HI there, I'm Amy from Cakes with Faces
Welcome back to my series about cute, funny & strange gachapon from Japan
Gachapon are the capsule toys you get from the machines
You can find them everywhere
Outside arcades
Outside shops
And just on the street
There's loads of them in Akihabara
But you can find them in all the main areas as well
Lots of gachapon series are related to anime or popular characters
You can get things like keychains, little figures or badges.
But I think the most interesting ones
Are just the random series
Because some of them are completely bizarre
I'm sure they make some of them just so you think: "That's so strange, I have to have it"
And it definitely works
On me at least
They're only about 200 or 300 yen
So they're not expensive
And they're always releasing new series
It never ceases to amaze me with what they come up with
If you want to see the rest of my gachapon series
There's a playlist on my channel
And with everything that's going on in the world at the moment
My online shop is still open
I'm shipping orders every day
So if you need to send a present to someone
And have it sent straight to them
Have a look, there's lots of things that make good gifts
And if you add a note at check-out
I'll write a special message for them
It's cakeswithfaces.co.uk
The link's in the description
So on to the video!
Here's my round-up of amazing gachapon from Japan
The first gachapon we're going to start off with is a cute one
Penguins at the doctors
The name of the series translates to "Penguin Body Measurements"
And they're having a check-up!
Taking their weight
Height
And an eye test
By the looks of it, some of them aren't too pleased with the results
I know I said the best gachapon aren't the character ones
But just look at these
Sumikko Gurashi... crystal balls?!
Sumikko Gurashi is a group of characters
That just enjoy a quiet, laidback life in the corner together
The name Sumikko Gurashi means "Corner living"
There's so much merch
And all of it is super cute
Including these:
Light-up crystal balls with the characters floating in the centre
It is kind of a strange combination
But it's very cute
"I'm looking into your future..."
"and it's very kawaii"
Something you see quite often in gachapon
Are little pouches or coin purses
Which are always useful
You can fool yourself into thinking you're buying something useful & practical
Quite often they look like little versions of packaging or food products
And these are sandwiches!
Sandwich pouches
That look just like sandwiches you get from the convenience store in Japan.
Series 1 has ham sandwiches,
BLT,
Shrimp,
And egg mayo
By the way, have you ever tried Japanese egg mayo sandwiches from the convenience store?
I don't know how they make them so delicious!
It's one of my kind of regrets
That I only discovered them on the last day of my previous trip
So I didn't have time to have any more
Series 2 of the sandwich pouches
Has sweet sandwiches
There's various kinds of fruit sandwiches
Which are also delicious
Highly recommended
And an anko sando
Which is sweet red bean paste
Next, also from the convenience store & also pouches
These are convenience store side dishes
Looking very realistic
These fresh dishes & bento boxes from the convenience store
Are surprisingly good quality
And pretty cheap
That's one of the many things I miss about Japan
How you can get pretty good quality food
For a good price from the convenience store
When you're in a rush
Next is another type of pouch
In the shape of underpants
That you can use to hold tissues
The title says "from pants?!"
You pull the tissues out of the flies
Sometimes I'm amazed at what you can get from gachapon for just a few hundred yen
These ones are mini games
The buttons are little moles
You have to press the one that lights up
And see how fast you can do it without making a mistake
And it's only 300 yen
Next we've got mini ATMs or cash machines
I'm not sure exactly how
But I think they actually work
They've got little buttons & you can take out coins & bank notes
Now you know tattoo sleeves
That you put on your arms to make it look like you have a load of tattoos?
Well this next gachapon is a bit like that
Except it makes you look like you have cyborg arms
So you look like a robot
This series takes that concept a step further
With a whole range
There's mecha arms
This one has X-rays, so it looks like it's showing your bones
That one's pretty original
This one has muscles.
You'd look like a titan from Attack on Titan
Or hairy arms
Not sure why you'd want that one!
But of course, the thing about gachapon is
It's random, so you don't know which one you're going to get
Next, arctic animals with big chins
At first, I thought this was just another strange gachapon idea
But if you look at the poster
It says Shakurel Planet
So I looked it up
In an attempt to understand what's going on here
If you look it up, you find it's some kind of character series
All with very big chins
If you know what this is
Tell me in the comments!
I've never heard of it before.
This is the white series
They're all arctic, snow creatures
Do snow hedgehogs exist?
Or is this just an albino one with the red eyes?
Next, birds with cosmetics & toiletries
The description says:
"Brush your teeth, wash your face...
...stroke your parakeet"
Which sounds like it might be some sort of expression
Or a line from a song
That is what they're doing
They're all getting ready in the morning
Sometimes gachapon are based on sayings
Or things that get a bit lost in translation
Either way, it's pretty cute
And just look at the detail
Even the packaging for the hand cream has little birds printed on it!
Next, tiny gravestones
For your dearly departed gachapon
Is it for when you step on them by accident?
All the memorial stones have words on
Now my Japanese isn't good enough to understand what they mean
So I tried putting them into Google Translate
They came out as things like:
Sunday, vocabulary, sense and motivation
So are these gravestones for when you've lost all sense & motivation?
Motivation is dead
Sometimes I really do wish I was better at Japanese
So I could better understand what on earth is going on with these gachapon
Particularly in the case of this next one
Are these yakuza?
Some of them have rockabilly hairstyles
The title says "Kyo kara Tsupari"
Which I think means "Youth from today"
So does it mean something like: "Kids these days"
As in: these guys are all delinquents
There seems to be a black team & a white team
But why are they crouching on the ground?
I don't know what's going on here!
So we've had gravestones,
So to continue the sinister tone these gachapon are taking
Next we've got spooky gachapon from The Ring
To give you tiny nightmares
When I was trying to find out more about them
I came across this:
It's The Ring, crossed with that Shakurel Planet series from earlier
With the big chins
It kind of loses some of its scariness
When they look so silly
There's even a lion version
Next, we're going from The Ring to another sort of Ring
Tin can rings
They're mini tin cans
That you can wear on your fingers as rings
Very stylish
There's tinned crab
Mackerel, boiled clams
A whole choice of seafood
They're actually really detailed labels
When you consider how small they are
There's also another series
With tins of fruit
And another series with cat food tins
Cat food tin rings
Next: teen tiny laptops, PCs, mice & monitors
They all have tiny cables
That you can actually plug in
It tells you which have USB cables & which have other types of connections
But I don't know, connecting up my PC
And plugging in all the cables
Is something I really don't enjoy doing
If I ever have to move it for some reason
It's always really annoying
So why would you want a tiny version
That's even more fiddly to plug in?!
Next, magnetic plasters or band-aids
They look pretty realistic
The example they give is:
You can stick them on your drinks cans or on your washing machine
For those situations where, I don't know...
Your washing machine gets a paper cut
So it's first aid for household appliances
With this gachapon
You can set up your own miniature (plastic) taiyaki stall
Taiyaki are street food snacks in Japan
They're made of batter
Kind of like waffle
With sweet fillings
The traditional filling is red bean paste
You can also get things like custard cream
And matcha
And they're fish-shaped
They're really good
I'd definitely recommend them
And with this gachapon
You can make your own
In plastic
There's moulds for individual & double taiyaki
And for when they're prepared
You even get a little cardboard box to serve them in
So that's it!
I hope you enjoyed this look through the world of gachapon
We've had some cute ones
Some strange ones
And some kind of confusing ones
Until I can get back to Japan
Which will hopefully be later this year
I've temporarily changed my video schedule
To every other Thursday
If you click the bell next to the subscribe button on my channel
It'll tell you when my new video's out
And if you want to catch up before then
I'm always on Twitter & Instagram
As Cakes with Faces
I'll see you soon
Bye bye!