New Groom

ぬいぐるみ (Nuigurumi, New Groom is how I remember it) is Japanese for stuffed toy and yesterday I got so caught up in going through my plush items, that I ran out of time to do a Countdown to Halloween blog entry. Since I was sifting three boxes worth of stuffed stuff, I figured I might as well photograph them. I plan to give a large portion of them away to the graduating Grade Sixes next spring. I'll start with the more Halloween oriented ones first just so I don't lose the interest of the Countdown crowd. Faithful viewers of this here bloggy thing of mine may have seen some before and if I've missed a few, you can always hit the label "stuffed" to catch up.

First up, Hello Kitty as famous monsters.

Kitty-chan has also cosplayed as various Evangelion gals and I think those others are Tiger/Bunny. The skeleton belongs in the above picture.

Speaking of cats, I believe those are Nyanpires above and Angry & Hangry below.

In addition to cats, we have Gloomy bears as well.

Here's a dubbed Gloomy at snacktime.

Some cosplaying Warner's characters.

And some of their cartoon colleagues.

Pixar pals and a few Disney friends.

And enemies...

And I'm not sure how to identify these.

or these.

And a few Illumination characters.

Gachapin and Mukku mesh with the Gegege Gang.

More Gloomy, this time as a ghost and an Oni. 

And...Best...Ever...
as Ghiddorah and Godzilla!!

Speaking of Kaiju, a few of the Ultraman foes.

The Little Prince...

Many characters from Mary and the Witch's Flower.

 

It's the Genie, Akubi-Musume.

 

A few Migi. I'm pretty sure I have more of these somewhere.

A few friends from Adventure Time.

A beer swilling Poochie-esque dog and a couple of maids.

Finally, I really like these Amabie, a Yokai-bird used to spread the word about Covid.

Now you can see why it took me so long to go through these. 95% of them were caught in the UFO Catcher game machines, so there's a lot of coins spent there.

I was trying to quickly find a fellow blogger with stuffed stuff, Nope. Try this guy for Action Figures or make your own Crafts.

Numa, Numa!

On Saturday, a friend and I took a drive to see the last of the changing leaves and they had pretty much all changed. We planned to drive Bandai-Azuma Skyline to our destination which was a group of ponds called Goshikinuma. The actual Skyline was closed, so we had to make do with the regular highway. Unfortunately, the high altitude and a slightly wheezy bout of asthma prevented me from hiking too far, so we just chilled at Bishamonnuma. (Must have been the asthma along the Azuma.)

Plenty of rowboats aboot. (NO ONE wore life vests.)

We didn't come across any bears. I'm not particularly worried, they're tiny compared to Canajun bears.

That Amabie is a yokai that has become the mascot for preventing Corona. I was given one from a friend, the last one they had.

Back to the pond...

A couple of carp.

Numa is the term for marshland or pond so I scammed the title for today's post from this unusual video.

 

This and most of the surrounding bodies of water were created when Bandai erupted back in 1888. The recently founded Japanese Red Cross helped to keep the death toll down to under 500.

After the pond, we wondered into a mini-Conservation museum and there's a very cool suzume-bachi (Murder Hornets) nest.

The swamp wasn't very impressive. Too cold for froggies, I suppose.

Manhole covers are always a welcome sight. I often forget to look down.

From there, we drove around Lake Hibara.

We couldn't figure out the name of these floating fishing lodges/docks. Any ideas?

That tree is gnarly, dude. 

And... woohoo! It's Bandai-san!

The secondary goal for venturing out this way was to go to a new Mansaido (Like a Mandai, nerdy used shop) in Kitakata. This place was SO CLEAN! Unlike the dingy ones I'm used to. I managed to pick up a few things and I may have a date for the next furry convention.

Finally, I didn't really get a chance to comment on the passing of fellow Canadian, Alex Trebek, so I'll let the Simpsons do it for me.