where I hope to make my first Yamato score of the trip, and I am not disappointed. The new issue of MONO magazine is out with a 3199 cover and a massive 44-page feature inside. Fans on Twitter had already been reporting that it was becoming scarce, so I’m overjoyed to find two copies left on the rack. I buy them both just for insurance. The article is a colorful and comprehensive deep dive into Yamato history, and looks like it will be fun to translate. We’ll find out together over future updates.

Two hours turns out to be ample time for my homecoming tour of Nakano Broadway, so I grab a surprisingly refreshing tonkatsu dinner right outside and then make for my final stop after sundown: the lobby of the Shinjuku Piccadilly theater, where our beautiful friend is waiting. I got all crazy and recorded a video message on the spot; see it here.

At this time, it’s been a bit over 24 hours since I woke up at home in LA. I maybe got three hours of real sleep on the plane. But now I feel synced and am ready for bed at roughly the same time as the locals. The older your body clock gets, the harder it becomes to reset. But somehow I managed it again.

See the day 1 photo gallery here

Day 2: Thursday, July 18

Good Gob is it hot here.

My home life is, by design, quite sedentary. Just about everyone who works in the TV animation industry in the post-Covid world has a home office and spends their entire day at a computer workstation. My “life” in Japan couldn’t be more different. Computer time is crushed down to the barest possible minimum in exchange for near-constant motion. If I’m not walking somewhere, I’m standing on a moving train. The exception is meal time. And I’ve been here enough to have favorite meals for every day of a trip.

Today started in the happiest way possible, breakfast at The Happy Pancake in Omotesando, near the Harajuku shopping district where all the cool kids go. Souffle pancakes are, as far as I can tell, unique to Japan; another example of how they absorb elements of other cultures and modify them into something unique. A souffle pancake is about as close as you can get to a pastry made of air, and Holy Godzilla is it flavorful. (Except for the standard syrup, which tastes like coffee, so I don’t recommend it.)

I also get my first taste of the heatup/cooldown cycle that’s going to be with me for the entire trip. Walking here in the blazing July heat means you arrive drenched with sweat. After a few minutes in the AC, you feel human again. But the minute you step back outside, the cycle starts all over. It’s the price of being here in the summer. California doesn’t get this kind of humidity. It’s Florida without the gators.

Anton Mei Brandt is inbound today (from Sweden) to join me for the REBEL 3199 premiere and other escapades. He was meant to arrive in time for this breakfast, but ran into a major flight delay that would have a huge ripple effect across the entire day. It sure put my hotel entry into perspective; he had to essentially rebook his lodgings while en route, which couldn’t have been even remotely relaxing.

He was able to keep me informed as he slowly made his way through the air, so I was free to make this a solo day, which was just fine. It’s fun to share this place with other travelers, but it also brings challenges to an agenda. And right now, my agenda is to get into Jimbocho for magazine hunting.

Of course, I arrive drenched but as I make my way down the row of used bookstores, the heatup/cooldown cycle kicks in again. Every store has AC (otherwise, no human could work there) so they each offer a blissful pocket that’s as reassuring as that musty book odor (you know the one). In some cases, you catch a breeze as you walk by an open doorway where the cool air floods out to a distance of ten feet or so before it gets swallowed up by summer. The tradeoff for this is some hellish back alley where everyone’s AC units are dumping their residual heat because screw them ice shelves.

I can tell at a glance which stores have old magazines and which are limited to books, so I don’t have to stop everywhere. There’s also an occasional record store, and they can all be relied upon for a smattering of anime soundtrack LPs. There’s always a surprise or two in there, even if it’s not something you want to take home. In fact, that sums up most of the shopping experience here; it’s best to think of it as a giant pop culture museum where you can enjoy looking at stuff you don’t necessarily want to own.

The magazine scores are few and far between, and honestly I only find what I expect: another back issue of The Anime and a couple 1980 issues of movie magazine SCREEN. Nothing else on my list is in sight, but this is the only way you find that out. On the other hand, there are zillions of back issues of Kinejun, a bimonthly movie magazine that played a role in early Yamato history. In the late 70s, the issue numbers surpassed the 700s, which means that thing went back a loooong way. 24 issues a year and decades of publishing results in some extremely deep archives. I don’t know if you can find every back issue in Jimbocho, but enough stores devote space to them to give you a running start.

Miles and miles of Kinejuns. Nobody has to worry about running out of Kinejun. WE’RE FINE.

I check for news from Anton periodically, and he’s certain he’ll arrive in Shinjuku by 4pm. I close out my safari around 3pm and head back to the train station, and a sign in front of a coffee shop catches my eye along the way. The shop is named Doutour, and they’re so common here that they cross over into becoming practically invisible. I don’t drink coffee, so until this moment I had no use for them. But for some reason, a drink offer catches my eye and lures me in.

It’s called a Moscato Yogurn. Summer is grape season (as I learned on my first trip in ’07) and they put grapes in all sorts of things. In this case, “Moscato” is the hook. When I bought my house in 2017, it came with several bonuses, including a Moscato grape vine. These grapes are amazing. If you ever eat grape candy, Moscato is the flavor it’s usually going for, and the real thing is miles better. Suddenly, I’m presented with a Moscato Yogurt smoothie, and there’s no way I’m walking by without one.

Words are inadequate. I’m just going to look for one of these every day for the rest of the trip and make it this year’s favorite food discovery.

Arriving back in Shinjuku, there’s nothing further from Anton, so I make a side quest to the Godzilla Store, which occupies a large corner in a Marui Department store. It’s pure merchandising and mostly fluff (they seem to mainly be in the overpriced T-shirt business), but I find a few recent volumes in the Toho FX library (Gunhed! They saw me coming!) and get an eyeful of an impressive statue of Big G from Minus One. Well done, Toho. No notes.

It’s closing in on 4pm and Anton says he’s on his way, but still has some obstacles to navigate. I stop by the Shinjuku Piccadilly to commune with the big model (at a time when it isn’t surrounded by onlookers) and he sends me the code for me to retrieve our tickets for the first 3199 screening tomorrow morning. Rather than obtaining them from a wetware meat puppet, I have to punch the code into a touch screen. There’s an English language option, so it’s easier than I expect. But it’s another sign of how things have changed since 2019.

Side note: this extends to convenience stores like 7-11, where you don’t hand your money to a human any more. Instead, you put it into a bill counting machine that calculates it and displays your total on a touch screen. You touch it to close the transaction. We’re about six inches away from replacing convenience store clerks now.

Hungry again, I pop across the street for a quick snack at Cafe Renoir (another favorite haunt; gotta catch ’em all). Anton finally turns up at 6pm, somehow still on two feet and ready for action. We’re due for a welcome dinner in Ueno at 8:30, and I suggest that we with fill the time prowling around in Akihabara, which is right next door. He’s game, so we’re off.

This is my first time to Akiba after Covid, and it’s changed in several ways. More high-rise structures, more consolidation. Its days as a warren of black market stalls have passed into legend. Now it’s built purely for pop culture tourists who stream in by the plane load, especially this year with the smell of cheap yen in the air. If you could turn Comic Con into an urban shopping experience, this would be it.

The upside is you can soak up a lot of energy here if you’re receptive to it. The downside is that it can crush the life out of you in moments if you’re not. It’s not a place for nuance, and is impatient with anyone who isn’t here to empty their wallet. Otaku Vegas.

Cospa lives inside Onoden now. Go here for your Cospa fix.

To completely digest the place would take a full day, more like two. We have less than two hours, so I lead us to a brand new Mandarake (all high-end toys in display cases), the record store right next to it (where I’m amazed by the resurgence of anime soundtracks on boutique-priced vinyl), and Cospa (which specializes in apparel). It doesn’t feel like a complete trip if I don’t fly home with some new Cospa T-shirts.

Unfortunately, Cospa isn’t where it used to be. The old address (a 2nd floor walkup) is barren, so we Google map ourselves to their new home, inside one of the young high-rises. I’m disappointed to see that it’s more of a popup store called Cospa Traveling Depot. If this is what they’re limited to, it’s the end of an era. I buy a couple Gundam shirts as a parting gesture. But then I’m relieved to learn that this is just a satellite location; the main one is half a block away in another high-rise.

We find it in minutes, and my heart goes on. It’s bigger than it used to be with a LOT more brands to offer. I add two new Votoms T-shirts to my wardrobe and all is made right. I’m delighted to see they still offer shirts I bought on my earliest trips, including the one containing text that I wrote for Votoms products released in the US. It’s a point of pride.

Dinner is with two Yamato pals, named Akira and Meijin, who meet us at Iserlohn Fortress in Ueno. It’s a 3.5 star dining experience where you are surrounded by décor from Legend of the Galactic Heroes. The food is actually very good and they take the theme to great lengths with presentation. One dish comes in a ceramic spaceship. The cheese plate is a map of the war theater. It seems everything we order comes with free coasters or a metal coin. Akira is a rabid collector, and adds a few more items to his binder while we dine.

Tomorrow morning we’ll be part of the crowd for opening day of REBEL 3199. My new best friends have also obtained tickets for us to see the evening screening with a stage greeting afterward. Communication is aided by rudimentary language skills and mobile software that allows us to part with actual knowledge of each other. The night is hot, but the belly is full.

Anton seems to prefer subway rides to the far more conspicuous JR lines, so this is where we part. I’m hoping for one more treat before the day ends; when I came here for the Yamato Resurrection premiere in December 2009, Anton Kholodov and I looked into the Shinjuku Piccadilly gift shop at just the right time to see new Yamato merch being unboxed and placed on shelves. We stood there on the other side of the rope like two kids on Christmas Eve. This time, however, the Piccadilly is wise to our shenanigans and has placed the rope one floor down. No access.

Well, I’ll be back in about eight hours. We’ll see who wins then, won’t we, Piccadilly?

See the day 2 photo gallery here

Day 3: Friday, July 19

Jeebus Cripes it’s hot here.

It’s premiere day. Another chapter of Yamato history has arrived. REBEL 3199 has crossed over from “Coming Soon” to “Now Playing.” This is the killer app for Yamatour 2024.

The Piccadilly will open its doors at the unAmerican hour of 7:45am, so the hardcores are there a good half hour earlier. There’s already a line when I arrive at 7:30, and I spot both Akira and Meijin right away. They look exactly the same as they did last night, as if they just stepped into the future (Meijin said he wasn’t going to sleep). I put on my best Dessler voice and say “Gentlemen of Yamato, it’s been a long time” (in Japanese, of course) and head to the end of the line.

Left: standing in the wraparound line leading to the gift shop. Right: Front of the line, ready to launch!

I brought an umbrella, since summer humidity can bring spontaneous summer showers, but I’m reminded by the sight of other line-waiters that it has another use; temporary relief from blazing sun. Between that and my battery-operated handheld fan (from trip 1) I can stand it for the few minutes before the doors open. Anton arrives by bus (that little scamp), and our loyal pal Minoru Itgaki turns up as well. That’s enough for a party.

When the doors swing wide, we all scoot up the stairs as if lifted by a breeze. The movie doesn’t start until 8:30, but Christmas morning comes first. We’ve all seen the new merch online (it was revealed exactly a week earlier) and made our little schemes for what to grab. There’s a taste of competition anxiety in the air, but the Piccadilly Elves have been through this dance before, and their stock is deep enough to sustain all of us. (At least on day one; I’ll be back later to see what dries up.)

Left: Christmas morning in Yamato world. Right: Oddly, nobody was interested in the Minions merch.

Other than the absolute necessities of Chapter 1 Blu-ray and program book, I’m after the PC case, which by a nice coincidence is exactly the right shape for my laptop. My current case is too big and has seen better days, so I’m happy to seize this new travel buddy. The one-Blu-ray-per-ticket policy is still enforced, but now they’ve added a two-program-books-per-ticket limit as well. That’s new. I’ll have to get two more at the evening show to obtain friend-share copies. Easily done.

There’s a customary free handout for everyone as we make our way to the screening room. In previous years, it was an envelope of production drawings, but this time it’s an illustration board. And…it’s a weirdo. An illustration of Kodai and Yuki that has no connection whatsoever to the film. I suspect it’s a pop culture reference that eludes me, so I’ll have to investigate later. Right now there’s some moving pictures to be watched.

After an interminable march of trailers, the room goes dark and the voice of Yuki Mori emerges. She’s the narrator for an extended story-so-far prologue that goes all the way to 2205, giving me a chance to see some beautiful scenes on a big screen for the first time. It reminds me of that arresting moment in 2009 when shots from Final Yamato were included in Resurrection. A direct echo of a moment in time I didn’t get to experience for myself.

Then REBEL 3199 Chapter 1, Dark Invasion, begins. We’ll only get two episodes (45 minutes of story), and I suspect it will only get us a short distance down a long road, but there’s not a wasted minute. It’s packed as full as possible and gets intense as soon as it can. We get plenty of moments we recognize from 1980, but we’re in a bigger world with a lot more characters and ongoing subplots, so there’s much more grist for the story. It’s a true ensemble drama now, and almost everyone gets a moment – including nearly forgotten deep-cut characters like Hayashi (who is now part of Shima’s AI fleet unit).

As usual, the writers (Fukui and Oka) find clever alternate explanations for things we just had to take for granted before. Instead of a convenient presidential shuttle, for example, we now have the Cosmo Hound coming to the rescue. Domon is inside, and I’m really happy with the role he’s been given at a particular key moment. He’s a good space boy.

Without spoiling anything, I can tell you that the super closeup we saw in the trailer of Sasha’s eyeball is all we get in this chapter. But the promo for Chapter 2 (due out in November) depicts Sanada addressing her as Mio Sanada – though she’s still off camera. They’re holding back this reveal as long as they possibly can.

We get a look at Alphon, but as I suspected it comes in the final moments of the second episode. No spoken lines yet. Just that silent stare.

As the film is showing, apparently, Yamato headquarters releases the news online for Chapter 2, which is titled Burning Sun Sortie. Audience members make this discovery when they log on right after the lights come up. Nice bit of timing there, headquarters!

We troop back down to the lobby, fully satisfied with what we’ve just seen. The crowd is bigger for the second show, waiting in the merch line with that same competition tension hanging over them. Don’t worry, guys. You’re good.

A group collects around us, including “Fumi,” who generously acquired tickets for Anton and myself a few days earlier, and we troop over to a local café to decompress. That’s exactly the right word for this, BTW. The movie is VERY compressed. We all feel like we’ve been living at high speed for the last hour. Everyone’s got questions and theories, and we share them as best we can over morning eats. I’m delighted to discover that I’ve encountered several of the people here many times on Twitter in my news-gathering rounds every morning at home. Another example of how Japan is basically the real-life version of the internet.

I’ve already decided to spend my afternoon in Akihabara, and Minoru Itgaki tags along. Many of you will recognize his name; he’s an active participant on Yamato Facebook pages, and my number one go-to guy for help and advice on tricky translations. He isn’t as fluent in spoken English as he would like to be, but he writes as well as the average American and understands plenty. He’s also extremely generous with support, leading me to award him the title Friend of the Website. I’m hoping to buy him lunch.

I’m still lugging a big fat bag of theater merch, so our first stop is my hotel for a dropoff. On the way there, and then back to Shinjuku station, I fill him in on my woeful hotel story, but then also share the unexpected benefit of it, which took me by surprise later. Now that I’m stuck on the back end of Kabukicho (the tourist trap right next to Shinjuku), I have to walk through all of it every day. It’s grubby, dense, and obnoxious, and it turns out to be exactly what I need to see at this particular moment.

I’m finally drawing a new SF webcomic project called The Last Blue Eagle (perhaps you’ve heard of it) that has been in development for oh, about thirty years, and upcoming chapters will be taking place in an urban environment on a space colony. While trudging through Kabukicho on my first day here, I realized…whoah…this is what it should look like! All this density, all this texture, all this thrown-together architecture and its many barnacles. It’s perfect. So I’ve been scouting different streets each day, grabbing photos for an urban reference library. If I’d gotten a room at my intended hotel, I would never have been exposed to this. I don’t know if Minoru quite grasps what I’m telling him as I stop for yet another photo-op, but he’s endlessly patient.

Truthfully, I don’t expect to find a whole lot in Akihabara today, so it becomes another spectator sport rather than a shopping excursion. Minoru isn’t hungry for lunch when we arrive (and I’m still walking off breakfast myself) so we stop for an occasional drink between visits to Mandarake, Yodobashi, Bookoff, and other stores. I seek out another Doutour and have my second Moscato Yogurn. If I keep this up, I’ll be sick of them by the time I leave and won’t have to miss them.

Minoru departs a bit after 4pm and my restaurant opens at 5, so I’ve got some solo time to drift around and look at more things I may never see again. There are foreigners every ten feet, and I’m noticing that they fall into a depressingly narrow category when taken in visually. When you look for it, you see it everywhere: licensed T-shirts, baggy shorts, day bags, not much body awareness, and usually a too-doughy center, especially for a young person. And, yep, they all speak English. Japanese people don’t present like this. I try to dodge it with more attention to wardrobe and health, but maybe I’m fooling myself. I just wish our culture had more to represent us than this.

(By the way, it’s different in Osaka, where I’m going tomorrow. It’s a little harder to get there, so I see fewer Americans. On the other hand, more Europeans. And they dress way better.)

What would have been lunch instead becomes dinner, because there’s no way I’m leaving here without it: tonkatsu of the gods at Maru Go. It’s all I can I think about when I occasionally get tonkatsu at home. It’s one of those places where the locals line up before it opens, which is always a strong signal. This time, I got to be at the head of that line and I struck another must-do item from the trip agenda. If you ever go on a Yamatour with me, you will learn why this is an essential agenda item.

Back in Shinjuku, I refresh with just enough time to scurry over to the Piccadilly for the evening screening of REBEL 3199 Chapter 1 and the subsequent talk show.

Packed house for the evening screening + stage greeting

The deadly combination of too little sleep, a full day of walking in the heat, and the tonkatsu digesting in my belly guarantee that I will nod off during the movie. Which, in this rare instance, is okay. I was in the second row off to the right, which put a lot of distortion on the screen. It won’t be a good viewing even if I stay fully awake. So I let it go just this once.

The reason it’s a second row seat is (A) I didn’t buy the tickets and (B) it affords a perfect view of the stage greeting. And I don’t catch much of what was said, but this too is OK; I’ll translate the online coverage later. It’s really about just being in the room with the few men on Earth who have this whole story mapped out in their heads. The MC is Eriko Nakamura (voice of Mikage Kiriyu, who has more to do in Chapter 1 than in all of 2205), General Director Harutoshi Fukui, Series Director Naomichi Yamato, and Scriptwriter Hideki Oka. Their passion and devotion come sailing right through the language barrier with no translation needed.

Eriko Nakamura takes the stage…and asks us not to take any more photos. Nuts.

Akira is sitting next to me, and tells me afterward that they said Yamato would actually launch in the fourth episode of Chapter 2 (sixth episode of the series, which is a lot of hold time) and that in the next stage greeting (on the 21st) they’ll show a work-in-progress shot from the launch sequence. I thought it would take only one more episode to get us there, but this says a lot about how much more story still needs to be front-loaded. After all, the crew is scattered everywhere and needs time to regroup.

With that, I make my way back to the hotel and the day draws to a close. The next one starts early. And is going to be a trial.

Day 4: Saturday, July 20

Great Klono’s Armpit it’s hot here.

Well, I’ve had worse days in Japan, but until now I’ve never had a worse day in Osaka. (Don’t worry, there’s a twist coming.)

I pre-plan these trips very carefully. They take place within a limited time and cost a lot of money, so I want to make them as successful as possible. I pre-plan to a degree where it gives me occasional nightmares in which I somehow wake up in Japan with no plan and no resources. It’s not NASA-level planning with every minute accounted for, but I know in advance where I want to be and when. It’s like playing a game against fate. Today, at least in the first half, I lost that game.

The trip from Tokyo to Osaka is old hat now; an easy bullet train ride across gorgeous open country for three hours. If only plane rides were that comfortable. I reserved a room overnight at the same hotel I stayed at on my first visit in 2008, which is just a ten minute walk from the station in a neighborhood called Umeda. And that’s where the hotel yokai jumps me. Again.

In place of the hotel I expect to see is an entirely different one occupying the same space. A sleazy “love hotel” called Lotus. Thinking I just misremembered the spot, I walk up and down the street (an arcade with a roof to intercept the scalp-melting heat of the sun), but there’s no sign of it. Even Google Maps tells me I’m looking right at my destination when I stand in front of the Hotel Lotus. It’s obviously a replacement. So where’s my home base?

Thinking someone inside might know something about this, I go in, greeted by mood lighting and incense. Yep, love hotel, all right. You rent these rooms by the hour. No one at the desk. I wait a minute or two, making some shuffling noises, but nobody appears. So I ding the bell (which always seems rude, but they put it there) and a tired obochan (granny) slides out from a hidden nook to respond.

“Do you speak English?” I ask in Japanese. She holds up the two crossed index fingers, which means no. I plunge ahead anyway. Nobody else around here is likely to have an answer.

“Want to find Hotel Kinki,” I say. Yep, it’s called Hotel Kinki. It’s named after the region in which Osaka sits, so wipe that look off your face. However, as the word leaves my mouth I instantly realize I am now in a comedy bit.

“Hotel Kinki Janai. Kore wa Hotel Lotus.” (This isn’t Hotel Kinki. It’s Hotel Lotus.)

“Wakarimas,” I reply. (I understand.) I hold up a map and point. “Hotel Kinki, doko deska?” (Where is Hotel Kinki?)

“Hotel Kinki Janai. Kore wa Hotel Lotus.”

And that’s as far as this is going to go. So I leave. There was a Hotel Kinki here at one point in history. I stayed there. I saw photos of it when I made the reservation. The confirmation had it on this spot. So I’m not crazy. You win, Yokai.

Now, with no reservation anywhere and feeling like I just ran my usual two miles, I wander around in the blazing heat, coating sweat layer 1 with sweat layer 2, considering my options. Back to Google Maps, which I never expected to work here. But it magically does. I enter “hotel” and several options pop up within easy walking distance, including another APA Hotel. But others are closer.

The first one is booked up. The second one isn’t. It’s called Via Inn, and it’s within sight. It’s also incredibly well air conditioned. The second I step through the door, the sweat retreats in terror. As it turns out, they have a room. It’s twice the price of an APA Hotel, but I’m in no mood for bargain hunting. I found this, I’m sticking with it. Check-in is still three hours away, but they can store my bag and free me to start my expedition.

There are three targets on the list: Mandarake in Umeda, Mandarake in another location, and somewhere I’ve never been called Tenjinbashi. I’m most interested in that one; it’s a miles-long shopping arcade (the longest in the country, apparently) and one whole block is evidently filled with used bookstores where I might find some of the vintage magazines on my wish list. The descriptions online make it sound just like Jimbocho in Tokyo, so I’m filled with daydreams about it. In one such daydream, I show a shopkeeper my list and he says, “Hai. Hai. Hai. Hai.” and tosses EVERYTHING on it into a pile. (Spoiler: it won’t happen.)

Mandarake Umeda: home of “Mammy-chan” the mammoth. (I just made that up.)

The Mandarake in Umeda is the closest, so I decide to breeze through it and just look for a few things. It’s as dense as a library, so it would be easy to browse it for hours, and I want to reserve time for Tenjinbashi. Nothing found in ten minutes, so back out to the street. Next I grab a subway and head down south a few stops to the other Mandarake, which is called Grand Chaos. The subways here are very easy to navigate, so only about 15 minutes later I’m back out in the sun renewing my sweat layer.

Ten minutes after that, I’m standing in front of a building that used to be Mandarake Grand Chaos. I know this for certain because I’m holding a photo of it in my hand. They moved the damn thing. Google tells me it’s about a mile away, but despite what I just said about the subway system I don’t have enough data on hand to get there. Two major defeats in one morning.

Left: what USED to be here. Right: the big block of nothing that’s here now.

I learned during my research that Osaka has two branches of Happy Pancake, and one of them is just a few minutes walk away. I’ll have that for lunch and see if it takes some of the sting off of this setback. I find it, but it’s a tiny little hole in the wall with as many people waiting to get in as there are people already in. Not worth it. The other one is back in Umeda, so I jump on the subway and retrace my steps. Along the way, I find another Doutour and get my third Moscato Yogurn of the trip. At least I have something divine in hand to drown my sorrows.

Happy Pancake, for when you need to reload on happy.

Upon my return, I see that the Umeda version of Happy Pancake is not only directly across the street from my new hotel, it’s also much bigger and table space is available immediately. Now that’s more like it. Osaka, you may still have something to offer. Next, I officially check in at the hotel (it’s just after 3pm) and relaunch for Tenjinbashi, which I now desperately hope will redeem this rotten day.

The walk to Tenjinbashi takes about ten minutes (I virtually walked it on Google Earth, so I feel like I’ve done it already), and I like the flavor of it when I arrive. It feels much more laid back and solid that Tokyo, which is like a restless teenager addicted to reinventing itself (I want to take credit for that metaphor, but I may have cribbed it from the great Helen McCarthy.) By contrast, Osaka always feels like a middle-aged adult who doesn’t get riled up any more. Tenjinbashi, though, feels like a grandparent.

I can easily imagine it being THE place to go back in the 1960s and 70s, but now it’s sort of like the dying mall that’s being slowly gutted by the internet. The bookstores are here, but I only find about half a dozen of them, and they have absolutely nothing I’m looking for. Not even close. In half an hour, I’ve absorbed everything it has to offer and my hands are empty. Defeat number three.

As I walk back to the hotel, the spirit of Happy Pancake begins to stir inside me. I budgeted a lot of time for Tenjinbashi and used very little. I can still turn this day around. I’ll go up to my room, plug in the laptop, go to the Mandarake website, and find out exactly where Grand Chaos is now. The original mission plan may have gone up in smoke, but there’s no reason I can’t write a new one.

I pull my resources together (both digital and analog) and make the connection. I’ve come this far, Grand Chaos. You’re not gonna keep me out. I don’t know it yet, but at that moment, all the karma shifts in my favor. From here on, it’s going to be win-win.

My first discovery is the “other” Osaka, which was under my feet this entire time. A vast, underground mall called Whity Shopping Town leads literally from the front door of my new hotel to the subway station I need. It’s packed and perfectly air conditioned. This is probably what Tenjinbashi was like in its prime, and it restores all the spirit I lost.

The subway ride is on the same line as before, just a few stops farther south and a transfer to another line. One stop north, and I’m back on the street. It’s only been about half an hour since the tide turned, and I get my first pleasant surprise of the day.

I’m in Denden Town. I totally forgot about Denden town! What’s Denden Town? Osaka’s version of Akihabara. All the otaku stores are here. I came here on my first visit, way back in 2008, and found it very likable. But all the visits since then have been day trips, so I didn’t feel like I had time for it. Of course; now I’m here for an overnight, so this is where I should be.

Mandarake Grand Chaos is now in Denden Town, and it makes complete sense for it to be here. It’s the tallest building around with a floor plan that’s narrow and deep (just like my shopping list). I don’t know what I expect to see here, but that’s the thing; I soon find things I didn’t expect. That’s the best reason to come. And sure enough, I quickly lock onto four CDs and two LPs I didn’t know I wanted until I saw them. This is the sort of thing that doesn’t happen on the internet, and it restores all my faith. (The weird part is that all four of the CDs were face-out on the shelf, like they were planted there specifically for me to find.) They even have a shelf of the vintage magazines I hoped to see in Tenjinbashi. They have only one I’m looking for, but that’s way better than zero.

Thank you, Grand Chaos. Worth it.

Nearby is a big hobby shop that’s fun to browse, and a local branch for Volks, which makes a line of model kits for Armored Trooper Votoms (my second favorite anime). They’re too big for me to carry and probably won’t be built for years if I somehow do get them home, but they’re nice to look at. I wouldn’t have seen them at all if I hadn’t taken control of this day.

Nor would I have seen the grandeur of Canyon Street. Explanation follows.

One of the movie theaters showing REBEL 3199 in Osaka is Namba Parks Cinema. Namba Parks is a giant shopping mall (seriously, there are hotels attached to it; you could hold a Comic Con there), and it came to my attention because a few Yamato fans posted photos from the cinema on Twitter. There’s a huge banner for 3199 that seems to be pretty rare, so I’d like to get a look at it.

Namba Parks seemed out of reach at first, but it happens to be right next to Denden Town, so here is yet another opportunity I wouldn’t have gotten if plan A had worked out. It’s almost 8pm and the stores are closing, but Namba Parks is five minutes away and will be open all night. Off we go.

Remember how I described it as “giant”? When I get there, it takes me another 15 minutes of exploration to work out where the cinema is. I wander aimlessly around to the south end of the complex and then up an escalator, not knowing that I’m doing everything exactly right. But I figure it out it the second I step into Canyon Street.

This is a whole separate section of Namba Parks that is absolutely exhilarating to walk through. It’s designed like an actual canyon, the type carved out by wind. Everywhere you look is a spectacular angle. You make your way around huge curves to see more, and when you remember to turn around and look back, you see things you missed from the front. It’s designed to impress, and it impresses me mightily.

Namba Parks Cinema is way up on the eighth floor. I find it and there’s the 3199 banner. Beautiful. They sell the merch as well, but they don’t have the floor space for a gift shop like the Shinjuku Piccadilly. Here, they only display pictures of the merch. You fill out a card and they get the stuff from storage. Not nearly as fun. But they make it work. Anyway, I get the photos I came for, and now I want to see more of Canyon Street. It really is unforgettable. Look for it in a future episode of The Last Blue Eagle.

There’s one more thing to do before calling it a night, and that’s dinner at Hirokazuya. This is another tradition that goes back to the first visit. I asked the clerk at Hotel Kinki to recommend a local eatery for okonomiyaki, and he directed me here. It’s one of the reasons I still feel loyalty for Hotel Kinki, because without knowing it, that clerk introduced me to one of the most heavenly meals on Earth.

If you know okonomiyaki, you know. If you don’t, try to imagine an omelette and a pizza having a baby with the best things about both. There is Hiroshima style (heavy on veg) and Osaka style (heavy on toppings), and after trying both it’s Osaka style hands down for me. I’m as adamant about this as Chicago deep dish. And as far as I know, Hirokazuya is the best place to get it.

As a magnificent meal fills me with gratitude, I reflect on the lesson learned today. As Alissa reminds me in a text message later, it’s the perfect embodiment of my personal credo: Make Your World Bigger. We all lose to the yokai sometimes. We all suffer setbacks. The best way to combat them is to broaden your horizons. Add things to your life. Transform setbacks into opportunities. Head off in new directions. Locking yourself up in a bubble of misery will only prolong the misery. But adding a new element, something untouched by that misery, gives you traction. And that gives you a way out of the bubble.

In my case, both in Tokyo and now in Osaka, a hotel screwup put me on a path I didn’t plan. Along that path there were opportunities I wouldn’t have found otherwise. Nowhere in my plan for this trip did I write down “location scouting for webcomic,” but now I’m seeing locations everywhere and I can’t wait to draw them. Going home with expected prizes is great, but the ones I didn’t expect are pure magic.

Before I leave Hirokazuya, I use Google Translate to speak to the server: “My name is Tim. I’m from Los Angeles. I’ve been coming here since 2008. It’s one of my favorite meals on Earth.” She is overjoyed. At last, someone in Osaka smiled because of something I said.

See the day 4 photo gallery here

That’s Part 1! Click here to continue to Part 2!