Hotel Art: Pokemon Adventures, Blue Redraw

I just returned from a solo trip to Tokyo for a couple days - hitting up my fav spots in Akihabara, Ueno and Harajuku.

It's not like it used to be there. I remember finding SO MUCH Pokemon OG stuff in Akihabara when I used to live in Japan and I still to this day regret not buying a Red figure while I was there (I was able to get a Blue, but online). Now... OG Pokemon is non-existent. Also... and I say this as a tourist (but at least I DID live in Japan too...)... there's too many foreigners and it's hard to get in to any place because of tourist congestion. It wasn't as bad back when I lived there :/ The popular spots are really catering to the foreign crowd these days too, which takes away some of the appeal for me. I'm not sure when I'll ever be back though, so I tried to make it count <3 and I did find some GREAT treasures.

I bought a Satoshi Yamamoto Pokemon Adventures "art of..." book (along with an A.M.A.Z.I.N.G Sailor Moon art of by Naoko Takeuchi...) and this is a redraw of the Blue design from that book. I found these two items (Japanese versions), in Animate in Akihabara. But if you're traveling to Japan I HIGHLY recommend the flagship Animate store in Ikebukuro. It's like nine floors of amazing.

Blue/Shigeru... he's my fav and always will be. <3