Hello from a cloudy Tokyo! Yesterday a storm came through and dumped a large quantity of rain on the city and surrounding areas, which meant one thing… shopping! We went over to Nakano Broadway in the afternoon since it was indoors and out of the rain.

It’s a great little shopping center with plenty to see. Mandarake operates most of the stores in the 3rd and 4th floor and many of the other shops deal largely in second hand goods. It’s typically less crowded than Akihabara and is completely indoors. Since it’s a bit less traveled, you can often find some interesting little gems!

Before getting on the train and heading out, we had to stop for something to eat. We picked a little restaurant on the way to Ikebukuro station that served a variety of food. I settled on the lunch special.

It was all sorts of yummy with a little fried chicken, cream filled croquet, egg, and miso soup. The bowl of rice was rather large, though the whole meal really hit the spot! After food, it was off to Nakano.

Once out of the station, the Nakano Broadway shopping center is right across the street. There’s a great little Taiyaki stand on the right hand side as well as a lot of good little restaurants inside the shopping area. The actual part we were looking for was the second area. Some of the shop names are oddly specific though…

Very descriptive tag line! Though I don’t see too many socks at first glance…. XD I wonder if they have American-style socks? Nakano Broadway has several floors of otaku goodness. We started at the top on the 4th floor and worked our way down. I noticed that the closer we got to the bottom, the more “normal” stores there were. Coincidence? Probably not. There are several stores dealing in animation cels, production booklets, posters, dolls, figures, and books.

I was particularly interested in the Kenshin cel, but it was being sold for 52,500 yen! That’s a little too much for my blood, and I’ve been trying to keep my spending down on this trip… I’ve been pretty successful so far! So what kind of stuff have I wound up with so far? Well…

Lots of stuff so far! My favorite is the IdolM@ster 360 box, which includes all the extras that were sold with the special edition of the game. The game wasn’t included, but I’m perfectly OK with that!