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Village Vanguard (Page 6)

New panda hats and earmuffs from ACDC Rag will keep you warm, increase your kawaii points by ten

If you’re into Japanese fashion (or if you happen to be Gwen Stefani circa 2004), you’re probably familiar with Harajuku’s Takeshita Street. Considered by many to be the nucleus of Japan’s youth fashion world, you can find everything from punk shirts to vintage clothes to the freshest kicks all on this narrow pedestrian street. There are plenty of shops, but perhaps the most famous is ACDC Rag, which sells everything from cute galaxy cat jackets to dark (but still cute) goth backpacks.

Recently, in collaboration with Village Vanguard, Japan’s premier retailer of weird novelty goods, ACDC Rag unveiled their new fall accessories and they are panda-rific! Now you can keep warm and maintain a look so cute it’s endangered!

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Bread lovers rejoice! Toasty bread backpacks, cushions, and footwear look good enough to eat

How much do you love bread? Would you cuddle with it? Wear it on your back? Use it to carry your books home from school?

Well now thanks to Village Vanguard, the popular Japanese supplier of crazy and unique items, you can do all of these things! They will be releasing a series of bread-themed items to help you get your balanced breakfast on your way to school or work.

Ready to be the toast of the town with an egg-cellent new backpack? Read on to find out how to get in on a slice of the action!

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Does the new Space Tea from Japan’s Village Vanguard actually taste like space?【Taste Test】

Village Vanguard is one of Japan’s more unique stores, selling everything from inappropriate T-shirts to Attack on Titan curry to more inappropriate T-shirts to whatever this is. Some of the food products they stock sit squarely on the border between delicious and “gag gift,” but perhaps the most intriguing of those items is the new Space Tea.

But does it really taste like space? Naturally, we were skeptical…but also curious enough to run out and buy a can. So, come along with us on a journey into the depths of spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace!

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  • Jun 21, 2015

Toy or cake? These mochi-like seal and bird figures are so soft and cute, you’ll want to eat them

Mochi rice cakes, made from glutinous rice, come in all shapes and sizes. They’re soft and filling, and they can be enjoyed as a dessert or a meal, depending on how they’re prepared. What’s not to like, right?

And now it looks like someone’s created these insanely adorable animal-shaped cakes out of mochi…but wait, is that what they really are? Would you believe us if we told you these are actually soft toy figures that look and feel like mochi? Well, whatever they are, these little critters are sure to elicit delighted squeals of “kawaii!”

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Century-old brewery crafts soy sauce specifically for use on pudding

Village Vanguard is a popular chain of novelty stores across Japan. There you can find all sorts of things from bird poop stickers to Resident Evil curry to wasabi toothpaste. As such, it’s easy to get desensitized to their range of items and lose the ability to be surprised with what they come out with next.

Or so we thought, until word came of a new product that will be sold there around the end of May. Purin Senyo Shoyu is a specially crafted soy sauce meant to be drizzled over a jiggly glob of pudding. You might wonder what pudding and soy sauce taste like together. The answer is surprisingly simple: it tastes like sea urchin.

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  • Oct 15, 2014

Gudetama the lazy egg now being served as actual dish, looks absolutely adorable!

Remember Gudetama, the apathetic anthropomorphized egg character from Sanrio with no desire whatsoever to do anything at all? Well, it seems the most unmotivated character we’ve ever seen from Sanrio has actually gotten down to business, if only for a limited time. That’s right, Gudetama now has his very own cafe at the Village Vanguard Diner at the Yokohama Lumine, and he appears in the menu as an edible ingredient, which we guess isn’t so improbable, since he is an egg, after all.  And boy, does he look adorable as part of a dish — definitely good enough to eat!

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These new “wet swimsuit” and “men’s bra” t-shirts will help you find your inner baka this summer

Japan’s hot and sticky summer days may mean that people are wearing slightly less than usual, but unless you’re some kind of magma demon impervious to the 34-degree heat we’ve been having recently, it also means you’ll be throwing sweat-soaked t-shirts and underwear into the washing machine with depressing frequency, making every other day laundry day.

Fortunately, book and cutesy crap emporium Village Vanguard has a couple of new t-shirts that are perfect for summer – and one of them already looks drenched before you even put it on!

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Earthquake strikes Kanto region, ruins novelty goods store’s evening

At approximately 8:44 on the evening of 16 November, a magnitude-4 earthquake shook the Kanto area of Japan. Although some barely noticed the tremor, the quake dealt a sizeable blow to the Village Vanguard store in Sangenjaya, Tokyo.

Village Vanguard is a chain of book stores in Japan, but also the place to go for those looking for a Jamaican flag Zippo lighter, bag of freeze-dried astronaut food, DVD of Golden Eggs, and/or bag with a Dr. Pepper logo on it in a country that by and large neither knows of nor likes the drink.

Following the damage caused by the quake, an outpouring of support has been seen from netizens in Japan.

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