Everyone is now in the holiday season mood and if you are getting presents for your loved ones and friends, you might want to consider shopping with one of our sponsors HobbyLink Japan because they are now having a very special “all-you-can-ship” promotion.

From now till 22 Dec 2011, as long as you purchase one of the special campaign item (list will be updated regularly), you will be able to enjoy a flat shipping rate of just 2,000 yen per box for postal service EMS for shippable orders. Then during checkout, all you have to do is to choose EMS as the shipping method and you can enjoy the flat rate regardless of how much loot you will be getting. Definitely a great deal if you intend to get tons of character goods or figurines as Christmas presents.

Today is Black Friday and that means the start of many great deals and shopping for those that celebrate Thanksgiving.

Our dear friends at HobbyLink Japan is having a special promotion as well, which they are offering super-special Black Friday flat shipping rates of 980 yen for SAL and 1,980 yen for EMS, per order, for orders of any size, to any destination in the world!.

To enjoy the savings, all you have to do is to place an order for items that are currently in stock between 2pm November 25 and 2pm November 26, 2011 (Japan Standard Time; GMT+9).

To find out more about their promotion, you can check out the special promo page.

I’m sure many of you folks would love to have this figure. Thus I’ve decided to step up the difficulty and effort required for this giveaway:

Make an otaku-styled 2011 Rabbit New Year Card for alafista.com

Just like the 3rd anniversary giveaway held back in July, I will be rewarding the loyal readers of my site. To qualify for the contest, you would need to have commented at least 10 times on my site. Alternatively, you will qualify also if you are following my twitter account or have liked my facebook page, but I would need you to indicate your facebook or twitter username as part of the answer so that I can identify you.

Here are some hints and guidelines for the giveaway:

1. According to the Japanese zodiac, 2011 is the year of the rabbit うさぎ
2. There are no restrictions, you can choose to make a real card or a digital version. If you make a real card, then you would need to take photos of the card.
3. Be as creative as possible – draw a bunny girl on your card, take a shot of your figures celebrating new year, or even cut your card out in the shape of a rabbit! XD
4. You can submit as many entries as you like
5. Upload the photo(s) online and leave the image link in the comments section
6. The deadline for this giveaway is 30 Dec 2010, 12:oopm (GMT +8).
7. The winning New Year Card will be feature on 1 Jan 2011
8. At the end of the contest and you need to send me your address. HLJ will be sending you the figure.

I will be announcing one last final giveaway, so do remember to drop by after your Christmas holidays.

Thanks to everyone that participated and helping to comb through HLJ to nominate figures for the X’mas giveaway (somehow most of you folks nominated figures from GSC). It was really fun to read so many interesting taglines that were posted. In the end, my favorite tagline was “Embracing the much loved otaku culture”. (I intend to modify it further so do look out for the new tagline next month!)

Congrats to AstrayP03 for winning the giveaway ^^ Pls contact me with you particulars and I will ask our generous sponsor HobbyLink Japan to send you the prize.

Thats the end of the Alafista.com 3rd anniversary giveaway and I hope everyone had enjoyed participating in it. Keep coming back and do ask your friends and family to support, so that as the community grows here, we can have more awesome giveaway for everyone! XD

Unlike the past few giveaway that involve guessing or luck, today’s giveaway requires an understanding of alafista.com and your creativity. Most of you probably have noticed that the tagline for this site is “A Fusion of Japan’s Otaku and Popular Culture”, but I thought it didn’t send out a strong message to my readers on what exactly is the content can be found on here. Hence, for this giveaway, I need you to:

1. Suggest a new tagline for this website (you can suggest one in Japanese if you like too)

2. Head over to HobbyLink Japan and select one scaled figure that you would like to see being given away during this Christmas (Provide the hyperlink)

In order to have more people to participate in this contest, I’ve decided to open up this giveaway to everyone without any pre-requisites. Of course, if you are visiting this site for the first time, I would encourage you to start following my twitter account or place a like on my facebook page XD

I would suggest that everyone take a look at my blog entries for the past week or month and then try to come up with something that is short and memorable. Here are some suggested guidelines to help you in coming up with the new tagline:

• It should sum up this website’s themes and tone
• Its should be memorable
• It can be clever or funny
• Key feature on this site would include Today’s Japan Photo, Nendo’s Travelogue [ねんどろいどの旅日記], and probably weekly gravure feature
• You might want to include some keywords to help the search engines indexing

For this giveaway you can submit as many entries as you want, so do come back whenever inspiration hits you. Deadline for submission is 20 Jul 2010 at midnight (+8GMT). I will then choose my most favorite tagline and present you with the awesome scale figure.

Systems are all green and you may proceed to launch and leave your creative ideas in the comments. ^^

The prize is a mystery set of Gunpla because I have not chosen it for you folks yet. But I do promise that it will at least be a Master Grade gunpla. (I will update the page once I confirm the prize).

We are nearing the end of the World Cup 2010, so I think this would be the most appropriate question:

1. Predict which country will win the World Cup 2010. (Netherlands, Germany, Uruguay or Spain)

2. Head over to HobbyLink Japan and select one set of Gunpla that you would like to see being given away during this year’s Christmas (Provide the hyperlink)

Just like the previous giveaway, this contest is strictly for the loyal readers of my site. To qualify for the contest, you would need to have commented at least 10 times on my site. Alternatively, you will qualify also if you are following my twitter account or have liked new facebook page, but I would need you to indicate your facebook or twitter username as part of the answer so that I can identify you.

Here are the rest of the contest rules:

• Everyone is allowed one guess
• Deadline is 7th Jul 2010 right before the start of the semi-finals  match between Netherlands and Uruguay
• One lucky person will be randomly chosen from the correct entries as the winner!

Systems are all green and you may proceed to launch and leave your answers in the comments. ^^

So if you fancy anything in the Holiday Countdown Sale, make sure you pay with paypal and you will be eligible for free EMS shipping.

I’ve gotten myself a 1/144 GFF Next Generation Aile Strike Gundam, which is something I always wanted but found it too expensive. Now the attractive 30% discount and free shipping makes it perfect opportunity to do so.