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Published: September 19th 2008
A collection of facts that I've learned in Japan so far:
1) English music is everywhere. Commercials. Playing from random stereos outside stores. And it can be in many forms too, sometimes without words.
2) English *celebrities* are everywhere. Cameron Diaz, Scarlett Johanssen, Tommy Lee Jones, Orlando Bloom, Kiera Knightley... tons...
3) Just about everything you can buy, you can find at a store somewhere for very cheap. Go to the mall, clothes are expensive. Find a local Avail shop or other equivalent, clothes are extremely cheap. And books? Books are already cheap, but find a used book store, and they're even cheaper! The only thing this isn't the case for is phones. Phones are friggin' expensive everywhere.
4) Traveling can be expensive... and long. But it's also kind of fun. Especially when you get lost.
5) Food that looks normal could easily be something really weird. But try it anyway. Most things you think would be gross are actually pretty good. Except umeboshi. Never eat that.
6) Japanese boys are very very very skinny. And they can dance.
7) Be wary of bookstores populated entirely by guys.
Anyways, onto last Monday. Another day of adventure. Quite an exciting day, I might add.
My friend Rivka and I decided that we were going to try to find this area of anime and comic shops that one of our Japanese friends had told us about. It was in a shopping center in Kobe. So, even though we had never been there, we decided to try and find it. We set off for the train station at Hirakata with only the small bit of directions that aforementioned Japanese friend had given us for the series of trains that we needed to take. The first train ended up being very easy as it was the same one we had taken to get to Osaka the Saturday before. It was the train to Kyobashi. From there, we had to switch lines to the JR Osaka Loop Line, and take this to the central Osaka stop. From *there*, we AGAIN had to change lines, this time to the Hankyu Umeda Station. This one was a bit trickier as we had no idea where it was!! So we basically just set out from the station and looked around. We were right next to Yodobashi Camera, the electronics store we went to on Saturday, so we went past that, and I was looking out across the street when I saw the building that said Hankyu Umeda Station! So it turned out to be not that difficult. We maneuvered our way into there, found the next train that we needed to take, this one to Sannomiya, and then we were off again. This ride was the longest, especially since we took the first train there, which happened to be the Local train (Local trains stop at every single stop, unlike express ones which only stop at a few and go a lot faster). But we finally made it there. To Kobe.
And we didn't really have any idea where to go from there. AHAHA.
The directions that Yumi had given us told us that most of the stores were on the 3F of a shopping center called Center Plaza, and it was basically right across the street from the Sannomiya station. Unfortunately, we couldn't see it from where we stood, so we kind of wandered around a bit, with still no luck. Finally, we decided to ask a Japanese girl who was standing at the bus station. She told us to go across the street and then off to the right, which we did. At this point, it had begun raining though, which kind of sucked, but at least we had remembered our umbrellas! Going on a hunch, we decided to go through this big indoor street kind of thing, because we assumed that it wound its way through all the shopping centers on that side of the street. Fortunately for us, this assumption turned out to be correct! So after just a few more minutes of walking, we made it to Center Plaza!
Up on the third floor, we found some four or five different anime/video game related shops. There was a big book store, a DVD/CD store, an action figure shop, another book store, and then a small shop called Time Factory, which was actually one of the most fun to look through because it had tons of older stuff from the shows and series that I actually *knew*. (hint for browsing through anime series in Japan: the series you're looking for had better be really popular or brand new or else you probably won't find much at all for it, and most of the new stuff I have no idea what it is). I'm actually starting to be able to maneuver my way around those shops pretty well now, though. I'm getting better at looking for the publisher. Case in point: I finally found my Lagoon Engine manga, which made me very excited. But anyway, we had fun looking through those stores, then we continued on a bit and found a Nintendo Store and a Playstation/XBox store which were fun to look through, but considering that I don't have any systems here, none of them would do me any good. We went down to the second floor not expecting much, but we actually found this really big hobby and figure shop that was REALLY fun to browse through! They had tons of different figures from anime and games, some of them old and some of them new. Then they had just a bunch of knick-knacky stuff.
We were just about to call it quits as we walked along when... we found the jewel of our trip. A used book store. Not knowing quite what to expect, we entered... and upon entering... we found... DOUJIN. Tons... and tons... of doujin. From every series. Tons of it. AND SUPER CHEAP! Seriously! Most of them were 50-100 yen each! That's insane! Needless to say, we spent a rather lengthy amount of time perusing the large collection. I ended up getting some Mr. Fullswing doujin and a Hikaru no Go one, because it was cute. And then I was looking through the rest of the shelves of regular manga, and I found series of all kinds! Old series that I actually knew! I found the entire Arc the Lad series that I would have bought had I not already owned it. I found some Hoshi no Kirby manga. I found the entire stock of Jump manga from when it first got serialized. I found... well, pretty much everything. I even found a whole entire section of doujin anthologies! Which are pretty much amazing. And all of these were exceedingly cheap too! The only thing I didn't find (and that I'm still looking for) are the old Brave Fencer Musashi manga. I think there were two or three of them. I've been looking in every store I've been to, including the two Book Offs I've been to (Book Offs are amazing - even MORE old manga for even CHEAPER, but no doujin - the Book Off near my house was where I bought like, five volumes of the Super Mario-kun manga which, that being said, is absolutely hilarious and I love it - it's based on Super Mario World, and it even has the Koopa Kids!) but I still haven't found it yet. I know that it was published by Bros. Comics, so I look, and look, and look through the whole collection until I find the Bros. Comics section, but Bros. Comics in general are hard to come across. They usually only have around 5 or 6 books from the whole company, and so far, no Brave Fencer Musashi yet. But I will not give up! There's apparently another Book Off near Makino station. I'll have to visit it some time.
But anyway, that was pretty much the really exciting day I had. I discovered used book stores. They are amazing. Everyone should shop there (especially Book Offs - come on... 105 yen for manga? I'M THERE).
Oh, and ahahaha, yeah, like I said at the beginning, don't go into a comic book store that's entirely populated by guys. We went into two of them obliviously, looked around for a few seconds and were like... wait a minute...
You should know what I'm talking about.
ANYWAYS THOUGH, it was a fun day. I bought lots of manga. Had a few laughs. Didn't take any pictures, unfortunately. I was too busy looking at manga, LOL. Sometime I'll have to take a picture inside a Book Off so you can see the vast amount of shelves filled to the brim with manga. It's an amazing and overwhelming sight. XD
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Queen Beryl
non-member comment
She grabs you by the neck and squeezes!!
OMG YOU WERE LOOKING AT MANGA?!?! You better get me some!! If you find any cute Fruits Basket stuff or Lovely Complex or anything like that, I totally want some!! Oh, and you will be excited, today I got my TOBIAS PLUSHIE!! It's a little plushie red-tailed hawk and it makes noises when you press its tummy! Like when he dive-bombs controllers!! ITS SO CUTE omg I love it so much. If you find that Mario manga you have to get it, cause it sounds awesome. ALMOST as awesome as the Super Mario Bros. 3 DVDs... but I don't think anything can be that awesome. Oh and if you find anything from The World Ends With You (pins probably!!) I totally want it for Christmas. xD I love that game so much. I might look on like cafepress to see if anyone has made TWEWY pins that I could put on my purse and stuff. Cause the pins are like the main part of the game!! Okay I am off. I'M A SHAAAAAAAAAAARK!!!