Day 13 - Nakano Broadway and I saw Shiro!

Actually I think I took a picture of this place last year in Akiba. Still worth taking another picture though.

Actually I read about Nakano Broadway from Danny Choo`s website after my Japan trip last year. After Akiba and Den Den Town, its the third otaku place to visit. To get there, you need to get on the JR Chuo/Sobu line. You can take it from Asakusabashi, Akiba or Shinjuku. Go out the north entrance and you will see this.

Just keep going straight down....

.. and you will see the Nakano Broadway sign.

Screw the ground floor, the 1st to 3rd floor is what everything is at. Lots and lots of freaking awesome shops with lots of figures, mangas and small figures like seen in the above picture. Lots of do not take picture signs as well so can`t really show you a lot of the good stuff. Come to think of it, I haven`t risked taking pictures in Akiba shops yet, lol. Hellcar did it last year and got told off.

Mandarake had so many cheap figures. I am right now flummoxed as to what figures to buy because I can`t fit them all in my third bag. They had this Black Rock Shooter figure for a good price but the box is at least half a bag. The worst part is that the box doesn`t need to be that big. Gggrrr. Hellcar, if you`re reading this, I saw your Gwendolyn figure for 8000 yen. The good news is that I have not seen it anywhere else.

Probably the most impressive thing is the 3rd floor which Mandarake owns most of. Yes, they have half the shop lots on the 3rd floor selling really vintage stuff like really old manga from god knows when to animation sells to very rare toy including American ones. Akiba is like this hip moe otaku land while Nakano Broadway is more like series otaku business. They`ve got train stores, a yo-yo speciality shop, a shop selling vintage movie posters and only 1 JAV store and 1 selling adult magazines.

View from 1st floor at Nakano Broadway.

I came across this shop selling 2nd hand posters. In the picture, you can see two posters for Keizoku SPEC! I got so excited trying to find a KDO or GTO poster to now avail. Most of the dorama posters are more of the idol variety featuring Johnnys. Of note, they had Jin2, Iryu 3 and Liar Game 2 posters. If only they had an Iryu 2 one. They also had a signed Mano Erina poster for 5000 yen!

Another view from 1st floor. It took me whole afternoon to walk 3 freaking floors of Nakano Broadway. Even then I couldn`t really make up my mind on what to buy. Too many things and too limited space to bring back. Plus I don`t want to lug a lot of stuff back to Osaka. I was just feeling dead tired. I realised that yesterday I had been walking from 11am to 11pm non stop. Extremely lethargic, I managed to stay half awake on the train back to Asakusabashi. IMO, Nakano Broadway is a must see place and it sort of feels like I was in a time warp with the combination of new and old otaku stuff.

After 1 1/2 hours nap, it was time for dinner in Akiba. I am getting very very sick of seeing Itano Tomomi`s face everywhere, as can be seen at the Softmap entrance. Haven`t the people at EMobile ever heard of less is more? I don`t care that she has CSLips. Now I can understand why Bframe5 is sick of seeing Sasaki Nozomi on tv everyday.

After dinner decided to head to DOn Quixote for some shopping, which is of course below the AKB theatre.

Lo and behold Ryu ga gotoku merchandise at Don Quixote! OMFG. In the picture you can see they`ve even got a stick on tatoo!!!! Managed to find an XL shirt with a dragon at the back. Finding XL/LL clothing in Japan is effing hard. Its ok if the size is similar to western L but a lot of times L is more medium than L. They`ve even got Of the End t-shirts which unfortunately are not available in XL. (Not pictured) I was so stupid not to have considered checking the L sized Of the End t-shirt against the XL dragon one. The only thing I was thinking was that I need to go to Don Quixote Shinjuku to find an XL one.

I have bought so many freaking shirts right now that I`ve basically got a new wadrobe. Should have came with just two shirts and bought everything else. I`m saving the merchandise t-shirts for a later post as this is getting very long.

Still feeling tired and couldn`t be stuff carrying around a bag of clothes to the usual arcade route and decided to go to Hey game centre Akiba. Saw this 50k bp Makoto player beasting and thought, wait a minute, this guy looks awfully familiar! OMG is it Shiro???!!!! I was freaking out but I wasn`t 100% sure because I wasn`t family with his kanji name. (I just checked and yes, the kanji is the same)

He was beasting on a B level Ryu and the Ryu came back and Shiro was just letting him beat him. Oh shit, is he leaving? He let the lucky bastard beat him, took his card, said goodbye to the player next to him and walked off. I had this plan of saying hi, asking for a picture and asking him why the quit Abel in the first place but it all went to smoke. It was already 10pm so he could be rushing home or something.

Then wait, what`s this, there`s a master Abel in the arcade and its AC Revenger! OMFG. And he`s fighting this 70k bp grandmaster Gouken! I didn`t even know Gouken had a c.mp, c.hp (?) link. Actually I saw a Gouken do something like that as a frame trap when he was fighting Iino. AC Revenger should have won the fight but he stuffed up his Ultra after a c.hp. Masters are human after all.

AC Revenger did the walk away, no one taking his place so put coin in routine and chose.... Yang. Without a card. WTF. He tried to beat the grandmaster Gouken about 5 times with his Yang and all I wanted to say was what`s wrong with your Abel? I put in a 100 yen and got completely and utterly destroyed by this no name grandmaster Gouken. I was outpoked and outfootsied. He did the demon flip parry against my anti air and then switch to demon flip throw when I was too scared to push any buttons. This was Gouken as his highest level and I felt like a noob.