I visited Nakano again yesterday, the holy land of retro shoppers. I go here every trip, and I find it’s still worth it even if these days I usually don’t find much I want to buy.

I very nearly bought this Flipper toy, and probably would have had my attention not been caught by postcards in the same store. What would I have done with the Flipper thing? No idea, but at sub $20 I’m sure it would have made a good gift for Bernard who I’m guessing is a Flipper-lover.

Nakano is certainly changing, and yesterday I thought a lot about the fact my first visit was over 23 years ago. Things that were brand new then are being sold as retro now and displays of the truly old stuff – like the 70s/80s manga magazines above – are shrinking over time.

I hardly bought anything (I have all the above FF books already) and after a few hours returned to Akihabara. When KLS returned (she’d been to Harajuku and Shinjuku) we went out again to explore the local shops.

There’s a doll shop in the Radiokaikan building that makes and sells unique dolls. Often the sale process is a blind auction, but many of them have price tags and it seems you can just walk in and buy them. The one above amazed us, especially the list of parts used and the fact you can apparently just buy a ‘snake body’. If you want it you’ll need over $2500 and a big suitcase!

The topic of doll shops in Akiba is fascinating and possibly warrants its own blog post. Maybe on a future trip I’ll do that…

Big Magic, the MTG shop in the same building, never disappoints and they’ve just casually got ¥1000000 boosters on display as well as much more expensive single cards (including five Black Lotuses). My feeling this trip is that interest in MTG seems to have actually declined here, so it’s good to see this one store holding fort (although I assume their customers are mostly foreign).

The Dragon Quest McDonald’s promotion began yesterday as well. There is a cool set of slime toys, but it’s purchasable only by lottery winners who live in Japan!

I was considering a review series on Japanese fairy floss cotton candy but after eating so much this trip I’ve realized it’s all almost identically wonderful.

Japan has mastered the ancient art of manufacturing and packaging cotton candy and it’s now become my favourite candy item here. I’ve eaten so much of it (over 20 bags of the bottom right one in the first pic) that I need to stop, but you can bet it’ll be on the menu again next trip 🙂