A couple of weeks ago, I bought a book called Tokyo Underground, a guide to toy and design culture in Tokyo. It's basically a Tokyo guidebook, but only concerned with toy stores. I've decided to check out every store in the book quite a few of which (shamefully), I have never been to, in my own little Tokyo Toy Tour. I'm also going to try to check out a few others in the same areas that I know about but weren't in the book for some reason. Today was the first day of my toy tour...Shibuya. The toy stores in Shibuya have, in my opinion, gone downhill a bit recently since the closure of one of my favourite stores (the name of which I forget), about a year ago. The first store I tried to hit up from the guide was the Shibuya branch of Hobbit, but either the map in the book wasn't good enough, or I was too stoopid to find it, or it's gone. Having checked out the internet a bit, I realise that I was too retarded to find it, AND the map was wrong. Bit of a disappointment really as it was the first stop of the day and on of the stores that I don't think I have ever been to. Anyway, next on the list was Blister, which I know pretty well, so at least wasn't a problem finding. On the way I went into Loft, which used to stock some decent toys and was one of the better places to find Monsterism and a few other lines, but they have also slacked off a bit recently and didn't have much apart from a big Mario Statue which wasn't for sale anyway. Blister was pretty empty considering it was sale time and they also had Fukubukuros on sale, in Star Wars, Spiderman 3 and "Cute" varieties, but you could see inside the bags where the staples had broken and the Star Wars stuff didn't look too promising for 3000円. Upstairs in their designer toy section they had some nice Kubricks on display, but have got rid of the massive museum-like unit that had the entire collection of Star Wars Kubrick with all the chase editions that used to be in there. They also were patrolling round the isles trying to stop me from taking any photos, but I managed to squeeze off a few shots. From Blister I went to the basement of the Shibuya Parco to check out their design book store and the Delfonics store. They had some nice looking old cameras in Delfonics, but all I ended up buying were these magnets from the book store. From Parco I went to Tokyu Hands, which is more of a hardware store than a toy store, although, like Loft, they have a "variety goods" section, which usually has a few good bits in it. Today they had a very disturbing display of Sonny Angel mini figures, and some cool little match stick keitai straps. I also got the.best.present evah for my friend back home too, which I have been looking for for a while. Next on the Tokyo Underground list was Project 1/6, the official Medicom store. I can't believe I have never known about the store before, but it's a gold mine of Medicom special editions and Kaiju toys. In here I picked up a Metal Gear Solid 20th Anniversary Kubrick figure. In a blind selection, I got the original Metal Gear Solid Snake, the second rarest at only 16.6% (I knew that omikuji was talking shit!). They were also a bit militant about not taking photos, and the store was too small to get any sly ones so I only have the ones from outside. Last on the list was Mandarake, which I had also presumed was a misreading of Mandrake, but according to my girlfriend I am wrong. They had signs all over the store about not taking photos too. I really don't understand why all these shops are so concerned with people not taking photos. The stores are set up pretty much as museums, and any photos that would be taken would surely help to promote the stores, but I guess that would remove some of the mystery. I did manage to take a few pictures, but had the aperture on my camera all wrong so they didn't really come out. Not sure if I missed any other stores around Shibuya...I think I got the main ones. There's a couple which are kind of on the border with Harajuku, but I'm gonna check those out when I go there.
