In the middle of a last-minute Christmas shopping marathon weekend, Judy and I headed over to Matsudo last Sunday to visit the Bandai Museum on the recommendation of one of her friends.

Bandai is the third largest toy company in the world and is responsible for introducing the world’s children such wonderful toys as Gundam, Ultraman, Power Rangers, Tamagotchi and those little pink M.U.S.C.L.E. figures that I was unhealthily obsessed with in the second grade (the absolute best-smelling toys EV4R!) , among others.

Now, with a such a diverse and widely-known character base, I was expecting the Bandai Museum to be nothing short of amazing — in other words, the kind of place that brings smiles to the faces of young children and slimy goo to the underpants of children slightly older.

Thus, you can imagine my surprise when the “museum” turned out to be little more than five floors of gift shops, all selling the exact same selection of toys (mainly cheap Ultraman figures). Signs all over the place indicated that there were a couple of special attractions of some sort, but after our initial disappointment, we couldn’t be arsed to spend the extra ¥300 to see them.

Oh well, at least I got to take a photo of Judy chillin’ with the man himself: