Adventures in Den Den Town!

June 19th, 2010: For our first weekend trip in Japan, we went locally to Nippombashi, also known as Den Den Town because of the plethora of video game, manga, and anime stores in the area.

We left the house around 10:00AM and walked to the Sakurai train station. We took a train to the wrong station (Shinsaibashi, was it?) and ended up walking the rest of the way to Den Den Town. In the small underground shopping area that we walked through after getting off the train, we had lunch at a small ramen shop. I got the cheese and tomato ramen, which is pretty much just pizza ramen. It was very delicious but a little spicy. At first I thought it was just the temperature, but towards the end it was still making my lips tingle. For my first ramen experience in Japan, it was great.

After eating, we left the underground shopping plaza and started walking to Den Den Town. Along the way, we passed by several temples that were all in a line. On one side of the street, there were ancient temples and graves, and on the other (where we were initially walking) was modern day shops and other buildings. It was interesting to see the clashing time periods displayed on the same street. I took many pictures of all the different temples we passed by, and I had taken about 100 pictures before we even got to Den Den Town!

As we were approaching Den Den Town, we could tell it was the place we wanted to be. There were many signs, including a giant one with a Gundam on it. As we got closer, we could see many familiar characters and many colorful stores. We decided to just go at it by walking down one side of the street, stopping at various game stores. Our main goal for our trip was to find and purchase a used Wii, Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, and some GameCube controllers. A secondary goal was to find a rice cooker for the house and potentially a microwave.

We stopped in almost all of the game-related stores we passed, each one being similar to the last but each being slightly unique. For example, there were some modern department-type stores that mostly sold new games with some used classics and other stores which specialized in only retro games. To my surprise, many of the used Famicom, Super Famicom, and Game Boy games were all in their original boxes! I would assume that the store sealed the box back up, but the fact that they had games in their original boxes in very good condition was fantastic. Many of these stores also had a lot of game-related non-game items like keychains, figurines, and other toys. One store even had original Game & Watch systems, but they were extremely expensive.

I had an absolute blast looking at all the game stuff, most of which is unobtainable in the States. I had to resist the urge to purchase everything that interested me, but I did buy two things. The first thing I bought was a Pokéwalker case (that consists of a rubber case and a strap with a clip) for 780¥. The second was a Japan-only DS game for 980¥ called Irodzuki Tincle no Koi no Balloon Trip, a sequel to another non-North America DS game called Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland (which is what I thought the game was when I purchased it). When we got back, I started a list of things that I should get when we go back, such as the original Pokémon Green for 300¥.

We ended up finding a used Wii and used copies of Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Tatsunoko vs. Capcom. I was pleasantly surprised that the store clerk unpackaged the Wii box and let us make sure that everything was there that needed to be there. We also bought four GameCube controllers, each a different color, for about $20 each. I decided to fully purchase one (the orange one) instead of just splitting the cost so that I could take it back home and have a fairly newer one. We didn't, however, purchase a rice cooker that day; we went to another department store in Umeda to get that and a microwave. When we were done shopping and looking around, we hopped on the train and rode back to Sakurai Station. At the end of the day, my Pokéwalker read 21,444 steps, which is roughly equivalent to 10 miles worth of walking!

Everyone else really enjoyed the trip, even if it was a lot of walking. I expressed interest in coming back a few more times before we leave in October, and the others thought it was a good idea. I'm not sure when we'll go back, but at least I know what kind of cool stuff exists there!
(Check out all the photos of the trip, from Temples to Triforces, here!)

(Next time, Week 2: "Getting into the Swing of Things"!)