A fire engine just drove by. I wonder where it’s heading to. But anyway, read on for photos from Kaminarimon, Nakano Broadway, Shinjuku and nighttime Akihabara.

Asakusa

We went to Sensouji near Asakusa Station in the morning. I tried the omikuji. It took forever for a stick to fall out, but my fortune is apparently good.

Tourist traps

Spot the odd one out

Tsuruya-san’s family business

Ruined symmetry

Small boat town

Kanji

Paying for protection

Shake, pull and match

Roses are red, violets are blue. All my base are belong to you

They need to add a foliage-penetration mode on cameras

I want one

Nakano

Next stop, Nakano Broadway. I already covered this place in a previous entry so I shall save the explanations. More pictures!

Still in the mood for X’mas

Fraulein Revoltech Rei for 1485 yen

The only other picture I took inside Nakano Broadway

In the back alleys

Japanglish

Reminds me of FLCL

Shinjuku

I spent the afternoon alone wandering around Shinjuku. I walked around 4km. I bought a light novel called Bungaku Shoujo to Shinitagari no Piero (“文学少女”と死にたがりの道化). I have no idea what it is about, but I bought it anyway because I liked the little prose in the page before the prologue, and because it’s in some kind of “Top 10” list so it has to be somewhat decent.

Pink flowers added just in case you miss the message

Outside the Shinjuku Station’s New South Exit

New South Exit

Shinjuku Station is about the size of a small city with exits that are hundreds of metres apart. It’s a hell load of walking.

I don’t know where this place is but whatever

Shinjuku Station serves a few dozen lines

Takashimaya used to be a cloth shop

One line

Two lines

Three lines

Shinjuku Station is the busiest train station in the world with over 3.3 million passengers a day.

Compensation

Random building

Kinokuniya South Shinjuku Branch

My membership card doesn’t work here…

Walkway connecting Kinokuniya to Takashimaya

Kinokuniya is actually a grocery store in Japan!

Walking towards the Metropolitan Government Office (800m away)

Hey, is that…?

Yeah it is.

Bureaucratic zone

One of Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s buildings

Taxpayer yen at work

Fuji News Network news truck

Push the button for audio signals

Akihabara

Finally, I met with Don777 in Akihabara. He’s a pretty nice guy, especially since he likes Maaya too. He brought me to @home cafe and Cafe with Cat (Toranoana’s new cafe). Cafe with Cat seems to be a pretty standard maid cafe deal except with cat-inspired uniforms instead of maid costumes, whereas @home is definitely on the manic side of things. The waitress who brought us our drinks actually did this heart-sign action to inject a “moé” flavour.

But I shall not go into that because I am falling asleep anytime now… A few more pictures and we are done.

Fortune Arterial is the latest game by August, the makers of Yoake Mae yori Ruri-iro na. Basically it’s the exact same game except the hair colours get shuffled around a bit and the Feena-lookalike is a loli. It’s also the most anticipated upcoming game according to Comptiq magazine, so expect it to sell a gazillion copies and be turned into a cabbage an anime.

Eva coffee

The second Kara no Kyoukai movie will be out on Saturday

Well, that’s it for today. I need sleep.

By the way, in case you didn’t know yet, all the photos (and more) can be found in my photo gallery.

Anyway, Mr. Lim is organizing a tour group to Japan…for the Tokyo Game Show! Basically it is a one-week otaku-centric tour package with geeky destinations that include:

• Tokyo Game Show
• Ghibli Museum
• Toei Animation Gallery
• Nakano Broadway
• Akihabara

The duration is from 18th to 23rd September 2007. The total cost of the tour, excluding airport tax, is S$1,600. You can find out more information from the website and this flyer.

For enquiries and bookings, please call 63983686 or e-mail icp@globaltravel.com.sg. You probably will not get any discount for mentioning my blog. LOL.

We picked the limited express and it didn’t take too long to figure out that it was the wrong choice… Oh well, you learn from your mistakes. Or in this case, you learn from my mistake.

Nakano Station

It’s only two quick stops from Shinjuku to Nakano Station. We probably wasted more time getting the right line. Getting out of the train, we walk out of the North Exit and find a fairly normal-looking street. Looking around, I see no indication of where Nakano Broadway might be. The map by the station entrance does not have Nakano Broadway labelled. After looking at the map for a few minutes… nope, it’s still not there. It looks like it’s going to rain soon. This could be harder than I thought.

A fierce-looking police officer turns out to be quite friendly (tsundere!?) and points us in the right direction. Directly in front of the station is a sheltered shoutengai that apparently leads right to Nakano Broadway.

It is a typical Japanese shopping street. Too typical.

It’s not long before we see the entrance to Nakano Broadway. We walk in, expecting to find a mini-Akihabara, but the shops on the first floor look normal. Too normal… That is until we hit the Nakano branch of Asobit City and the otaku radar starts beeping.

Well, it’s smaller than its multi-storey shop fronts in Akiba, but it’s a start.

Of course, this is not what I am here for. Moving on to the third floor, we hit the jackpot: Mandarake.

Mandarake is a chain store that specializes in secondhand manga, collectibles, cels, toys and rare and expensive things you can’t wait to sell your firstborn off for. Mandarake actually takes up half a dozen store fronts on the third and fourth floor and each shop sells items of a certain category (cosplay, used manga, cels, etc.).

It’s times like this that makes you wish that your father was a mutli-billionaire.

zOMG it’s rei!!!11 Besides Mandarake, there are stores for used CD and DVDs, manga, cards, figurines, toys, models, posters, cels, anime scripts and sketches and other cute little things to waste your money away on scattered all around the building. There’s a secondhand CD shop selling a huge stack of first pressing Negima! character CDs with pactio cards for 1500 yen to 3000 yen (original retail price of 800 yen). And to think I paid about 6000 yen on Yahoo Auctions Japan for my copy of Evangline’s CD with card. (Then again, my copy is brand new and unopened :P)

Photography is strictly prohibited. Really.

There’s a doll shop in a corner near Mandarake.

That’s Haruka Suzumiya and Mitsuki Hayase from Kimi ga Nozomu Eien and Sakura Shinguji from Sakura Taisen.

And that’s Sakaki Chiduru from Muv Luv and Sakura Yoshino from Da Capo.

I wanted to pick up a cel from Nadesico or Evangelion while I was there, but the cheapest one I could find cost a nice 10,000 yen (roughly 100 USD). Cels for older and less popular series can go as low as 200 yen to 1000 yen. Complete cells with perfect colouring and matching background drawing from a well-known series can make one’s wallet 40,000 yen lighter (which is not a lot lighter since 10,000 yen notes are not uncommon).

There are also stores dealing with anime character design booklets and episode scripts. Design booklets are made in-house by the main artists working on a series and used to standardize character design across a series. Episode scripts are what the seiyuu get. I wonder what a H-anime script reads like… I ended up buying a huge stack of sketches for the Ichigo 100% anime for 2,500 yen. It’s all photocopied (originals sell for a few more zeroes), but the quality is so clear such that pencil marks still look like pencil marks and the stack is huge. It’s a good source of reference material if you draw (which I may someday get back to doing).

Assuming you stay in Tokyo, the best way to get to Nakano Station is to take the JR Yamanote Line to either Tokyo Station or Shinjuku Station and transfer to JR Chuo Line (Rapid). Akihabara might be good for the latest game releases and figurines, but if you are looking for real collectibles that aren’t mass produced in China, Nakano Broadway is a nice place to visit. Of course, there is a price to be paid for being a collector…

P.S. I am blogging on my bed in front of this.

And xxxHOLIC is on TV as I speak type.