Mandarake Nakano — Local services in Tokyo

There is something really special about the Mandarake in Nakano Broadway. It's like walking into a huge department store where every store front is dedicated to a specific manga/anime/toy culture, but it feels like its own shop.

My friend and I were on the hunt for a few old franchises and we were shocked at how easy it was to locate a dedicated storefront for each. The area didn't feel as crowded as their locations in Shibuya or Akiba especially, so it allows for a more leisure shopping experience.

You'll definitely spend at least an hour or two to just get your bearings straight before you dive deeper into spending that money. Keep in mind that some places are cash only (especially those with collectibles), so be sure to have some on hand.

Once you're done, enjoy the many restaurants that are inside and...

Do they have a lot of stuff? Yes. Could you find what you were looking for without searching every store, every shelf, every square inch of all three floors? No. Sure some things are grouped together but there’s no such thing as a single place to find, say, Star Wars stuff. It’s smattered throughout. And forget Star Trek, you’re lucky to find one single action figure. There were definitely some fun gems - vintage McDonald’s toys, Smurfs, ALF, and GI Joe to name a few. If only you could say the name of any of those and have an employee tell you where ALL of the merchandise for that franchise is. You wouldn’t have to spend eight hours...

Basically heaven on earth for all anime and retro videogame collector’s. Thankfully it’s not flooded with tourists just yet. I’m not a toy collector, but the amount of vintage and rare items is just mindblowing. As for the retro gaming stuff, it’s my favorite shop of all time. the presentation and actual condition of most of the games is as new as it can possibly get. The price/quality is breathtaking. It has less choices than mandarake akihabara but it’s also cheaper. I bought a copy of coryoon on pc engine priced at 47.000¥ while it was priced at 75.000¥ in akihabara. Same condition different prices. Do yourself a favor...