Day 81 - March 28

Today I went to Nakano Broadway entirely against my will.  Nakano Broadway is a street/mall place that is like a cross between Harajuku and Akihabara, and it also has the highest concentration of non-current anime merch. in Japan.  Akiba for the most part has everything that is new and currently popular, and then once they need to free up store space for newer items the old ones go to Nakano Broadway.  This makes Nakano Bdwy. home to many gold mines of merchandise.
Now, as for how I got there against my will.  You see, I had been spending this Sunday working on my International Marketing group presentation which we were going to be doing the next day and no one in my group had done the slightest bit of work for, despite having all semester.  Kira starts talking to me on Facebook saying that she is bored out of her mind and wants to do something, like go to Nakano Bdwy.  I respond that, "sorry, I'm too busy, etc., I can't go.  That is, unless you want to do the project for me."  "Sure," she says.  Now, this is not the response I was expecting.  No one ever says yes to that proposal, ever.  Kira then proceeded to send me and Tom a skeleton presentation that only required us to add in the actual meat of our research.  While it had not been explicitly agreed upon, I was pretty much obligated to go with her at this point.  Not wanting to be dragged into the depths of hell alone, I convinced Li to give up procrastinating on his work and just come with me.

We got to Nakano Bdwy. around 6pm, and most of the stores close at 8pm (at least on Sunday), so we did our best to cover as much of the anime-related stores as possible in the allotted time.  Thankfully I only had 14,000Y on me, so even if I lost control (which was inevitable, especially since the lack of merch at the Tokyo International Anime Fair yesterday) I wouldn't be hurt that badly.  I don't remember exactly what I bought, but I do know that I've tried my best to delete my memories of that place since there were many more things that I wanted but didn't have the money for... 

One thing I remember buying is something I'm very excited about:  Shakugan no Shana car decal kit thing.  I posted a pic on facebook from one of my Akihabara trips where a guy's car was covered in gigantic anime decals.  Well... now I can be one of those guys XD.  I'm totally going to be the koolest kid in skool.  I was torn between the Shana set and the Little Busters set, but I decided against the little busters one since it was very brightly colored, had multiple stars, and was overall quite girly, while on the other hand the Shana one is very dark, has flames, and looks badass.  Well, it looks badass to me, other people might not find an anime girl with long red hair and a flaming sword very badass but what do they know anyways?

I also remember that Li and I emptied a gatchapon machine which contained Negima figures.  Fortunately there weren't a ton left in the machine when we started, but still...  Of course I didn't end up getting the one I wanted the most and got several copies of the ones I wanted the least >_<.  *sigh* looks like I have yet another set to finish hunting down...

As all the stores started closing we made our last few rounds as quickly as possible before heading back to the station.  Oh, another reason why I try to forget that Nakano Bdwy. exists is because its only two stops away from 'baba on the Tozai line, which is significantly closer than the ~35 minute trip on the Yamanote to get to Akihabara.  With those horrors behind us we returned to 'baba, performed our daily ritual of Gundam Kizuna, and then returned to the Weekly Mansion where Li could continue procrastinating and I could meet up with Tom to try and pound out the rest of this project.