#202 Exploring a huge anime store

Transcript

Well, this return to Japan is a little bit reminiscent of my first time visiting Japan. So cast your mind back. Way back to the first episode of this podcast where it was about visiting Japan in 2019 and how I was deathly ill when I got here. And it was a weird feeling because it was so double dreamy. Wow, this is the dreaminess of visiting a different culture. But it was like I slowly re-atomized and became myself over the course of the first week and a half or so. This thankfully is way, way lesser. That was one of the worst sicknesses I ever had. I hope to never be that sick again in my life.

Where in this case is just a bit of a sore throat and I'm still fairly confident that it'll just pass me on by in the next day or two. Here's hoping. But my first full day back, no question woke up and I was like, oh, well, that didn't go away yet. That's still a thing. And it does still just feel dreamy and weird a little bit. You know, it's just like on the train today looking at the window and it's like, man, yeah, I'm back in Japan. I got back in.

Didn't necessarily think I was going to do a second visit on this trip. But now here I am. Although my head's a little swimming. It's a little weird. It's like, but I am here. Wow. But definitely off to a slow start. It's going to take a slow beginning because I am not at my tip top best. I think it's okay to just chill. So today is a chill day in Chiba.

There's this park in Nagasaki side park. I and a GE that I kind of sort of went to last time I was in Chiba. It was the day after I went to the Izakaya. And I was all hung over. It felt like, felt terrible. And I walked there into the night in the dark. And once I got to that park was super windy. It was pitch black. There was one person there out by the shore looking very spooky all by themselves. I was like, okay, well, I technically got here, but let's just go home now. So I was like, oh, that could be a little thing. Just a nice little local thing. I could go there in the daytime.

But it is still quite a walk. Chiba is big, man. And he just little vague stuff I've been looking into. Like, oh, I can go here. I can go there. You don't really realize, you know, I'll see like that the train ride is at 90 minutes or two hours. And I'm like, wow, really? But then if you compare it to the other side of the bay, like, oh, yeah, it just seems like I'm just traveling down south in Chiba. And then you cross over the bay. And it's like, oh, yeah, but that lines up with like, not even just Yokohama, but further down, you know? And it's like, oh, shit, yeah, like Chiba is fucking huge.

So even in Auguste, he said, park not exactly close, even though it is quite close on the map to Chiba Station, which is roughly where I met. But I found out there's this little line, the K-O line, K-E-I-Y-O, where there's the monorail in Chiba that I think is a little bit famous, because I don't know. I'm not sure if it's the only one in Japan, but like a monorail that hangs down from the rail. And it ends near my Airbnb. And it turns out there's a JR line, the K-O line that just goes from there, which makes sense. You wouldn't want to get to the end of the monorail and just strand people and have nowhere to go. So this line seems alright. It basically heads into Tokyo. And it was only like medium busy. It seems like it might be a sneaky way to get into Tokyo without just going to Chiba Station and taking the main trains.

Yeah, it was a bit busy, but it wasn't that bad. But as for stuff to do in the middle, I doubt that there's much, because also if you cast your mind back, every time I tried to go to Tokyo Bay, it never turned out. It's always just industrial concerns. This is not where you want to be near the water. So it seems that same way with this K-O line. It's just industrial stuff along the water. Unless you want to go all the way into Tokyo or maybe stop at Disney. I don't think there's much else there.

Speaking of, it just came out to a main road. Lots of big trucks.

Ship tons and trucks. Oh, and there's a CD-DVD warehouse. Kitty corner to here. And a big shipping train behind that.

I want to go over. I mean, maybe I will. Maybe I'll just go over and wander through there. Since I'm here, why not?

But yeah, if I took a couple of stops on the K-O line, it would take me to that Inage seaside park. But instead I went further. Further on, several stops further on to Minami Funabashi. And then I just thought, I'll just walk back. I'll just walk back toward Inage seaside park. I probably went a little far though, because yeah, there's that. It's a Manny-O's gas station. It's actually kind of lucky this random DVD warehouse is here, because others in that. What else is here? Why am I here?

But it's all about adding to the mental index. Now I know. Now I know about this line. I know it's here. I know it's another way into Tokyo. Good to know. And I've been noticing little things, too, of, you know, the stand on the right when you're on escalators and stuff, as you do in North America. But I always heard that in Osaka, you stand on the left. Well, it appears in Chiba. You also stand on the left. I noticed it just random staircases and stuff. It overpasses when I left the house. I'm like, hmm, I'm noticing people on the left. And then when I got to the train station, and there was enough people to really tell for sure, it's like, oh, yeah, everyone's standing on the left. And then I kept my eye on it, and that's how it kept happening. So I mean, there you go, something I didn't know. A little odd in some ways. There's just one city over from Tokyo, and you just stand on the left. But I learned that. Yeah, this seems like it's kind of, I found some of these in Fukuoka as well, like inside is like arcade-type stuff as well. So they don't just sell stuff. It's just kind of like an all-purpose entertainment complex. Seems kind of cool. Yeah, I definitely noticed in general. I mean, I had a pretty good feeling about to boost on in Jeju. My days in general were pretty good. Like, oh, yeah, I like this. And then Taiwan kind of upped the ante in the sense of I had that feeling of like, oh, yeah, it's just fun to walk down the hallway of my Airbnb. And to just go out the door and just be in the city and go do stuff. It's like, ah, that little feeling. We're being back in Japan. It's like that extra step up where just laying in my Airbnb, even though I was like feeling a little under the weather. But I just felt that tingle in my body of like, yeah, you're in Japan, pal. You're in Japan. You can just feel it. You got to go outside. You got to go experience this. And I guess what I realized from walking around now that I've been to these other countries and then coming back to Japan is as much as I had plenty of good times in South Korea and Taiwan. It was heavily subsidized by how much I enjoy hiking, you know, and it was actually easier in general to find mountains to hike in those countries. Japan's a little trickier. I mean, I've only been to Tokyo, West Tokyo and Fukuoka, but Tokyo especially, not really a lot of mountains around this particular area.

So pretty much everything was based on, can I get to a mountain and go hiking? And that really helped balance things out in the other countries. Like they were still fun to be in, but they were double fun with that. Where I guess what I like so much about Japan, it does feel different. It's just walking around random ass Chiba, just doing nothing this morning. It's just like, ah, it just feels good. Like if you're just going to walk around a city with no particular goal and no particular, like just do nothing. Japan's the king for that. It just feels so cool.

Just speaking of, let's head on in. Let's head on into this fucking place.

This place is a lot like, not even just so much the one in Fukuoka. The one I found in Saga, I believe I was still in Saga. See how there's cards? Lots of Yukio cards? I found out Magic the Gathering is the card game I grew up with. It is played in Japan, but as of this recording, it's like eighth place in the listing. Yukio is way up there. I'm not sure if Yukio is number one, but maybe. These are all Yukio cards. And yeah, claw machines. Ah, this is just the best. This is so cool.

I'm presuming as I walk around, there's going to be manga, there's going to be anime figures, there's going to be video games, there's going to be all the stuff in here. The one in Saga had fishing equipment. We'll see if this one has that. That's the true test. If they literally have everything that somebody might want for entertainment.

I ain't good old CDs. Still got CDs.

The land of physical media, man. Japan.

But yeah, I did notice some little things, though, as I was walking around. It's not all fully upside to Japan.

I guess this is all washroom-based. Oh, here's the random grab bags. 20 bucks for just a bag full of stuff.

Bag full of DVDs. I'm always so curious about what's in those. You know, you can watch people on YouTube open them. What would I do with them? What would I do with the innards? Nice mix of local stuff and friends on DVD. The complete series of fringe. Pretty little liars. Beverly Hills 90210.

Heroes. I've been kind of meaning to rewatch heroes season one. That was really good.

But yeah, I did notice in the washrooms, uh, definite piecemail that I did not notice. Like, you just don't really think about these things until you notice the difference. They were really doing a good job in South Korea and Taiwan. They still have the little signs. This is men's washrooms. I'm sure exclusively because it's a urinal problem. They have these little signs that just say, please stand a little closer. Please stand closer. You're dripping pee on the floor.

And all the countries have those signs. But only in Japan is their piecemail everywhere. I don't know that the other countries are doing a better job getting their pee into the urinal. Guys just splash pee all over the place. But maybe they're just cleaning them more often. But yeah, I was right away. I was like, oh, there you go. Piecemail, piecemail in the bathroom at the JR station. And then I went to wash my hands on my way out and no hands open. I was like, oh yeah, how soon I forget. And that was a big thing when I was here before. Why is there fucking never-hand soap in the goddamn bathrooms? Which is definitely not a problem in South Korea and Taiwan. They're on top of it. So, you know, little ways that Japan is not quite keeping up. It's exclusively bathroom-based so far.

But as far as just walking around, the general vibe, the general feeling, oh man, it's so good. I mean, even just this store that I'm in right now. Taiwan had some pretty cool stuff. But South Korea definitely did not. Like, South Korea is aggressively distancing themselves from Japan. It's very, very evident.

Man, this store's got everything. Now, here's like Ultraman-type figures, all the various Power Ranger adjacent shows, Common Rider. God, this store is fucking huge. Man, I'm actually glad I came out here. I really kind of thought, like, oh, this is going to be kind of an industrial walk back to Inage seaside park. Why did I do this? But, already Japan is paying off. Just go to a random place. Don't worry about it. Just go to a random place to start walking around, man. The fact that I'm kind of in the middle of industrial nowhere in Chiba is why this place is so big. This is insane how big this is.

I mean, I suppose Akihabra has big stores too, but those are those like seven floor monstrosities. This one is all just one big floor. I'm just walking and walking. Now, I'm in the bookstore corner. It's just endless. This is insane how big this place is. Ah, manga land. No, manga.

Oh, what are these called, a Gravier? Oh, that's interesting. So, it's like these Gravier books that are just like, you know, basically a soft core sort of more like... like the sports illustrated swimsuit edition, like these photo books that are very, very chased, but of hot ladies. But I've seen those before online. But there's also dude ones. I didn't know there was dude ones because I guess nobody scans those and puts them online. There's viewer. There's only a quarter of them are hot dudes, but yeah, they have hot dude versions. I didn't know that. Cool. I'm learning. This is what I would just gorge on if I could read Japanese is these like collections where they sell the big brick of manga. This brick is $18, but this brick is only five bucks. And they're just like random girls comics. Those are always my favorite. Like, girl domestic manga. Like Maze on a Coke, who's my favorite manga of all time. And just stuff like... I love that shit, but it's not extremely common in North America. And it's not even fan translated in a lot of ways. I don't recognize any of these. I would read all of this shit. I don't know why I just really love Japanese comics about teen girls and their fucking problems. They're boy problems. It's my favorite.

Slam Dunk. I always meant to read Slam Dunk, because it's like the most famous fucking basketball comic, like sports comic, of all goddamn time. It's insane how famous it is. And I read an old much shorter basketball comic called Harlem Beat back in the day that I thought was really good. Someday I'll check out Slam Dunk, the exact opposite, the antithesis of what I usually read, but I'll read a voice comic here and again. Man, yeah, these bricks are manga, man.

I mean, this is bringing me back to when I was like 17. I briefly started trying to learn how to read Japanese. I really didn't stick with it. But just because I decided to be cool to read comic books, but then, you know, comic books got a lot more. Japanese comics got a lot more popular really fast. And like nowadays, there's more stuff that I've been meaning to read than I have time to read. So it's all right. It's all right if not every single little thing that I want to read has been translated or not.

Not enough of them have, but there's still plenty of stuff, particularly in those genres, you know, like the girl's comics, genres, that yeah, just, they're just not of interest apparently to North Americans. So they're not translated. Just ills and ills of comics. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it sounds like I'm exaggerating. Again, it's a little weird again that this is just audio, but that's what's neat about audio too. I got my little recorder tucked away in my sleeve. It's chilly today. I'm actually wearing my little jacket, my rather resistant jacket, which is a nice feeling. I just got my recorder in my sleeve. So I can just walk around talking to myself. It doesn't look weird filming in a place like this would be a whole other thing. You know, you'd have to talk to people and okay it. Yeah, yeah. So you don't get to see it, but I mean, take my word for it. I'm not exaggerating. I've been walking this whole time. You know, I finally hit a wall. I'm turning around. I'm going back now. Now I'm back to action figures and stuff. This place is fucking huge, and then the other half of it is claw machines and stuff. And then there's yet another area that is still under construction. They're doing stuff over there. Here's anime, titty figures, and chased anime girl figures. I don't know which one's a weirder. I mean, it's obviously a little weird to put just a hot, big, boobed girl on your desk. But at least, you know, it's clear why you gravitated toward that particular figure. It's almost a little weirder for just like, oh, here's just a girl. Like, here's a girl like, say, I don't want to those little comics that I like to read. But why would you have the action figure of them sitting on your desk?

Speaking of Maze on a Coke, here's a little LUM figure. Both Fibromico Takahashi.

I guess I haven't seen any video games, or did I? I think because I was yammering. I think I walked by something that looked like video game controllers or something. Where did that section go? Oh, yeah, here we go. It's definitely a lot smaller. Video games are the one thing that's not a huge deal around here. It's just sort of select stuff. PS4, PS5. There's some DS games. The Nintendo Switch. On, like, Xbox Patrol. Anything Xbox? Nope. Not a single thing. That checks out. Oh, yeah, here's some used systems. Old PS3s, PS2s. I don't see any PS1s. Just go back that far. Gran Turismo branded driving controllers. God, this is just the fucking best. This was the kind of thing that I was very surprised, like, to get to South Korea and just to never find a store like this ever. And then I started to unravel it a bit of, like, they had this big embargo against Japan in the 90s. And then as I looked into it more, even to this day, like, they're really trying to eliminate not just Japanese loan words, but all foreign loan words from the Korean language. They want to use their own words. And then I think they take that extra step where you can't really get Mackey roles in the convenience stores and said, you get the Korean style roles. And, like, they're really, really trying to just be Korean in Korea. And you can tell. Because, yeah, cool stores like this just didn't exist. It's dead. It's just like, I don't know. Here's the North Face. Here's Urban Outfitters. Here's just some boring American fucking shit. Where Taiwan, obviously, is a lot smaller than Japan, but Taiwan was pretty down with all this type of shit. You can tell Taiwan does not have a particular bone to pick with Japan.

And then, of course, if you want to get real deep into it, obviously Japan. War-like maniacs that brutalized and subjugated everybody in this whole fucking part of the world at one point or another.

So, hey, I'm not saying you can't hang on to a historical grudge. All I'm saying is it might be fun to have some mecha toys and stuff around.

I feel like that just makes life more fun. And there's so many of these figures, like, just figures in plastic bags, like, you know, that are used or whatever, that are, like, five bucks each. I wonder, I mean, again, my anime tastes are so esoteric and narrow, but I feel like if I really took my time to look through all of these, I bet I could find something cool. But it's better that I don't, like, I don't want to buy stuff and then just be stuck with it. I've got my little chachkis. I've got my few little things that I bought. I really don't need more. But there's so many things here that I bet I'd find something.

See, I don't know what this store's fucking called, but if you go to Minami Funabashi and just walk east a little bit, that's how I got here. It's pretty enormous and maybe it's hard to miss. If you're in the Chiba area, though, this is fucking worth it. This place is fucking giant.

That'd be a cool, like, just as far as a big mech figure to have, they've got one of the, uh, from Evangelion, one of the angels. Evangelion's one of those things that I like it conceptually. I like my memories that be Evangelion, but every time I go back and try to watch, either the old one or the new stuff, I'm like, this is, this has a lot of issues. The storytelling in this is suspect. But conceptually, I like it and the designs are fucking awesome. It looks so cool.

No, even that. That is so funny. Back in the 90s, we didn't think this was weird at all. Like, here's, uh, oh, this is cool. It's Asuka, but she's in Rae's plug suit. She's in the white suit. They have these teenagers and skin-tight suits and, uh, Masato in that show. Literally, like, she's got to look after this boy Shinji, this young teen boy. She gives him a picture of her own cleavage with an arrow pointing right at it. Like, feel free to take a look. All this stuff that in the 90s were like, ah, it's just anime stuff. It's funny. And then I heard people, you know, in the ensuing years, because Evangelion's so famous, they'd like, oh, let me go check this out. And there's all this bizarre sexual stuff going on. And like, what the fuck is this? It's like, oh, yeah, you're not wrong. We literally didn't think twice about that in the 90s. We didn't even notice that that was weird. Man, I wasn't sure if, like, I was like, ah, probably this will just be a little teeny recording. Like, you know, I'm not up to anything today. I just thought I would talk about my first little things that I noticed coming back to Japan. Just a little teeny, oh, standing on the left. Where's the hand soap? Stupid crap.

Is this just going to be an episode of just me walking, walking around the fucking store talking about stuff? I mean, hopefully, if you're still around for this podcast, at this point, you're in for this type of nonsense.

I just keep walking. I mean, at this point, now I'm doubling back over places I've been. But there's so much stuff. There's still like a ton of little aisles I've not really looked at properly. I'm just kind of breezing around, but Jesus, this place is fucking awesome. Oh, just max box cars, hot wheels. Did they even still make these in North America? Maybe. I guess I don't really. Like, I don't really do this in North America. I don't go walk through the toy aisle of, uh, Toys of Russ or anything, because it's all just North American shit that's boring to me. Oh, yeah, there's tons of these cars. Oh, wow, there's a shitload. I said, I don't really know, but I know when I was a kid, I had a lot of these little toy cars, little die-cast cars. Yeah, there's a shitload of them here and there. They're all metal, I think. Like, you know, we switched over to plastic at some point and all of our stuff in North America got shitty.

All right, let's get weird.

This is something you absolutely could not do with a video recorder. In fact, I'm going to hide, let me hide away my audio recorder.

Even more, I got to make it super impossible to tell that I'm talking to myself.

Okay, I might make the sound quality a little worse, but I hid even the wire that goes to my little headphones in my sleeves. And no one can tell. I'm just kind of talking into my hand for some reason. Now, let's go into the adult section 18 plus. I'm 18 plus. Holy fuck, even this is huge. These little sections, like, you know, there usually is one. But they're usually, like, not that big. Fuck, this just goes way back. This is by far the biggest adult section I've seen besides, you know, the fully adult warehouses, which are about the size of this place, but are only born. 25:00 There's the UFO catcher back here. What the fuck? Yeah, I guess you can just win, like, panties. They're so into, like, what are they called? The eggs. The tango? Tenga? They're like pocket-pussy eggs, and they love those here. I've never tried one. Probably I never will at this stage in life if I was ever going to. I don't know. They seem to like them. Random porn magazines. This actually is so far. Maybe I got to go deeper in, but this is actually kind of vanilla.

That is one thing I kind of noticed in some of, like, those places in E.K. Bukero and stuff that are, like, manga and DVD and CD rental places. They had little porn sections, but the porn sections, I guess, maybe because they were smaller. You go in and right away it's like, oh, yeah, weird Japanese porn everywhere. This is remarkably normal. Just kind of hot bikini babes and stuff. I mean, it's porn, but...

Okay, here's a little bit weirder. Some slightly bondagey stuff. I don't know. Maybe I've just been fetishism. Yeah, even this thing is labeled fetishism. Okay, here's some ladies peeing. That's a little bit. A little much out. There we go. Should I even... It's not peeing. It's the other one. Let's just say that. Maybe I've just been too overexposed through the internet to Japanese porn. I'm sure this would have blown my mind. If I was just some guy who traveled here in 1993, I'd be like, what the fuck? Okay, so that one little section. But yeah, now I'm just into anime stuff.

Yeah, there's a surprisingly small extra creepy section. And yeah, even the extra creepy section is just like bodily functions. It's not like the, you know, it's talking about Japan's warlike past.

And how they conquered and dominated all those around them. If you're not at all familiar with Japanese porn, that carries over to their porn. Japan has like, that's what I think is so funny. Like I heard an anecdote the other day. That, you know, baseball is usually popular in Japan. But apparently when it was first introduced, there were like people saying, you know, pundits or whatever, saying like, oh, that's not going to catch on in Japan. No Japanese person would steal bases. What is this immoral game? It was like, who do you think you're kidding? You can have as much fucking Hello Kitty as you want Japan. That's not the truth about who you are. That's not the truth about what you do. You're fucking warlike maniacs in the not that far back past. And Japanese porn is easily the weirdest in the world. That's where I'm sort of disappointed. This place is not letting me down. But if you want somebody to dig a hole in their backyard and put a grating over top of it and put a lady inside and then fill it with water and threaten to drown her, you go to Japan, my friend. That's not even, they're just like, yeah, whatever. It's a porn movie. What? What?

But I don't know, I like that about Japan too, just thinking that feeling of just that walking around Japan just feels cool. I mean, that's part of it. There's just duality of this country. They're the most civil and chased and nice and calm. And then under the surface, they're fucking bananas. It's a little island nation full of maniacs.

It's pretty empty back here. That's why I can talk to myself so freely. It's me and one guy.

Here's Hentai Games, like PC games. But yeah, I don't know. I'm surprised, I guess, because this section is so big, I was like, oh, this place is going to be wild, but I've seen weirder Japanese porn by, like, times 10. This is, uh, snoozers. Anyway, there's the guided tour of the porn section. Oh, more, more UFO catchers. Oh, okay, and this one you just catch vouchers to get a free DVD, that kind of makes sense. Still, that seems very funny. To come to the porn section and just start playing a fucking clock at your game. Oh, actually, that guy before, he was, uh, taking up the anime section. So let's swing by there. Look at these little dojins, NTR. This NTR dojin has a little broken heart symbol on it. If you're 30:00 at all familiar with NTR, you know why that's funny. Yeah, these are interesting, too. I know I said this one was in Akihabra, but I've never seen these in real life. I've just seen scans of them. Well, these ones are actually kind of cheap, like, five, six bucks. Oh, this one's $30, though. Yeah, that's more like it. Like, a lot of these, these dojins that are just like fan made, they're not produced by a big company. They're surprisingly expensive, but it's just neat that Japan has that, has that industry. And then in Akihabra, I even found some that weren't porn. Tenga. Here they are. So you had Tengas, the word. Wow, there's a whole shelf of Tengas. Really fucking love these things. I don't know. I guess they have like a jelly thing inside. Oh, here we go. You can get extra soft, premium soft, hard, extra hard, and premium hard. So I guess that's what, how goopy the insides are. And yet, the little, uh, anime manga section.

Pretty standard stuff as well. Oh, here we go. Wow, cool. Okay, so here's like a whole shelf of these little fan dojins. Just a whack of them. Yeah, like, they're weird because they, they don't look like Japanese comics. They look like a North American comic more. They're larger, and there's fewer pages. Instead of the Tonkobans, you know, those big thick collections of Japanese comics. These like dojin fan comics are much smaller. Oh, here's the one section that's like behind glass. I wonder if this is like older stuff. Is this like classic stuff?

Yeah, I don't know. It just looks like more porn to me, but it is a little expensive. So yeah, maybe it's harder to find older porn. Nice. And the anime figures here, they're really not that different from the ones out front, but they're set up on a high shelf and turned around backwards, so you get the panty shot. Oh, Japan. Oh, Japan, you're the fucking best. All right, back into the real pal. Ali McBeal. We're back in normal civilization now. Oh, UMDs. The PlayStation Portable. I forgot all about that shit. And yet, there's still 10 times more PlayStation Portables than there are PS Vita games. Probably 20 times. Yeah, there's probably any PS Vita games. Man, that thing fucking failed. Oh, and there's one single U card, a Namco baseball game, Game Boy Advance games. Okay, so yeah, I've come to the real video game section. Okay, scavenger hunt. Give me one Xbox game. I just want to find one Xbox game for any Xbox system. No Xbox games, not a single one, not a single one. All right, well, at this point, yeah, I'm just wandering around and I'm if I was going to buy anything, it would be one of those little teeny figures, just like a little keychain-type figure. But I guess even in a place this big, I mean, it still is a lot of, uh, you know, here's ReZero. Here's Chainsaw, man. Here's Dragon Ball.

No matter how big the store is, popular is popular and unpopular is unpopular. Yeah, and I guess I can't really fault them for the relatively vanilla porn. I mean, it's still by other country standards. It's still got a little crazy in there. But yeah, there's plenty of, uh, dedicated porn stores that can handle that. This place, that's obviously not, not their priority. I think that section's probably only so big because this whole place is so big. Oh, here's like old Sega Mark III games. The master system, there's ease and uh, Fist of the North Star, which I think was just called Black Belt for us. Mega Drive games. Sonic 2.

Donald Duck in Quack Shot. Alex Kid in the Enchanted Castle. Toe Jam in Earl. Awesome Sega Saturn games. Oh, and there is the old Sega Mark III. Wow, it's only $200 and it's in the box still. That's not bad because the one I found in Hachioji was way more expensive, but it had the FM sound adapter and all kinds of shit. Wow, though, in box. Crazy. I'd buy that for $200. Again, if I just had an apartment, I just wanted to put something cool on the shelf because the Sega Master System was my first video game system. 35:00 Holds a fun place in my heart even though I sort of sucked.

It's weird to even just try to determine what system some of these are for because the boxes are not the same as they were in North America. Oh, okay, Metroid Zero Mission. So it's Game Boy Advance. Okay, that explains that. That's what these are. Super Famicom.

Mother too. Oh, there's the guy who was in the pouring section. He's out in the general population.

Yeah, let me look more closely at these trading cards. They must have some magic to gather and come on. I know it's eighth place, but it's magic. It's the granddaddy.

There's a store, I guess, in Tokyo called Hallelujah. That's the one of the worlds only fully magic to gathering based card shops. Apparently you can go in there and just play magic, like tournaments and stuff. Multiple times a day. Man, nothing. Poor old magic, magic though. It's a truly esoteric game. It was like the first trading card game and it is, uh, uh, here we go. I found it. Very small section, but I found it. This is a game that has extremely esoteric rules. If you're not a fan of corner cases and bizarre, I was just a very complicated game, but I like it.

Let's see, though, with no English. Do I recognize any of these cards? There's one of the pathway lands.

Lotus cobra, classic.

Smothering ties. A Japanese smothering tie. The ruin on your friends' days for only, uh, $17.

Oh, they get some English. A single English card. Yehenny's expertise. How random.

Cool card, though. I like that card.

At the exile, I recognize that one. Oh, fucking birth of Meledis.

Oh, what is this shit? The token from Theros. The one-one token. They're like goat people. What were they called? What a random assortment of cards. Nothing like great, but yeah, it's a shame that I don't have an actual magic deck. I played online for a while, but it was ruining my life, but it would be, I'm sure I said this before, but it would be cool to trick out your deck with some Japanese cards. Here's some of the dungeons and dragons cards. A whole little packs, little packs, if I'm sure just all shit cards, but for like two bucks, that would be kind of cool just to flip through them, but again, then I would just, I don't know, I don't want to carry a red magic card with me. Well, at least I found some magic cards. There are some. That's a bonus.

It seems appropriate to eight-place card game. Man, too, I was just thinking like I'm kind of glad this place is so big, and it's not super duper busy. It's very easy for me to keep away from people, you know, I'm like not, because again, I don't want to spread my sickness, but then I also just noticed like, maybe it's just because it's so fun to walk around this place and look at all this stuff, but I like don't even feel it. I was like, oh, I feel better. How weird that I just suddenly feel better.

But I guess just because this place rules, and it's just fun to walk around, takes away your worries, takes away your stresses.

Ah, the CD section. 10 folds five. Well, I thought about the album. I don't remember that song as well as I thought I did.

Thought about the army. Mandy Moore, she had an album. She had two albums. Oh, no, she didn't. It's just two versions. With the same album.

Not exactly a music career to remember. Hey, hey, deep-cut Mandy Moore reference.

Oh, here's big packs of magic cards. For five bucks. Yeah, like a big pack, like a hundred random cards, so it's probably all just commons and shit or just like bulk rares. Yeah, this would be really cool if I was a more regular magic player because yeah, like they don't need to be good cards. It could actually be kind of fun to make like a cube of just shit, fucking Japanese magic cards. I'd be fucking kind of, that'd be fun. 40:00 Sadly, that's why I was playing magic online. And then quit because magic arena made me hate my life. But yeah, my actual physical playing magic cards with actual cards, friends, drifted away a long time ago. Here's like the classic. This is why I could only find back to PlayStation 2. You got to go to a different section for really old stuff. So there's a lot of arcade fighting sticks and stuff. There's a Sega Saturn one. But speaking of, there's a Sega Saturn.

Only $40. Does it work? I don't know. It's got a very complicated label on the front that I'm sure explains in the event that it doesn't work. And here's PlayStation 1, a couple of PlayStation ones. And 64. Super Famicom. Gamecube. The Wii U. Oh my god. There's stacks of fucking Wii U. That piece of trash. Nobody wants that fucking thing.

Oh wow. John Madden football for the Mega Drive. That used to be like a thing back in Vancouver. Back when I first moved there. So sometime ago, but that was one of my little personal scavenger hunts. Anytime I was at a thrift store, try to find a sports game for the Sega Genesis. There always was one. And there's even one here. Amazing. A cool GameCenter CX Nintendo Switch game. Did they have a trends like that? I would play that. I love GameCenter CX. That show fucking rules. It's a retro video game show. That pre-dates. YouTube lets plays and stuff.

All right. Well, I've taken up enough space in this store where I didn't buy fucking anything. Actually, I don't even know. I was going to say maybe I could just mess with one of the claw machines just so I give this store something back. But I put a hundred bucks on my suite card and then all I have besides that is two other 10,000 yet notes. Two other hundred dollar notes that I haven't broken yet. So I don't have any small coins or any tax. So what is this store called? Out front it says welcome treasure discovery.

I doubt I can translate this because the sign is very cool and wacky. Oh wait. Can't I, Dan? K-A-N-T-E-I-D-A-N? It says, can I translate this sign? It's a surprise. When can Narasino store? Two different things on the sign say that. W-A-N-G-A-N-N-A-R-A-S-H-I-N-O.

What about landmarks? What landmarks do we ever rent here? I'm just trying to figure out how to explain where this is because I think it's worth it. It's really close to a Minami Funabashi station on the K-O line.

Jatsu Higata mud flat is right across the highway from here. Y-A-T-S-U-H-I-G-A-T-A mud flat. But yeah, just Minami Funabashi, Eddie East, follow the train line. Follow the train line East, just like a little bit. What a cool store, man. What a cool fucking store. Okay, yeah, here's English. So yeah, that one, the Wangan name appears to be right. Chiba can tie Dan, Wangan, Narasino.

K-A-T-E-I-D-A-N-W-A-N-G-A-N-N-A-R-A-S-H-I-N-O. That has to be the name. It's just gotta be.

Yo, Editor Keith here. I just want to jump in briefly to say that I cannot for the fucking life of me. Find this place. There's Minami-Funabashi Station. There's the Yatsu-higata I called it the Mud Flat. It's called the Tidal Flat. Now, the nature preserve, apparently. There's a whole bunch of stores. There's the tennis court. There's an animal hospital. There's like a gas station. There's all this stuff. That store I was in, this is like a fucking ghost story. Where the fuck is it? I just don't see it. Anywhere here. I'm going on a street view. I'm looking around. I don't know. This did happen to me. One other time, it'll be in the future of this podcast, but there was this enormous bookstore in Okayama. That is one of the biggest bookstores I've ever been in in my life. And I was trying to show it to my friend Brad and I couldn't find it either. I found 45:00 a secondary branch across a parking lot. That was on Google Maps, but the main one wasn't. And it's eerie. It's like, well, I mean, it's possible that that store's just gone already. Did it closed? Or it might just not be on Google Maps. So similar situation here. Did that store close down? Or is it just not on Google Maps? I don't know. But basically, I guess keeps that in mind with my recommendation. I guess it's easy enough. It's like, there's the station. Yeah, you walk along the road following the train line. The title flat is like just a little ways. So I mean, I guess you'll know because this place, like, that's why this is so weird. This place was like the size of a city block. It was so fucking big. You couldn't possibly miss it. You know, it's like a fairly major road. And if you're anywhere near the intersection, it's like, well, that store takes up the whole fucking area. I don't know. There is like a thing here, like two warehouses on either side and a building in the middle that is blank.

So yeah, maybe it closed. So if it did close, I guess, let this be in memorandum of the big cool store that had everything. Or maybe, well, no, wait, street view. Is that it?

I don't know. I don't know. I think so. I think there's a Google Street View from across the street where I think I can see it. But basically, either, either this is the coolest hidden gem that's not even on Google Maps. Or I'm telling you about a place that doesn't exist. So, uh, so don't travel too far to try to get here. But if you're in the area, you know, it is easy enough to just, if you're on that train line, let's say that if you're taking that train line anyway, easy enough to get off the train and just go take a quick little gander, see if it's there. Because yeah, I believe it should be right across the street from this anyose gas station. But yeah, usually I hop on Google Maps just for, you know, in the podcast description. I just like to add in a little, it was actually a listener suggested this idea to me. They were like, hey, why don't you just add, you know, like the areas that you've discussed. Type them out, you know, instead of, you know, the way I do tend to spell the words a lot of times. But, uh, it's a lot easier to just go nab, nab the places. And I try to get the names that actually line up to Google Maps. So when you type the word, it'll actually show up, you know.