It’s the fourth day of our little adventure in Tokyo and we took a trip to neighbouring Saitama prefecture to visit Konata’s favourite Gamers and Animate branches. Long story short: Saitama isn’t a very exciting place.

JR Ueno Station

The location is JR Oomiya Station West Exit (大宮駅西口), about five (long) stops away from JR Ueno via the Utsunomiya Line (宇都宮線) or the Takasaki Line (高崎線). The journey takes around 30 minutes and cost 450 yen on an express train. You can also pay 1280 yen for a one-stop ride on the Shinkansen.

JR Oomiya Station

Immediately outside the exit, face left and you will find this:

Head towards the McDonalds and into the streets behind it to find the old location of Animate’s Oomiya Branch.

The branch has since moved to a bigger location about 10 metres away.

In fact, it even has a second storefront just next door selling character goods. (There’s also a Melon Books above it.)

And a few hundred metres away from Animate lies Gamers. It’s kind of hard to describe its location. In fact, I had to ask a guy in Sofmap for it. Then I asked for the directions to Animate from a Gamers employee. It seems that they do hire real otaku in such places.

The East Exit of the station also happens to be one of the setting locations for School Days, specifically Sakakino-chou (榊野町).

Well that’s about it. We didn’t wander too far from the station because it was already getting dark (at 4pm). We split up and I ended up wandering around some familiar places in Ikebukuro to take pictures and busk in nostalgia.

And by popular demand, here’s a soapland:

And here’s Odex:

Most of the other pictures suck, so I’m not going to bother posting them here. Go look at today’s gallery for more.

By the way, today’s doujinshi haul is as follows:

• Yousei Mangasha – Kaiketsu Ma-ryan (okay)
• Arestica – Sweet Folk Music
• Essentia – Giga Drill Break
• CRIMsON – CRIMsON plus (awesome)
• Rei’s Room & Spread-Pink – Double Again (decent)
• Amekazesyokudou – Clannad (nice cover)
• Arestica – Baby talk (nice)
• Matsumoto Drill Ladoratory – Tamakin (interesting…)

One more day till Comiket.