Translator/toy maniac Matt Alt and Japanophile Patrick Macias become (almost) the first gaijin to set foot inside the Bandai Hobby Center and live to tell about it at AltJapan.
http://altjapan.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/11/tha_shizznit.htmlTha Shizznit
Patrick and I really did it, I think to myself, pressing the shutter for what has to be my first-ever photograph of a urinal. We've penetrated the inner sanctum. This is where the people who design Gun-Pla relieve themselves.
We're in the Shizz. That's what Patrick has unoffically dubbed the Bandai Hobby Center, a gleaming new high-tech factory in Shizuoka prefecture where each and every Gundam model kit is lovingly manufactured. Bandai set up a personal tour for the two of us after a sake-fueled evening in Asakusa a few weeks back. Patrick's book Otaku in USA made a big splash at the Bandai offices, and my company's been doing translation work for them for years. Now we're being thanked with the otaku equivalent of an audience at the Vatican.
frm Gunota