Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Gundam Bar - Side 3

A friend was riding through town and called me when she found this place. She sent me the link afterwards.

A couple of days later I ended up going there with another friend who knew absolutely nothing about Gundam but she got a long well with the staff regardless. The staff are really nice folks. The manager and the shop owner are quite... eccentric. The owner introduced himself to me wearing a Darth Vader mask! And instead of 'Cheers' they'd say Zieg ZEON! Wow. It was a lot to take in for a regular person. More so for a Gundam fan. There are models EVERYWHERE. Gifts from the customers! 1/60 Strike Freedom and Exia were given to them as gifts? Wow. Again. It was cool though, I could play with the MG GP02 as I was drinking, and Gouf Custom and blahblahblah. There was A LOT of stuff there. I was playing with 1/60 Exia last night actually and I really liked it.
The menu was crazy. Take a look.

I'll translate some of the "Gundam Cocktails" for you.

The Federations "White Thing"
Red Comet
Black Tri Star
Cinderella Four
Nightmare of Solomon
Stardust Memory
White Fang
Moonlight Butterfly
Blue Cosmos
Pink Princess

And if you're not a cocktail drinker you can always get the Hyaku Shiki Beer. The manager showed me a picture on his cell phone of a customer dressed up in Quattro's costume drinking that beer! Hilarious!

Of course most of the people there are Gundam fans but not all. It's on a street that's full of shops but most of them close at 6pm and this place is open until... well I'm not sure really.

It's narrow. Haven't gotten a chance to see the upstairs yet. I noticed that at the back they had a little raised tatami area. Don't know about tatami? Check here. 4.5 Mats. 6 people were sitting at a table playing a DS game linked together. Couldn't see what game it was but I asked if they were all playing the same game together and they lady said 'Yes'. I passed them on my way to the washroom.

The washroom was plastered with Gundam posters.

I think it was at that point that I realized that I probably won't be able to find a place like this anywhere else. I felt like I fit in this place (yeah just the toilet haha). But at the same time not. I could talk about modelling and Gundams freely with people who knew more about it than me. Really it was quite a special day in my life when I usually go through it with people having no idea about Gundam or having the 'otaku' stigma attached to it. Not here. It's embraced openly. I'm somehow relieved when I come across those Gundam fans who are more extreme than me.

Gundam OO DVD's are running constantly. People are coming in and out constantly. There were a lot more women there then I thought would be.

It was fun but a bit on the expensive side, not to mention the Japanese is a bit tough for me. A lot of the folks use a strong regional dialect so it's a bit hard to understand sometimes but they took it down a notch for me. Lot's of quoting from animations. Dragonball. At one point in the night everyone in the bar repeating a line from G Gundam simultaneously! Shook the walls! Nice place and I'm really glad I found it. I'll come back for sure.

More pics with write up's here.

2 comments:

  1. it's in Nagoya you say? If only it's closer to where I'm at (Mishima)

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