So, as you may recall (or not, if you don’t remember inconsequential things like when anime bloggers go on vacation), I was on hiatus not long ago doing the Grand Tour around Europe. I’m sure you’ll all be glad to hear that I had a lovely time, and that, of course, I didn’t forget about the blog or about anime while I was contemplating life in the mountains of Switzerland. Before I was in Switzerland, I spent several days in Paris, where I encountered a number of shops with anime/otaku-related merchandise. And, through these experiences, I came to realize: I’m not very hardcore. At all. What follows are some pictures of anime related shops and items that I encountered during my travels. I hope you enjoy!

I’m just not otaku enough for this nonsense.

The first thing I found (in one of the less scary shops) was the French translation of Silver Spoon. Someone explain why we don’t have this in the States?

I remember that shot…

And then, I was excited to find the first volume of Soul Eater NOT! with the anime starting to air.

Some people really like Saber, I guess.

Madoka Magica, too.

And I found this in the wild. No point in buying a French DVD, but it’s always cool to find little gems like this out and about.

A nice little shop near where I found some ramen.

Here’s where it gets scary.

The following shops are all on the Rue Keller in Paris.

Okay, not bad.

I can deal with this…

These shops look like the pictures I’ve seen online of Japanese hikkomoris’ rooms.

The Mike stuff was cute, though.

I couldn’t even get myself to entire this shop.

And this one was a real struggle.

I did have my first sighting of Soul Eater figures, though.

And then there was a long break from anime until I found this in Rome. Anime=soul in Latin, by the way.

I did a lot of hirigana drilling during the in-betweens. I think I got this streak in about 20 minutes.

The only thing I cam back with was a French version of the final volume of Blast of Tempest, with the intention of translating the ending chapters myself. I heard there was a bit more information in them than what was in the anime, and French should be fairly easy to translate to English.