Today we visited otaku shopping mall Nakano Broadway. It’s jam-packed with dozens of little stores that sell anything a maniac like me may be after.
Tamagotchis, wrestling masks, model trains, telephone cards, jigsaw puzzles, boxed Vectrex games, 1980s Japanese RPG manuals, idol books and CDs, animation cels, Tokusatsu items, ancient stickers from vending machines, sports memorabilia, Michael Jackson merchandise, happy meal toys, RC cars, old signs, toy figurines, electronic music on vinyl, dolls, board games, lots and lots of manga and anime: all this and much more can be found here.
That shows a few of the curious things I saw today, including one of the JP only original gamebooks to complement the FF series (yes, I bought it), two of the rare panoramic game-and-watches and tiny (~2 cm) Ultraman figures from the 1980s.
Even more mind-boggling for me today were the $250 Wizardry PC game guide, the $1000 game-and-watch and the $2500 sticker (yes sticker) that was packaged in candy 32 years ago! Like me, fans of such esoterica are getting older and they’re collections more complete. Naturally prices for the scarce items have risen.
If I lived near Nakano it would be dangerous indeed. There’s so much there is love to collect 🙂
That’s a seafood restaurant a hop and skip from the hotel. As usual the lights at night are often very pretty, and every evening I’m enjoying the view as I write cards.
And then as I started writing this while lying on the bed I suddenly felt very nauseous. Almost immediately thereafter I felt the bed, and then the building shake. This continued for some time (over 20 seconds apparently) and was my first earthquake. It was disconcerting to say the least, if only because it was sustained so we had time to understand it was (still) happening. But the locals were unfazed, probably because it’s already the second this week!
Tomorrow we’re off to somewhere new! Another tower, another Ferris wheel, and what else will we find? Stay tuned…
