Monday, June 05, 2023

Japan 2023 Day 17: Tachikawa and Shibuya

Off to Tachikawa, where the Showa Memorial Park is. Tachikawa is further West from Shinjuku and Nakano on the Chuo line.

However, my main reason for coming was  manga hunting at Surugaya.  I wanted to go Showa Memorial Park but I was meeting Yukimi in the afternoon and you need at least 3 to 4 hours in the park.

I have to say Surugaya Tachikawa has a treasure trove of games!

More rare games in Akihabara and decently priced! 

Screw Akiba and Shinjuku. I feel like tourists have stripped everything there and you need to travel further out to find good stuff. Of all the Surugayas I have been to, this might be my favourite.

Went to neighbouring book off, still no Mugen no Juunin but I found whole set of Slam Dunk complete edition for 160000 yen. This was what I had been looking for. I lifted it up and it must have been 10kg. Crazy effing heavy 24 volumes. This is the complete edition so its bigger than the normal sized mangas. I would definitely need to upgrade luggage allowance and I could only buy this when going back to Asakusabashi. No plastic bag was going to hold this.

Oops. I did not know that I"s had a complete edition as well. The paper is not regular manga paper and was glossy like so that it would not yellow. I think I should have gotten this instead, maybe. Then again it is the first time I have noticed this so maybe it is not so common.

Walked 25 minutes in the sun to another Book Off.

So many cheap manga complete sets.

20th Century Boys complete for only 2400 yen? So absurdly cheap! Maybe I should buy loads of manga, bring them to the post office and just ship them back.

On the way to the Book Off, I walked past Tonkotsu Ramen Nagahamaya and went in for lunch on way back to Tachikawa station.  It was not bad not can't compare to Nagahama Number 1.

Went to Shibuya Parco.

The main reason was the TorchTorch shop. Early in my trip I had come across a Sekira prosthetic hand t-shirt at Kotobukiya Akihabara which I was interested in but was very expensive and decided not to buy it with the thought that I could take my time deciding since no one like Sekiro anyway.

When I went back to Kotobukiya, the shirt was gone and the Kotobukiya person said to try the main shop in Shibuya. Yukimi said to meet in Shibuya so I could kill two birds with one stone.

The good news is TorchTorch had the prosthetic hand t-shirt I wanted.

The bad news is that they did not have L size. WTF. I was holding an L sized shirt at Kotobukiya at the beginning of the trip and did not buy. And yes, I had checked out every Kotobukiya everywhere I went but non of them had TorchTouch. Most important lesson from Japan, better to regret buying than not buying!

Shibuya Parco is also home to the Pokemon Centre.

and also the Capcom Store! 

Again another Capcom store with no Street Fighter merchandise for sale. For the record, I can't stand Luke. Ugh, they should have put Alex in the game instead.

Monster Hunter picture stage.

Met up with Yukimi who had come down from Osaka to visit friends. We ere walking around looking for a place to sit down and I randomly chose this cafe called Hen na Cafe (strange cafe) in the basement of a building only to find that it was not run by any human beings.

Yes, with ChatGPT and coffee making robots Judgement Day is here. I ordered an ice chocolate and Yukimi got a coffee.

How to order instructions. You order from the vending machine and put QR code to activate robot.

The robot also spoke while doing work. Stuff like please wait a bit, am I looking good etc. Of course the robot wasn't really listening and conversing.... I think.

My ice chocolate was ready and (un)fortunately it was not good. I think robots are not replacing humans at coffee just yet. Yukimi was telling me about her restaurant job and then we got to talking about the white meat tonkatsu place Narikura and I said Narikura had closed down. Yukimi said she didn't know that and I said I had checked because I came to Japan. Just in case, I googled again and Narikura was no longer in Takadanobaba but had moved close to Minami Asagaya station! It was my last night in Japan and I could not be stuffed. Will go to Narikura next time as I still had shopping to do.

I went to Shosen to buy the whole set of the new edition of Slam Dunk. For some reason they did not have volume 20 and I somehow missed volume 8.


Went back to Ichikatsu for dinner.

Taste a let better when not using the sauce and just the mustard.

Normally shops would have an open for business sign saying 営業中 eigyouchuu except this shop is a gyoza shop so as a joke they have replace gyo for business with gyo for gyoza 餃子. I regret not getting gyoza and chahan this trip. I had a gyoza a few times but not with chahan. Too many things to eat and not enough time.


From Surugaya at Tachikawa. Finally found Shin Shino Den after looking all over the country. SSF2 was only 6000 yen which was very cheap. The middle page manual was loose but worth the 2000+ yen discount and I could not resist the DS lite. Surugaya at Tachikawa is my favourite Surugaya of this trip. I then went to Grand Bleu for my last night of drinking in Japan.

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