During the end of year holidays, I organised a trip down to Numazu in Shizuoka with some friends. I took the role of tour guide. I initially fell in love with the surrounding area during a short trip during the Typhoon season in July of the same year. Due to the bad weather, I didn’t get to explore it as much as I wanted to!

Traveling during the end of year was highly discouraged by the Japanese Government due to the rising cases of COVID-19, there was a real fear that those traveling out of Tokyo would spread COVID to surrounding prefectures, and rightfully so. We had access to our own (classic!) car and made a conscious effort to steer clear of any crowded spaces. Starting the day off bright and early at 6AM!

We made our way down the inland highways towards Mount Fuji.

Numazu lies east of Shizuoka city, along the coast. It sits in the shadow of Mt Fuji, which makes for some beautiful scenic views. Numazu remained pretty unknown to the international community until the premiere of the anime Love Live Sunshine which was based in the area. Due to the immense popularity of the show, tourism exploded with local and overseas visitors. When you walk around Numazu, you will notice the impact that the anime has made on the area, bringing much needed revenue to some worn down areas of the city and surrounding areas.

Surprising, Uchiura Bay, which lies south of Numazu and is a leading set piece of the Love Live Sunshine anime, was packed with local tourists on the 31st of December. Fans from all over the country had come to visit on the last day of the year. Come to bask in the cold morning sun haha.

After arriving, we took a quick visit to Mito Beach.

Then we made our way up to the Awashima Island Boat Terminal and parked our car and proceeded to make our way back down the coast on foot.

Along the street by the ocean.

I’m not sure what it is about Uchiura Bay, but it has a very nostalgic aura about it, and many people that I have talked to share similar feelings. It’s a relaxing location, very different from the hustle and bustle of Yokohama and Tokyo.

If you have the opportunity to visit this area, even if you are not a fan of the series, I do recommend a day trip just to relax. If you do have some money to spare, I’d recommend booking a night at Yasudaya Inn, which is a small inn opposite Mito Beach.  It’s not for the faint of heart! One night can cost ¥30,000 but includes a 5 course dinner and breakfast. Yasudaya Inn is a set piece for one of the characters homes in Love Live Sunshine, so is very popular and books out very fast. Before COVID19, it was common to have to book 6 months in advance.

We eventually made our way to another set piece of the show, the school. This school is on an outcrop of land overlooking Uchiura Bay next to a mikan orange farm. It was nice to visit the outside of such a prominent location in the anime. To my suprise, there were a lot of people out the front taking photos.

If you do visit the school, please consider others around you and visit on a holiday. Real children attend this school. Don't be a nuisance

Afterwards, we made our way back to Numazu City via the bus that runs along the bay. This will cost you about ¥850. It’s best to have loose change or ¥1000 notes on you so you can pay quickly as the bus fills up quickly along its route and you don’t want to be THAT person!

As the day was growing to a close, we stopped by Gamers Numazu only to find out they had a ticket system in place due to increased traffic and COVID safety.

We decided to visit the Love Live Sunshine Cafe, just outside of Numazu Station, before I left my friends to their hotel and headed back to Tokyo.

I returned to Numazu on the 2nd of January for the special Love Live Sunshine art exhibition being featured at Kiramesse Numazu, north of the station.

The exhibition featured various key frames from the animation, as well as costumes, outfits and props from the different performances over the years. It was a pleasant viewing experience, if not a little short. No photography was allowed inside the actual exhibit. Obtaining a ticket can be challenging for a foreigner that isn't familiar with the ePlus system. Tickets were virtual and held on the ePlus application, which is only downloadable on a Japanese App or Google Play store. To be registered on the ePlus system, you have to have access to a Japanese phone number.

At the end of the exhibit, there was a little surprise  some props from a live show that happened not even 2 days earlier during the 31st of December!

After the exhibition, we got in a taxi and headed down the main strip of Numazu to Numazu Burger. Numazu Burger is famous amoung fans of the series. A few of the actresseses visited the shop many years ago, and since then it has become a sort of pilgrimage spot for those visiting Numazu.

Numazu Burger, as seen in the daytime of July 2020

The table in which the actresses sat. Notice the photo framed on the wall.

After eating at what might be the best burger shop in all of Eastern Japan, we walked back to our hotel, Riverside Numazu, for a rest. Since it was the new years holidays, the streets were very quiet!

And finished up the day by the banks of the Kano River in the freezing cold!

The next day I was meeting with a long-time friend whom I had met back in Melbourne, Australia. She had studied English in the city before moving back to her hometown in Shizuoka. Life travels fast, and despite living and working here in Japan for several years now, it had been what felt like an eternity since I last saw her.

We stopped by a famous Showa era style café called Donguri, off on a side street of the main road in Numazu. The shop is plastered with photos of famous guests and signed shikishi boards. You purchase your meal tickets at a vending machine at the front of the store and enter. The shop features a small river in the middle in which you place your ticket in a tub, and let it float down into the kitchen. The tub soon returns with your order on it. Very fun!

After a short day of exploring, we stopped by the local arcade north of the station for some quick rhythm games before it was time to head back to Tokyo and prepare for the big year to come.

Numazu will always hold a place in my heart for the memories I have made there. It is a lovely small city with a nostalgic aura to it. I’m very glad to have been introduced to it by Love Live. I plan to visit again once the COVID situation eases up and foreign friends are allowed to return to Japan.

Until then, I  hope the residence of Numazu stay healthy and are able to survive these difficult times. I hope everyone is well

Sometime early last year during my downtime, I came up with the idea to create a fantasy style outfit with accessories for Smart Doll, which was inspired by the elf ears released earlier the previous year. I noticed that there had been a distinct lack of external accessories for the BJD brand.

Toy Companies often have the opportunity to bid for licences held by media companies to create toys from popular intellectual property. This is the case with Volks, whose product Dollfie has had many limited releases of IP branded characters over the years. Some of these limited releases feature external accessories. A great example of this is the Saber Lily from December 2010 and Ruler Jeanne d’Arc from December 2018, both of which feature armour and weaponry.

After sketching out some ideas on Clip Studio Paint, I came up with a basic model that I felt happy with. Something that wasn’t too difficult to model and print as a starter while looking aesthetically pleasing. The idea of this sword came to me while listening to space rock opera. It has the resemblance of a comet traveling through space with the tail as the blade.

This, coupled with the elf ears and some other ideas I had sketched up, lead to the idea of a full space fantasy costume set. Using Chitose as a base, I sketched some basic costume ideas to go together with the sword. I really like design 2.

he second design is a favorite!

Once I was satisfied, I began hard surface modelling the weapon accessory in Maya. While I set out to model an eight-pointed star for the centre area of the hilt, I decided that for the first iteration, it was best to keep things a little simpler.

The cross-guard area of the weapon ended up being a little ugly and during feedback in the design phase, it was pointed out that the weapon would indeed look better without it, however as this was more of an exercise for me than a final product, I decided to keep it in the final product as a challenge of sorts.

Once complete, I encountered my first problem; the scale of the weapon. As I wanted to print this on an SLA printer (for its superior resolution and ability to print finer details), the total print size of the printer was far smaller than what I wanted the weapon to be printed at. Scaling the weapon to the maximum size of the ANYCUBIC Photon SLA printer yielded a maximum size on the Y axis of 15cm, approximately the size of your hand.

The first print turned out realy small!

To resolve this issue, I returned to Maya and split the model into two parts. However, this would leave a clear slice in the model where it would need to be glued, which wouldn’t look great aesthetically. Instead, I cut the accessory at the base of the blade and hilt. And extended the area that would make up the insert for the tang of the blade.

Finally! It was time to slice the model up and begin printing!

And after a few failed attempts…

(Not enough UV resin…!!!)

I had a completed print at a decent size!

You have to be careful of any unsealed resin on the vinyl material of the doll for it may stain it!

I hope to continue producing these prototypes in the future. This will be an ongoing personal project of mine. Overall, creating this print was a great learning experience when it comes to designing, modelling and printing your own ideas and products. While I have been using FDM printers for some time now, this was my first print using my own design and an SLA printer.