While trying to ignore the loud noises of the house next door being demolished, I slept in until 10:30. Eventually Phil & I left the house, headed for Shibuya. When we exited the Hachiko gate and walked over to the station, I reminded Phil of the historical story of Hachiko while pointing out the eponymous dog’s statue. We crossed the famous Ningen Crossing. I intended to navigate us to the Shibuya Mandarake store by memory, but I found that I couldn’t remember whether it lay to the left or the right side of the Shibuya 109 building. I also had trouble finding the police box that I use as a landmark. So Phil referred to Google Maps to put us on course.
To conserve Phil’s leg strength, I pointed out the stairwell to the second basement before we walked around to the elevator bank to descend.
I navigated to the H doujinshi section in the corner. I found the Saigado section, but it contained none of the comics I was looking for. I then found that none of the other creator groups I was interested in appeared to even have sections on the shelves. While thumbing through the shelf of new in-stock, not yet sorted doujin, I came across a particular oddity, a collection of over 200 vintage newspaper advertisements for the 1978 film Dawn of the Dead. At 600 yen the doujin was too unique for me to pass up. Among the new-in-stock doujin I also found a copy of Circle Outerworld’s Street Fighter comic “Haru no Otozure,” stickered at 2,000. Although not cheap, the comic was cheaper than I’ve previously found it online, so I decided to buy it.
I found that the selection of film comics had moved from one side of the store to the other. The store had one Cream Lemon hardcover film comic, a first edition volume 8 with no obi for 2,500 yen. My collection copy is a second edition. I’d prefer to have found a copy with its obi, but I decided to purchase the book, regardless. Phil spied shelves of KochiKame manga and pulled a volume 1 priced at 300 yen. I was tempted by a nice-condition 7700 yen copy of the 1981 Shonen Jump that contained the first appearance of Cat’s Eye. But I decided that if I was going to spend that amount, I should spend it on an item that I don’t already own one copy of. My copy is simply in rather poor condition.
Next to the elevator, we saw a poster announcing that Mandarake would pay 3 million-yen for a specific vintage Kamen Rider vinyl figure in any condition.
We took the elevator up to the third-floor Animate store. I was hoping to find and purchase a second copy of the current Dirty Pair Illustrations book, but this particular Animate store didn’t have any copies in stock.
We left the building and walked a block over to the Shibuya Parco department store building. We took the escalators up to the sixth floor. On each of the first five floors Phil & I wondered whether we were in the correct place. The Parco building appeared at first glance to be a fashionable upscale mall rather than an otaku-oriented establishment. However, that perception changed when the sixth floor came into view.
Roughly half of the sixth floor was devoted to a Nintendo store. The Parco building’s sixth floor was also home to an official branch of the Godzilla store and the Jump store, the Capcom store, a Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure store and café, and an RC vehicles store. To my disappointment, I couldn’t find a single item at the Capcom store that bore the image of either Chun-li or Juri and the Capcom Store logo. At the Jump store I did spend 200 yen for a machine to produce a flattened coin embossed with a Lufy D. Monkey bust and the Jump Store logo.
On the street outside the Shibuya Parco mall
We returned to the station and took the train to Akihabara, primarily so I could browse the Radio Kaikan building, and so Phil could get a look at the city.
The Akiba has long been a store featuring unique Akihabara anime merchandise. Its selection of anime-themed bottled wines is larger now than the last time I saw it. I also saw a plush kogal Hello Kitty that I planned to purchase on my way out, but I forgot about it.
We took a quick lap around each of the first nine floors of the Radio Kaikan building, skipping level four, which is entirely amiami, a store I’m familiar with, and level ten, which is the building’s event space. At Akiba no X on the fifth floor, I found a second-hand but unopened Street Fighter 6 Chun-li Chokonose Premium figure stickered at 1680 yen. That price was about 150 yen more than Nakano Broadway price, but for the convenience of not having to return to Nakano Broadway to hunt for the figure, the extra 150 yen was well worth the convenience. So I bought the figure in Akihabara. Of note, the ninth floor was strictly trading card stores. I then led Phil down the road and across the street to the Mandarake building.
A literal fresh-squeezed orange juice vending machine
My phone rang. My friend Jon was calling from Yotsuya. I told him that after Phil & I exited the Mandarake building, I’d call him back to arrange our plans to meet for an early dinner.
After we browsed the Mandarake building, Phil & I took a rest in the courtyard behind the Mandarake second building to await Jon’s arrival. Jon found us at five-after-six-pm. He led us well off Chuo Dori to a Torikizoku izakaya restaurant where the three of us spent two hours ordering plates of chicken & beef skewers, cheese croquettes, drinks, and desserts. To our astonishment, after two hours of eating and conversation, the bill came to 8,970 yen, which seemed extremely reasonable for three people’s ample dinner.
We parted with a loose promise that Jon would meet us on Sunday to attend the SDF17 doujinshi convention at Tokyo Big Sight.
