Minis? I lived in Japan for a decade...

There seems to be a lot of excitement about the big Labyrinth Lord/Otherworld Minis team-up.

I would be more excited, I guess, if it weren't for my time spent in Japan. Japan is the home of the cheap(ish) pre-painted plastic miniatures. While I was there, my minis collection went from a few odds and ends from my childhood to a huge whopping collection of cool monsters, adventurer types, normal animals, and movie/game tie-in figures that range from anime goofy to down right bad-ass.

Thanks to a place called Mandai Shoten (affectionately known to me and my friends as either "the geek shop" or "The Mummy's Ghost"--the latter due to their having the movie poster painted onto their building's facade), I was able to get lots of them dirt cheap. But I spent plenty of time buying the prepackaged, random collectibles first hand in convenience and toy stores, as well as buying lots of Coke or Pepsi when they had Final Fantasy and Star Wars figures attached to the bottles.

So while it would be nice to have some of those great looking Otherworld Minis, I'll stick with my cheap, light and already painted (for the most part) collection from Japan.

And just to note--while Japan is a wonderful place to be a gamer who likes minis, Korea seems to have nothing of the kind. Bummer.