Japan Trip Part 3 - More Osaka

On September 26th, Saturday, we spent a full day in Osaka. Randy and Curtis have been waiting impatiently for weeks to go to the 'World's biggest pokemon store' at Osaka City Station ever since I found out it was there. Osaka City Station is a pretty new mall (I think .... it wasn't there the last time I went to Osaka, which was maybe 5 years ago?) on top of the JR Osaka Station.

There is a big department store called Daimaru (大丸 - Hey whatever happened to the one in Hong Kong?), and the Pokemon Store is on the 13th floor of Daimaru. Before that though, we have to walk through the 'trap' of Tokyu Hands located on the 10th-12th(?) floor? I called Tokyu Hands a trap because with all the cute pens, stationery, toys, and lunch boxes, it was very hard to get away from without leaving a pile of cash. We will end up at Tokyu Hands again in Tokyo, but actually I think the one in Osaka is newer and nicer.

 Obviously this is where you can get
the newest pokemon cards. 

 


Finally we made it to the Pokemon store. It was not big at all, and was packed. It was full of kids and adults probably downloading and trading characters (capturing Pokemons maybe? Who knows.). That only works if you have a Japanese version of the game, so Randy and Curtis just walked around peaking at what everyone else was doing. Being in Pokemon heaven, we did stay around for an hour, and we got some new Pokemon cards and toys from the Pokemon capsule station.

Pokemon merchandise

Ahhh, capsule station, and it brings us to our next destination. Across the street from the train station, there is a huge store called Yodobashi that cannot be missed. It turns out to be a huge electronics store. When we first walked in, we saw rows and rows of electronics and sale signs - razors, printers, cell phones - in other words, nothing fun. We decided to take the escalator to the 2nd (or 3rd? I forgot) floor, and on our right was the largest capsule station section we have ever seen.

Capsule stations (扭蛋机) are these little vending machines where you put in a coin, turn a knob, and out comes a toy inside a plastic egg. The toys that you can get are pretty cool, and on the front of the machine you can see all the styles made. Of course you hope to get the one cool one, and when you don't, it can get addictive. And like comic books and Pokemon, half the people wandering and putting money in are adults. I was tempted.


Anyway, yes the place was pretty huge, and there were maybe 20-30 rows of machines there.We were again trapped on this floor for over half and hour. Afterwards we made it through the remaining floors in Yodobashi. In addition to electronics, there is also a toys section and some cute stores. The good thing about all Japanese department stores is that on the top floor, there are usually at least 10 (sometimes 50 or more!) decent restaurants on the top floor of the department store.  So when we got to the top floor, we got some habachi lunch.