Nakano Broadway

This is the Nakano Broadway mall. Even from the outside it looks like a dark tunnel leading to the underworld.



Here we find the Jesus card trading shop. They are just normal cards, sports and comic types, whatever made them think Jesus was a cool or appropriate name is beyond me. Jesus is on the third floor.



This is the coolest shop we found. It's a shop that only sells things that people left behind on trains. Apparently they auction off all that stuff after a couple of months. As you can see, people leave a lot of bags and coats on the train. There were a few ratty paperbacks and dirty manga, one called Bastard. You can see a lot of beanies, scarves and gloves. Inside were rows of jewellery and weird purses and wallets. Whilst umbrellas are the most lost item on the subway, they didn't really sell these as everyone has about ten of them in their closet. You can buy umbrellas for about three dollars, so whenever it rains and you get caught out, you just buy another one.



Junkworld is a store full of used electrical equipment.

Nakano Broadway is mostly full of used toy and manga shops, with the occasional music store thrown in. On the top level there were some yo-yo players outside the yo-yo shop doing whack tricks with their mad skills. My watch doesn't show the date so I was unable to helpfully point out to them that it was no longer 1983.

There were also a few cosplay stores featuring the latest in crime fighting spandex and faux weaponry. At first it's quite shocking to see a shop full of guns in Japan, but you soon realise that they are either replicas or just shoot those little plastic pellets. One of these weaponry stores was going for the World Record for Poor Synergy, as it only sold knives and fossilised trilobites.

Some of the toys on display were more for clutching at poutily than for having a tea party with. These were being sold at the Gothic Lolita supply stores located well away from the high traffic areas. Goth lolis dress kind of like little Bo Peep after she got addicted to heroin and started cutting herself. It's all corsets, braids, tartan and bows but cutesy anime style. Also they buy thousand dollar old-fashioned porcelain dolls which they dress up to resemble themselves.

Another strange sight was a video game tournament being fully commentated by a seriously into it guy. Even other Japanese people were laughing and pointing. Next to their little grotto were some of those vending machines that kids get toys out of, like the old gum ball machines. Alice was clawing at one of them, so we went to put our coins in only to notice what we were potentially buying. They were tiny men dressed as babies, for the diaper fetishists amongst you. I was all for them, she doesn't know a man from a baby anyway, however it was not to be.