Time for a long due post for a long due figure - the very one I have been lamenting & feeling hopeful about since April. Long story short turns out I have written an incomplete address and it has been "Returned to Sender," hence the awful delay. I had been so naive and was actually expecting it to arrive two weeks after I ordered it (yup, discounting the fact that it was Golden Week, that's how much faith I have in SAL). Poor Yui has been flying to and fro Japan due to a minor mistake on my part, so sorry Yui-chan TT

There were a few reasons I've decided to brave the eBay and order her:

1. It was really cheap - like less than $20... Let's not mention the shipping fee for now

2. I'm taking down the B2 Yui poster so this will be a "commemorative" figure to signify Yui will forever be in my heart (ok drama, but she's just so cuteee)

3. The guitar

4. This is the best version of her with a guitar (in my opinion)

5. To prove that eBay is safe & reliable (probably not smth my Mother would be delighted to hear, to know that her daughter is playing with money like that, but it's a fact that parents won't ever know 70% of what the kid did behind their back)

This is possibly one of the better Banpresto figures I have ever seen and am willing to own, and despite knowing the quality wouldn't be top-notch, I believed it was the right thing to do. The standard protocol before I purchase a figure is to run a thorough search for all the available variants of the desired character. Not only is it a sport in itself, seeing how sculptors depict a character in 3D, but it'll ensure I get the best out there (within budget, of course).

Fellow collectors who have hanged around long enough should know Banpresto's reputation as an affordable figure manufacturer, often at the price of compromising packaging and using mediocre material (e.g. cheaper PVC/resin). I would not complain about the plain black base here, since even the higher end of the figurine manufacturer would sometimes surprise you with their plain bases. However, they certainly did not cut back on their quality control here, as there were hardly any unwanted blotches or obvious discolourations. The only problem I have is with the guitar's amp cord that has a tendency to fall off, and the guitar strap that keeps slipping out on one side of the screw. However, there would only prose a problem when you're carrying and shifting it around, and since most of the time Yui is seated behind the glass cabinet, that is hardly a pressing issue.

For those who are curious, this was released way back in March 2012, under the SQ Figure series titled 'Winter Uniform Ver.' The reason they could maintain such competitive pricing is due to their smaller packaging and breaking up of the figure into several containable parts. LEGO has never been my forte, and I get really nervous and clumsy with build-yourself toys, partly from the fear of accidentally breaking a limp or leg, but mostly because I suck at it.

Well... With lack of motivation to travel far and severe lack of willpower to peel myself off the bed before 7AM, I settled with my good o' neighbourhood park, Bishan Park.

Hooray! Thanks to the carefree cumulus floating around the sky, Yui and I were spared from the scorching sunlight. Warning: series of dark photographs ahead! To capture the glorious sky view, I have to compromise on the exposure of Yui - I'm sick of plain white sky.

My Mother was ironing bed sheets beside me while I was uploading today's photos and when she saw this, she commented, "Don't anyhow go to dangerous places to take photographs." I lol-ed.

A lucky ray of sunlight slipping between the overcrowded clouds

I call this a path to success - that is to keeping walking!

Giita (The name of her guitar lol) really outshines her owner here

"I'm a rockstar who plays the low low note guitar, Yui!"

Loving the reflections here, to the point of breaking the illusion that I'm surrounded by all nature

Yui looking like she's waving to the tower of flats

A beautiful backdrop of purple flowers, celebrating Yui's music career

You can't go wrong with the Weeping Willow swaying behind you... Opps where's the guitar?

Ahh, here it is... A lame attempt at creating a 'cool guitar abandoned under the sun' vibe

So with the end of this post I've proved 2 things - the platform eBay is safe, it's the seller that changes the game, and unregistered SAL is safe too, just that you've got to have faith N patience. She took 3 weeks 1 day to arrive at my doorstep in pretty good condition, much to my relieve. The best thing was that the seller paid for the reshipping cost without any prompts or grumbles. As a show of appreciation of their good customer service, do check out japan-mslcom on eBay, they have a huge and random catalogue of figures and anime merchandise and who knows, you might just get lucky & find a long sold out figure!

xoxo

So, the other day at Flower Dome there were a few species that caught our tsundere's eyes & I thought I should share some of her "top picks" here. Enjoy!

Above is our Flower Ambassador, Senjougahara Hitagi from the well-aclaimed anime, Bakemono Gatari. This is also my first figurine that has inadvertently ignited this collector's frenzy in me. She is a 1/8 scale EX figure by SEGA, released in 2012, 3 years after the show aired. And I've bought this... 2 years later. So much history eh.

Hitagi is gazing thoughtfully at a bed of Lupinus cultivar from America, and no, it wasn't named after Lupin the Third, since they have been consumed by Ancient Egypt over 3000 years ago.

The garden's current theme is Nursery Rhymes and the Lupins were generously planted under the "Little Bo Beep" section.

Just staring at these harlequin of colours brightens up my day!

Just beside it we have a cluster of larkspur (Delphinium cultivar) surrounding the big Daddy cow and another bed of vibrant purple ground covers that holds a resemblance to purple daisy (sadly I can't find the name of this flower) where the little ducklings were warmly nestled.

Next to the pathway dividing the flower beds we have "Baby Elephants." Truth be told, when I first saw them I was thinking about Thailand more than some kid's bedtime story.

After a long day of fetching water, they're taking a nap among the safety of the flowers.

 Here we have the favoured flower of the anime industry, Hydrangeas, in its different stages of bloom.

Have anyone seen before a black flower? Me neither, but look what I found! I was so fascinated that I actually sat by the pavement in front of it. This is actually pansy in a shade of purple so dark that it appears black. For ladies (and gentlemen alike) who wishes for your other half/ potential boyfriend to pay a little more attention to you, just send him/her a stalk. In the flower language, pansy means to think of you.

So mysterious, it silently draws you in and piques at your curiosity.

Hitagi & I have to argee on one thing - how is this possible? It is like a cousin of Delphinium 'Blue Jay,' except much more alluring and frolic.

If anyone has an idea what the above plant is, please let me know in the comment section below. I was so distracted by its colour varieties that it slipped my mind to ask for its name.

It is indeed a luxury and pleasure to be able to witness such a colourful array of perennial plants in a tropical country like Singapore, and I cannot begin to imagine the amount of maintenance cost & labour the garden is pumping in just to keep up this pretty front!

That's all for today's "Top Picks," please continue to love flowers and spread the art of flower appreciation!

xoxo

Today I'll be sharing a trip to one of Singapore's latest landmark (it changes almost on a yearly basis, so you really need to pay attention, the country's rich that way), the Gardens by the Bay at Bayfront. The green oasis was opened on 29 June 2012 and has attracted countless visitors since then, including The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. It has since dominated the local postcards as the Face of Singapore and stirring up a storm within the media, with people reopening the discussion of Singapore's indecisive vision between "Garden in a City" and "City in a Garden."

Having recently acquired another figure, I thought I should disguise myself as a tourist and head down to borrow its landscapes.

The star of the day, Hirasawa Yui is my favourite electric guitar girl from the anime K-ON! She didn't come by easily - as this was a 1/8 scale, exclusive release (limited stocks available at limited outlets) from Kyoto Animation, I thought that was it, I should give up on getting on. Let's not forget this was released way back in 2011 and fellow collectors know most of the figures will be out of production once the pre-painted stocks are wiped out.

Just when I was about to give up, I stumbled upon the Hardware zone (local) forum and my god, someone is selling it, and it's brand new! So, I did the next sensible thing, I contacted the guy.

I was worrying my guts out when he did not reply my text until the next day, at 3:15 P.M., as I vividly remembered till now. We battered back and forth for the best price and finally, the deal was on and I was going to meet up with him near his place. I had to take train, change bus & travel across the expressway, but it was all worth it. Yui Yui you're so cute!

For this photo, I had to sit under the burning sun on the equally burning asphalt while I wait patiently for the right intensity of sunlight. I didn't know such beautiful lavender-like flowers can strive so well under such intense conditions.

When I was on the verge to melt, I chanced upon this bamboo cove with a huge and flattened white boulder in front of it, just in time for a time-out and to place Yui for this shoot. Ah, love the cooperative wind-blown effect of the foreground grasses!

With the hard part/ hot part over, it was time that I left the Heritage Gardens for the Flower Dome, a.k.a. air-con place. Above is the ticket for either one of the cool cocoon (the other being the Cloud Forest). Since I went on a weekday morning, there was no queue and I quickly entered.

One of my favourite shots of the day, this dreamscape of small white flowers reaching towards the gentle sunlight, with my Angel in the middle losing slightly lost, perfection.

Unfortunately they did not have a label for this flower, which I could not understand (they have for all the ones around this!) Here, Yui seems a little frightened by the gigantic petals around her.

Argh, the sunlight was not showing mercy here. It was mostly my fault for going so late (11A.M.) but it is hard to find such tiny petals that matches the scale of Yui :(

Another favourite shot of mine, the Daisy Valley~ They are pretty odourless too, somehow.

The floor of loose pebbles allowed me to hide Yui's base so I can show more of her fab stripe leggings <333

Yui looking camera-shy here as she hid among the red bursts of spring.

Flower Dome was having a showcase of Nursery Rhymes, which explains the Little Bo Beep that Yui is so fascinated with :o

Buuowww, I was in there for almost 2 hours and I was freezing by the time I left! Nevertheless, I am thankful for the awesome palette of perennial plants they have provided me and I shall end off with this advertorial shot of the Supertree, the landmark of GBTB. This scene feels like the ending of her performance, with the explosion of waterworks and bright lights stretching out behind her. After all, this figure is based on K-ON's first ending, <<Don't Say Lazy>>, a fitting setting if I should say.

That's all for today, thank you for dropping by minnan!

Good day everyone, shortly after my first experience with outdoor figure shoot (it had been 3 days), I grew restless and could not wait to try it out with Juri Han of Super Street Fighter IV. This is a 1/7 scale figure released by Kotobukiya in April 2015, something I've eagerly waited since I ordered it back in December last year. 

Similarly as before, I wanted to make as much use of natural lighting as possible and armed with my iPhone 6 and water bottle, I set out to hunt for the 'it' spots. I was due to graduate that afternoon and did not want the day to be solely remembered for sitting through hundreds of awardees and sweating buckets under the grad gown while I brought my parents awkwardly around the school compounds...

Just a little background information, Juri Han is a South Korean Taekwondo (the first in the series) who was introduced to satisfy the dedicated Korean fans after countless pleas on their part. So after coming up with 400-500 concept designs, they've finally decided to make her this sadistic, sexy villain that you'll either love or hate on first sight. It's rather obvious what my opinion is so I shall not elaborate further.

Super Street Fighter IV is a fighting game produced by Capcom in 2010, and the title "Super" is to denote it as the upgraded version from Street Fighter IV. Personally I've tried the game on my friend's PS3 and abused Juri on countless matches; needless to say it's brilliant and absolutely addictive, well-deserving of the Golden Joystick Award for Fighting Game of the Year 2010.

Now, getting on to the actual shoot...

For this I've chosen Bishan Park again, but I headed over to Park 1 to try my luck, hopefully to find some hidden cool spots. Above was the very first picture I took by a moderately fast moving river. What I really liked is how the energetic water somehow complements with her belligerent personality and brought movement to the otherwise still photo.

For someone who solely fights for the thrills, it seems like even the rapid currents could feel the evil emanating off her and were retreating in terror. 

It was kinda awkward taking these photographs since I was standing/ squatting in the middle of this rocks-on-water path, and I had to scramble to protect my figure from falling into the currents whenever someone walked by.

Next up, I headed down a slope to get closer to this bio-swale and boy, the faraway temple could not have made the photo more perfect and fit to context. Thank you.

This is after shifting the depth of field from the landscape to Juri, which I depicted as a formiddable training ground for our sexy fighter (and a nice view of the temple). 

Just behind and that greenery and me is this dang and mossy 'tunnel' that I definitely could not miss out - we're talking Juri the vengeful spirit here (like evil - dark - unknown - women - dangerous...)

Switching up to a peaceful atmosphere, there's this giant pond that's the embodiment of zen and purity. Unfortunately, I wasn't feeling so zen as the sky was suddenly overcast with passing clouds and the lighting was really bad. I even felt like the still pond was mocking me... But there's always the temple (peeking behind) to calm my mind~

See what I mean? It was a TIR - Total Internal Reflection, no photoshopping of the inverted scenery, but the exposure was just... I had to touch up on the shadows and stuff on my phone just to make her face slightly more visible.

After that pond incident there was not any hot spots left, and feeling dejected and disappointed, I snail out of the crowded park (I wonder what the day was - there were 2 secondary schools hosting cross countries at both parks & an army force training by the field...) ...And went back to Bishan Park 2 since it was still early and all. Then I saw this row of Loropetalum chinense, or very strikingly beautiful red leaves and had to stop and snap. This shrub was practically made to be Juri's backdrop!

Oh yea, for the last spot I overcame huge steps (see top left) and dropped next to yet another rocks-on-water path and got working. I liked how this photo has a little everything.

It was a pain to balance her on the grids of the gabion walls but alas, her talent in martial arts did not fail and I've got this satisfactory bottom-up angle. An interesting thing to note is the figure is actually meant to be viewed this way instead of eye level, since the choker would make her appear neck-less and hence slightly unflattering. Also, the illustration that resulted in this sculpture was drawn with a low angle, so I guess that's why it became like this.

While I was crouching and cracking my head for the best angles, I was also occasionally distracted by heads popping down from the top of the steps. From their expressions I could imagine they must be wondering what the hell was I doing alone by the drain with a toy.

Well, that's all for today, and I shall be posting soon when I got my next figure... And nope, my eBay order is still not here, it's been 4 weeks, 4 days and I'm losing hope........

For the complete set of HD photographs from this shoot, you can find them in my flickr account here.

Jyaa!

P.S.: Guys, you've got to watch Juri in animation to see how badass she is over here! 3njoy kekeke...