 | Nakano Broadway is a short walk from the JR Nakano station. My favorite route there is through the Nakano Sun Mall, with its entrance just across the station's taxi and bus turnaround, and far end delivering the determined (it's not always easy to pass its used CD and game shops, cut-rate clothes stores, game center and assortment of food places!) into the four-storied funland of Nakano Broadway. |  |
 | First stop was cel shop Commit. In addition to its vast stock of cels from a variety of studios, Commit also handles sales of Pierrot's officially released douga and fukusei cels for several series. Today was a Saiyuki RELOAD douga random sale, and at noon we filed in down one side of a long line of tables. Envelopes of douga cuts were dealt out to us, face down, one cut at a time. When we each had a stack a couple dozen deep, we all turned our stacks over, picked out the cuts we wanted, and then passed the stack to the person on the right. After the stacks had made a complete circuit, the remains were put on the shelves with the rest of the Gensomaden and RELOAD douga on regular sale, and we admired each other's lucky acquisitions, janken'ed for late discards, and browsed the shelves in case we'd missed anything before. My best this time were a Goku from UraSai #18 (the first UraSai douga any of us has seen!), Hakkai atop the tiger from the Jumanji takeoff, and three cuts of Gojyo flambeaux! |  |
 | Then it was up to the fourth floor to check out the Mandarake Cel Shop, on the same passage of the H-shaped floor as the Mandarake Costume Shop. A look through the cels didn't yield anything useful this time, but the showcases are always full of cheap thrills free to see--this time most prominently some Mononoke Hime production cels! At the far end, a showcase filled with various series' episode e-konte--storyboards--held a thrill of a different sort: A set for RELOAD GUNLOCK #18 was nestled among the offerings! (No fool me; bought the set first and then shot the photo at right of its former home. ;^) ) |  |
 | The Mandarake women's doujinshi shop shares the second floor with a flock of other Mandarake shops, including its men's doujinshi shop, catcher-toy shop, AV shop (I always eye its windowful of CD singles on the way to Commit), and resin kit and vintage toys shop. Doujinshi hunting for KirinPro is an important part of any trip, so after scoping out what's hot in the showcase, did a good stretch of searching inside, finding some needed Naruto, Slam Dunk and Saiyuki books. |  |
 | By then it was getting on toward 3, and I was pretty hungry, so skipped Mandarake's third-floor manga shops and headed back down the Nakano Sun Mall to my favorite kaitenzushi place. Wolfed down six plates' worth of conveyor-belt sushi--half of them amaebi (sweet shrimp); had a craving for them raw li'l sea-fleas!--and then headed back to the station and took the Chuuo to Shinjuku. Found a locker there where I could stash the backpack and bag o' douga, and then caught the Yamanote to Shibuya for more doujinshi hunting. |  |
 | Since I'd checked doujinshi shop Meikidou the previous Thursday while in Shibuya for the Niigata earthquake benefit anime concert, figured it would be safe to skip it today to free up time for other shops, so headed for the opposite side of the station and took the Hachiko exit. Hachiko was the dog who waited and waited for his deceased master to return; after 10 years of returning faithfully to the place he'd last seen the man, he finally joined him. Hachiko is immortalized with a statue outside the station, and the station's nearest wall has a 3-D tribute to his breed, the Akita. I visited the statue, and then strode on with the surge of humanity crossing the every-which-way walkway that separates the station from the bright, beckoning canyons of consumerism. |  |