Yodobashi Camera! Finally the place that a lot of people have been raving and talkin’ about. (I think I might have missed out on coming here the first time I went to Tokyo 12 years before this trip just due to the pace of the Japan tour that I was on with my mom at the time – doing all sorts of stuff with the tour group, and not having enough time to slow down and check out some of the places that I would have more interest in…especially with electronics and even just being in the presence of that.)
It was definitely a more magnified experience shopping there than BIC Camera – there was just a lot more stuff. I was definitely a bit overwhelmed; it felt like I could get everything I needed as a consumer (well with the exception of groceries I guess) all in one place! There were a total of 29 places to dine at on the 8th Floor, 9 places to eat in on the 1st Floor (including the Square Enix Cafe that I went to earlier that day), and this one cafe on the 4th Floor called Marafuku Coffee [(丸福珈琲店 ヨドバシ AKIBA店)] (known for their hotcakes, or classic style pancakes – originally from the Kansai Region)
You might be thinking “Wow Kev…how were each of the floors? You must have had a ball with the variety of stuff there. I bet you bought some stuff and eat quite a lot there too!” Jokes, I was just focused on going to the 6th floor honestly hahah – I had my eyes on exclusive video game merch that they might have that I may not be able to get in the States. Also, I was hoping that they had more selection of amiibos (especially since I wanted to see if I could still get the Amiibo Cuby or not – the ridiculously rare amiibo that I mentioned in the previous post).
To my surprise, they only had a small section of amiibo (a lot of which were from the Splatoon series) on the 6th floor. Also to my surprise, I did happen to see this awesome Final Fantasy section with some really neat stuff…like these two cool looking passport cases!
It never dawned on me to have an actual passport case until I saw one of these in person – it was just the appropriate first, cool buy that I would make during this trip; it’s practical, it has multiple pockets of various sizes for both my passport and for other things like ticket stubs, mini brochures, and my JR pass. Best of all, it’s FINAL FANTASY THEMED! HELL YEAH… the only thing though was that I had a tough time deciding between the two….
The blue one had cactuars, moogles, and chocobos (which are creatures from the Final Fantasy series), and the white one had different main characters via throughout the Final Fantasy Series + a sleeping moogle on the back.
After 5 minutes of debating, I ended up going with the latter.
I definitely found stuff here that I didn’t really see at the Square Enix Cafe (which is understandable granted that the cafe was more Dragon Quest focused at the time). I then proceeded to pick up more stuff as shown:
~ Side Note #13: The last 8 pictures were taken after my trip (aka today haha) – Obviously, I didn’t open up the acrylic keychain collection no. 2 mini packs at the time I was in the store, but I was pretty anxious to find out what I got – I did open the mini packs after I was done for the day in Tokyo that night. ~
As cool as these products are, there was a cool kicker that came with getting all of these products.
~ The player’s strategy #3 ~> During the transaction process via these FF merch products, the cashier, who was taking care of my purchase, revealed to me Japan’s tax exemption program (which applies to tax-free stores, and in this case, Yodobashi Camera – Akiba). If you purchase ¥5,000 or more in the store at one time, you’re exempt from paying the 10% tax. In other words, Buy just enough to not have my purchase taxed – CHYEAH No-tax purchase! HELL YEAH SON. (although…the only thing about this strategy that sucks is that if you want to get stuff that might not even be close to ¥5,000 total, it “heavily encourages” the consumer to buy stuff that they may or may not want just to get that tax-exempted purchase.) ~
I ended up paying ¥5,200 for the aforementioned items at the 6th floor. Even though I was happy that I was able to get the tax-exempted price…unfortunately, there was a slight downer that came with this purchase though. I tried to use one of my two credit cards (especially my BOA (Bank of America) travel rewards card that I got specifically for buying stuff overseas so that I don’t have to pay for any foreign transaction fee), but here at Yodobashi Camera…my credit card didn’t go through. I tried my other credit card to see if it would work… no cigar. Sigh, at this point (and as I will realize later on during this trip) – using credit cards in general is like a lottery system, you just never know if they’ll go through or not.
All good though, it wasn’t like my credit cards were blocked or anything – they just didn’t work here at the 6th floor in Yodobashi Camera (spoiler alert: I was able to use my BOA travel rewards credit card in certain places throughout my trip in Japan successfully 🙂 so no worries!)
I wasn’t too down about it in the end because I had cash anyway (but…I just thought it would’ve been nice to use my travel rewards credit card when I can so that I can use my yen when I need to, you know what I mean?) The cashier was trying to be nice about it and I could tell that he was having trouble communicating with me since my Japanese was very limited and I was just trying to understand what he was saying to me about my credit cards and what he was about to do next…
After my purchase went through, he did this thing where he stapled my receipt to one of my pages on the passport. I thought it was really weird when he first did this, but (with his limited English and hand gestures/motions) he explained to me that I’ll need to keep this receipt in my passport and just show this to one of the airport employees (when I get to the airport before I fly back home) as a proof of purchase. Thinking about it a bit more shortly after I finished buying my Final Fantasy merch, it made more sense to me about the receipt situation – Japan probably wants to keep track of how much is spent through tax-exempt purchases, but still…I just thought that the concept of stapling a receipt into one of the pages of my passport was a bit strange because I always thought that those passport pages are reserved for passport stamps (indicating point of entry in another country when traveling overseas and all that jazz)
Anyway, after all of that was done – I went down from the 8th Floor to the 1st, left Yodobashi Camera, went outside and walked over to the Ginza Line, took a 14 minute rail ride from Suehirochō Station in Akihabara to Nihombashi Station in Chuo City, entered the Nihombashi Takashimaya S.C. East Building, took the elevator from the 1st floor to the 5th, and the first thing I saw after I turned the corner was this!
OH. HELL. TO. THE. YEAH. IT’S. GOIN’. DOWN. man…I can’t believe it! I’m at one of the best stores that I wanted to hit up for such a long time in Japan. POKÉMON CENTER TOKYO DX. CHYEAHHHHHH. WHAT WHAT?! YOOOOOOO.
This 5th floor also had the famous Pokémon café that I’ve heard all about; however, I wasn’t able to get in and check out the café because unfortunately you had to book your spot to enter in advance (by the time I found out about it while I was still planning out my 2nd Japan trip back in the states, the earliest time available that I would’ve been able to book was November 20th at 3:30pm, which would’ve been too late since I was planning on being at the Narita Airport at that time, getting ready to fly back to the States).
Anyway, back to POKÉMON CENTER TOKYO DX. Oh man… what a ball – there were just so many different types of Pokémon merch, including this beautiful Detective Pikachu (like the movie that just came out last year in early May, but in an ACTUAL DETECTIVE OUTFIT.) This was probably one of the main, premier things to get in this exclusive store! I’m not gonna lie… I definitely regret not getting one of these now that I think about it – at the time, I just thought that it was more practical to get stuff that were slightly smaller in size so that it would be easier to pack…but that logic doesn’t really make sense in the long run because I know that I was going to get a bunch of stuff in Japan anyway. (I did end up getting a stuffed Pokémon plush though, which you’ll see in a bit).
From all different kinds of Pokémon plushes (from the original 151 Pokémon in Generation I to Generation VII…(and a few from Generation VIII) and exclusive Pokémon apparel, to awesome stationary stuff that just caught my eye so much – I was just overwhelmed and couldn’t decide on what to get – it was just a bliss and me geeking out, wanting most of the things in the store, but I just had to narrow it down to some things including the following:
Most of these things that I got from this Pokémon store are part of the “Pikachu Number 025” collection (the 025 represents Pikachu’s Pokémon # out of the 895 or more Pokémon out there).
~ Side Note #14: My BOA Travel Rewards card worked this time whilst purchasing these awesome Pokémon goods! Phew man I swear I hope this works more often than not whilst I’m here in Japan 😀 ~
Man… that was dope. Both Final Fantasy AND Pokémon Merch! Legit. I’m really glad that I got some awesome stuff already from both Yodobashi Camera + Pokémon Tokyo Center DX – in terms of shopping, I’m off to a great start!
Sigh, y’all know what it is… I gotta cut off day 2 and stop it here. Day 2 Part 6 is coming up (and it’ll be coming up sooner rather than later 😅) – I’ll be covering the last few things of Day 2 of the following – all in Shibuya!
- Sushi @ Katsumidori Seibu
- LOFT
- Ramen @ Kindenmaru Shibuya Honten
- Niku Yokocho
Cheers / wave
Listen to what you see. 