Three Steps Over Japan: The quest

A little one-shot blog entry here.

There's been a bit of activity on the anime-product tie-in front. First up is Kirby. No idea why, but Kirby, the video game and anime character, has been showing up as an advertisement on some of the vending machines, but it's nothing worth taking pictures of. Additionally, he's on the placemats of the MOS Burger shops, inhaling burgers and drinks (again, the artwork's boring).

Changing topics, I was at an AU smartphone shop a few days ago, and the TV was on a 10-minute loop of smartphone ads. One such ad series had Bruce Willis pretending to be Doreamon, with his Docodemo Door (I think it's a play on the "Docomo" phone company name). Later, I found a vending machine with a Picture of Tommy Lee Jones, and a hint at what looked like a "Doraemon Walk" AR game, but I can't find any details for something like that online yet.

Speaking of "Walks," one of my last blog posts had been on the Dragonquest Walk stickers on one single Pepsi machine. The idea was that there's a Dragonquest Walk game, where you wander the city with your smartphone, and the screen shows various monsters you can fight or do business with. DQ teamed up with Suntory so that at specific vending machines, you can spend money to heal your character. Well, this kind of thing has become much more visible, because I've found another 5 vending machines with those stickers on them around the city now (most of them close together in Tenmonkan).

Changing topics again, last month, there were two (at the time) completely unrelated things. First was Family Mart's egg burger campaign. The konbini chain was advertising sandwiches with hamburger buns, but with a scrambled egg "patty." This looked pretty silly, and at about $2.50 for one, it was more than I wanted to spend. The second thing was a vending machine that had the artwork for Attack on Titan. It indicated a line of can coffee from Wonda with the Attack on Titan character art. I didn't have time to take a picture of the machine, and the next day I couldn't find it again. For the next 3-4 weeks, I've been checking every machine along my route, as well as the various konbini chain stores to see if any of them had the loose cans on the shelves (like they did for Lupin III and Kochira wa Kameari), but nothing.

Last week, I had a short break between lessons at the English school, and I figured I might as well swing by the Family Mart around the corner and grab an egg burger just to take pictures of it out of habit. But, when I got to that Famima, I discovered that they'd changed campaigns and didn't have the egg burgers anymore. Going home, I swung by the 4 other Famimas along the way and it was all the same thing - they'd all switched campaigns. Sigh, oh well.

Finally, two nights ago, I was out walking for exercise. When I got near one of the pachinko parlors on the other side of Tenmonkan, I noticed that they had the Attack on Titan art on the Pepsi machine (above) in the doorway. But, none of the cans in the display window had the character art on it. Reading the advertising more closely, it seems that Wonda has decided to get really chintzy. Only a few of the cans, for their Morning Shot, Golden Coffee and Bitter Shot brands, are the Attack on Titan cans. You just have to try your "luck" and see if you win one. The machine charges 130 yen per can, which is more than the coffee is worth (it's not good coffee). Anyway, I decided to get a Morning Shot right there, and it just turned out to be a plain can.

My cellphone has a step counter, and I've never bothered seeing how many steps I walk a day. That night, I figured "why not," and went all the way down to City Hall (2014 steps in 20 minutes), then back home by a slightly different route (4034 steps in 40 minutes). While I was at it, I continued up to Amu Plaza (5300 steps in 50 minutes), then back by a slightly different route (6620 steps in 1 hour). As I was coming back, I approached another Family Mart, and it had the banner out front promoting the egg burger. I wasn't dressed for going into a brightly lit store and I didn't have a mask), so I returned home to go to sleep for the night. The next day, I got to the Attack on Titan vending machine on the way to work, and I got a can of the Gold coffee brand. This one DID have character art, but it was for Kochira wa Kame Ari. What the hell? Ok, yeah, fine. Enough's enough. I continue to work.

A few hours later, I'm done with my classes for the day and I head back home. I make a side stop to the Family Mart from the night before and go in to get the egg burger. And, they don't have it. When I get outside, I look at the overhead banner, and it's for the new campaign again. However, next to the chilled sandwich shelves, the store had their heated can coffee shelves, and right at eye level were two cans of Attack on Titan Wonda Morning Shots. The refrigerated drinks section had more of the cans. None of the artwork looked all that great, but the cans were marked at 108 yen each, so I got the one pictured here.