Day 13: Nakano

Today, I decided to go to Nakano on the west side of Tokyo in order to live up to my otaku reputation. Mainly, I had planned to visit Nakano Broadway, which is known to have tons of merchandise related to anime and manga. I also found out that it has tons of shops that cater to other otaku subcultures as well. There were lots of airsoft shops and doll shops and various things like that. But we'll get back to that.

After leaving my place, I noticed that it seemed really busy on the train. Not quite as busy as rush hour usually gets but up there. I chalked it up to it being a Saturday, but in reality I think it may have been because it was a holiday. April 29 apparently marks the beginning of Golden Week so kids and lots of salarymen that normally might not be off on Saturdays might have been off because of that.

I had actually thought Golden Week started on Monday so I was a bit concerned as to whether or not stores would be open.

Directly between Nakano Station and Nakano Broadway is a Sun Mall, a covered shopping district/street that has lots of shops. It was actually really busy and everything seemed to be open here so that was a relief. The vibe was pleasant and lively. I would be worried if trying to get a seat at a restaurant in this mall but most of the people were just window shopping so it seemed lines to actually buy things were pretty short for the most part.

I wasn't particularly hungry and many of the shops here appeared to be pharmacies, restaurants, and confectioners so I didn't dilly dally too long.

After making it to Nakano Broadway, the first thing that stood out to me was how old it looked. I've been to a lot of malls in Japan and I can say that this one appeared to be the most run down of them all so far. Indeed, the Wikipedia page even mentions that it is an at-risk building for large earthquakes since it hasn't been retrofitted since its construction in 1966.

That being said, it wasn't so run down that I wouldn't visit again. And it had more charm than something like Aqua City in Odaiba, in my opinion.

One of the first things I noticed was that some of the shops must have very niche audiences. For example, this shop that sells miniature cars. Some of them were pretty expensive too!

Or this one that was selling airsoft equipment. Note the gun isn't real, the orange tip thing is just a US law.

There was also a gallery for that famous flower guy. Upon looking it up later, it looks like his name is Takashi Murakami. I am not personally a huge fan at all, but I have seen this flower all over the place. Seems pretty popular?

As I walked around Nakano Broadway, a couple more things became evident to me. The first is that shops can get very crowded easily. Each stall seems to be pretty small (with a few exceptions, like a luxury goods store was spacious), and each merchant wants to cram as much stuff in their shop as possible, so the aisles between shelves of merchandise can get really narrow. Sometimes, just a single person would be able to fit through. In those cases, there are usually arrows on the floor to indicate preferred direction, but that doesn't work if someone is standing on an arrow, obscuring it. For me, this only became a big issue once when there was a poster store I wanted to browse but it really on had room for one or two people inside at most so I just looked for a second and left since I wasn't a very high intent buyer.

The second thing I noticed was that Nakano Broadway was less of a broad way and more of a maze. Seriously, I actually looped the second (or third?) floor a couple times before realizing I was going in circles. The main reason for this, I think, is that a store called Mandarake actually operates like 100 (hyperbole) of the shops inside Nakano Broadway. So if you don't pay extra attention to the signs and stuff you've already seen, you might be stuck looping for an eternity.

There are some storefronts that offer a clear indication that you've come back to them because they are so distinctive. For example, this shop had a light-up floor and a torii gate entrance! But it was still just another Mandarake...

I explored for a couple hours but didn't find anything I really needed. The closest I got to buying something was on the top floor where one shop was selling key frames from anime and other cool production materials such as the storyboards or annotated scripts. Obviously, for popular anime these would sell out basically instantly, so nothing super popular remained. The one thing I was surprised to see still here is this SSSS.Gridman season 2 (not really a sequel but still). It's the one with the girl in the picture below. I guess it wasn't nearly as popular as season 1 and I don't know if it's $60 cool. It wasn't for me at least.

The only other I even took a picture of was this Asuka figure. Not because I like Asuka but because it's basically become a meme for this blog, okay? OKAY?? I'm not sure who would be willing to pay $1,500 for an anime figure with a track suit though.

The top floor actually had a few shops that were closed, likely for the holiday. This floor was much less trafficked as well, I think since the escalators only went to floor two and people are kind of lazy sometimes. The Nakano Broadway Promotion Office was also closed, which was a shame because they were selling a Nakano Broadway anime girl poster for real cheap if they had actually been open.

After I left, I only had one more place I had intended to visit in Nakano. I had decided to skip the planetarium because limited seating + holiday + Japanese language only, so I made my way to Nakano Shiki no Mori Park. I meant to take a look at the park and hopefully find some food in the adjacent building but something even better happened.

As I approached the park, I came to find out they were having an event called the Lambassador Festival 2023 in the park. I actually hadn't known about this at all so showed up pretty near the time everything was sold out or closing, unfortunately.

I really love lamb so I was happy to get a chance to have some anyway. I stood in one of the remaining stands that hadn't closed down and ordered... something! I'm not actually sure what the menu said because the Kanji was something I haven't learned yet but it was basically lamb and potatoes (and maybe cumin seeds? IDK I'm not known for my particularly good palette). Whatever it was, it was tasty!

I wasn't quite filled up after eating it and didn't want to order more since it was actually pretty expensive, so I opted to go to a chain pancake cafe instead.

The signs outside made it quite clear that they had a Sanrio character collaboration event going on so I thought why not just take a quick peek. Plus, pancakes.

After taking a look at the menu, I decided to order the "MY MELODY ♡ CINNAMOROLL STRAWBERRY PANCAKE". I'm not a huge fan of Cinnamoroll (the character on the left) and literally didn't know who My Melody was prior to this, but I do know what cute it. And this is cute. I felt a little judged ordering it since the only other person I saw ordering it was a little girl, but I was confident I could make it though.

After a little bit, they brought me the mini-poster that my order had earned me. Usually you would get something small like this or a coaster or stickers when ordering at a collab cafe or somewhere like this so that you don't just eat the meal and have nothing but an Instagram post to show for it (or a blog like me!).

After a little more waiting and playing on my phone, my order arrived. The ladies at the table next to me saw the order coming to my table and let out an excited "Kawaii!", which I confirmed with a flatter "Ah, Kawaii".

Presentation-wise, it was very cute and looked basically exactly like the advertisement. For the price, the portion was obviously bad but I don't think you're really paying for that when you order something like this LOL. The taste was pretty good for the most part, they were just regular pancakes and strawberries and cream, so that's good. I did feel a bit bad about like cutting into and eating such cute characters, but they'll just throw them away if I don't which feels worse?

I don't think the faces were edible. I tried to eat one of them and it just didn't seem to be something I should eat. They might have been edible paper but I wasn't sure so I just put them off to the side. The Cinnamoroll ears were white chocolate and tasty but My Melody's ears were frankly disgusting. LOL I'm generally not one to really say that about food but I actually think there had to have been a mistake or something. The red ears were like bitter and also seemed to maybe be garlic sticks (with garlic flavor???)? I didn't eat all of them and was honestly confused why they were used instead of like shortbread or literally anything else. Even one of those mini baguettes would have been better since they wouldn't have added unnecessary garlic flavor. Anyway, I didn't let these ruin the experience, I just put them to the side and finished the rest.

Do I think they were were the ¥2,000 I paid for the pancakes and iced coffee? Hmm. Probably once or twice, yes, since it's more of a novel experience but if you came to this pancake place every day to eat, no way. Lots of the other menu items were cheaper and gave more food. Plus what are you going to do with 20 mini posters. Actually, the girl that had ordered hers before me didn't even take the poster!

After eating, I headed home. Not a super active day by any stretch but pretty cool nonetheless.

Unrelated-ish Gacha Gaming Corner

Today also marked the last day that the Princess Connect global server was still up. Since Crunchyroll decided to shut it down, I had one goal in mind - to stay on the top 100 most powerful players list until the end. This had actually been a little hard since I had skipped I think 6 characters since the game launched (mostly since I stopped semi-whaling the game). Luckily, at the last minute I was able to jump from around 104 to the mid-80s by bricking some characters. If Cygames do take re-start the global server, I guess I won't be able to join any competitive guilds LOL

Anyway here is the final profile card I exported before going to bed.

You can see me on the top 100 list here in 88th place, which is basically forever now that the server has closed: https://mofumofu.live/power

I had also made it to #1 in my arena bracket by the time that I went to bed, although IDK if I kept it since it was open for like 6 more hours after I went to sleep. The player profile page doesn't include that data and I'm not sure when the memorial pages will be active.

Anyway, I'm not as bummed out as I thought I would be. I played from the first day to the last day of the server and joined an awesome guild from the start and ended up as the guild leader for our auto-battler guild after I decided I didn't want to spend so much time and effort doing clan battle.

I decided not to move to JP server with some of the others so I can have time to focus on other Gacha Games LOL

In case you were curious, here is how my guildhouse was decorated at the end:

Why are they all sleeping during class???