In the comments of the 4th anniversary post, jimpac asked for a post sharing pics and details about TACO che. I've had dozens of photos saved up and now that I've been kicked in the pants (and found a happy solution for hosting lots of pictures with PictoBrowser), it's time to post everything!
Folks reading on RSS: PictoBrowser doesn't play nice with you, so please click through and come see the 100+ photos! Mouse over 'Notes' to read the photo captions.
If you've been reading Same Hat for a while, you've probably heard me talk about the Nakano Broadway Mall. It's located just west of Shinjuku, and home to a sprawling complex of strange, otaku stores-- including the massive 15+ Mandarake shops. It's like a more underground and less commercialized version of Akiba, minus the foreign tourists with cameras and with more of the stuff we all like. How to get to Nakano Broadway and maps/pics from the Mandarake shops can be found here.
Last Spring, my GF and I went to Japan for two weeks, and I managed to fit two trips to the greatest shop in Nakano Broadway (and quite possibly, my favorite shop of any kind in the world), TACO che!! I was originally told about the shop by my German buddy Ben (who gavee me the Shintaro Kago Bullying kit from there back in 2007). TACO che is pretty much THE underground manga shop of your dreams. They don't have a specific tie to any one publisher, but I heard that the owner is close with the folks that fun Seirinkogeisha. The shop carries fan zines, dojinshi, along with nearly every title by Seirinkogeisha, EnterBrain/Beam and all the other indies we love.
The shop is located on the 3rd floor, in the general vicinity of the northwest end of the Nakano Broadway mall. Here are some shots from inside the store. The place is tiny, but every square foot is something cool and tempting:
These photos are all from March 2008, and reflect the books and goods that were hot at the time. Kazuo Umezu's 50th Anniversary (of his career in manga) celebration was in full force, and the store was crammed full of incredible Umezz goods:
In my two trips to the shop, I spent (eeek) over 300 bucks and filled a suitcase with books. I didn't really have 300 bucks to spend on comics, but I. JUST. COULDN'T. HELP. MYSELF. In addition to the bigger pubs and indie zines I mentioned above, TACO che also publishes their own occasional zines and pamphlets (which are insanely excellent, like this). Here is just a small smattering of the manga gems I am talking about:
Not content to be simply the BOOK store of our dreams, TACO che also carries limited edition shirts, toys and DVDs, including Suehiro Maruo posters made just for TACO che (sorry, I can't find that pic at the moment, will take one of the miniposter on my wall). Here are some of the shirts:
And here are some of the goodies:
They also carry lapel pins by all our favorites:
I tried to include good captions for all those pics, but if you have any questions (or corrections!) leave a comment here! You can see the photos directly at the non-flashy Same Hat flickr, which I'm using just to store pics for PictoBrowser to pull from.
TACO che continues to be the epicenter for all the manga and art we all love so much, so I'll keep my eyes ope on their blog and post interesting news. In the coming month or so, TACO che will be hosting signing events with Takashi Nemoto and Jun Hayami- hopefully Nate or Schultz can check those out for us!!
In the comments of the 4th anniversary post, jimpac asked for a post sharing pics and details about TACO che. I've had dozens of photos saved up and now that I've been kicked in the pants (and found a happy solution for hosting lots of pictures with PictoBrowser), it's time to post everything!
Folks reading on RSS: PictoBrowser doesn't play nice with you, so please click through and come see the 100+ photos! Mouse over 'Notes' to read the photo captions.
If you've been reading Same Hat for a while, you've probably heard me talk about the Nakano Broadway Mall. It's located just west of Shinjuku, and home to a sprawling complex of strange, otaku stores-- including the massive 15+ Mandarake shops. It's like a more underground and less commercialized version of Akiba, minus the foreign tourists with cameras and with more of the stuff we all like. How to get to Nakano Broadway and maps/pics from the Mandarake shops can be found here.
Last Spring, my GF and I went to Japan for two weeks, and I managed to fit two trips to the greatest shop in Nakano Broadway (and quite possibly, my favorite shop of any kind in the world), TACO che!! I was originally told about the shop by my German buddy Ben (who gavee me the Shintaro Kago Bullying kit from there back in 2007). TACO che is pretty much THE underground manga shop of your dreams. They don't have a specific tie to any one publisher, but I heard that the owner is close with the folks that fun Seirinkogeisha. The shop carries fan zines, dojinshi, along with nearly every title by Seirinkogeisha, EnterBrain/Beam and all the other indies we love.
The shop is located on the 3rd floor, in the general vicinity of the northwest end of the Nakano Broadway mall. Here are some shots from inside the store. The place is tiny, but every square foot is something cool and tempting:
These photos are all from March 2008, and reflect the books and goods that were hot at the time. Kazuo Umezu's 50th Anniversary (of his career in manga) celebration was in full force, and the store was crammed full of incredible Umezz goods:
In my two trips to the shop, I spent (eeek) over 300 bucks and filled a suitcase with books. I didn't really have 300 bucks to spend on comics, but I. JUST. COULDN'T. HELP. MYSELF. In addition to the bigger pubs and indie zines I mentioned above, TACO che also publishes their own occasional zines and pamphlets (which are insanely excellent, like this). Here is just a small smattering of the manga gems I am talking about:
Not content to be simply the BOOK store of our dreams, TACO che also carries limited edition shirts, toys and DVDs, including Suehiro Maruo posters made just for TACO che (sorry, I can't find that pic at the moment, will take one of the miniposter on my wall). Here are some of the shirts:
And here are some of the goodies:
They also carry lapel pins by all our favorites:
I tried to include good captions for all those pics, but if you have any questions (or corrections!) leave a comment here! You can see the photos directly at the non-flashy Same Hat flickr, which I'm using just to store pics for PictoBrowser to pull from.
TACO che continues to be the epicenter for all the manga and art we all love so much, so I'll keep my eyes ope on their blog and post interesting news. In the coming month or so, TACO che will be hosting signing events with Takashi Nemoto and Jun Hayami- hopefully Nate or Schultz can check those out for us!!
...the mother of all "CHECK OUT THIS AWESOME SHIT, JAPAN RULEZ!" posts, featuring dozens of previously unseen pics of Maruo, Kago, Umezu, Hanakuma, and Tsuge goodness from TACO CHE.
...the mother of all "CHECK OUT THIS AWESOME SHIT, JAPAN RULEZ!" posts, featuring dozens of previously unseen pics of Maruo, Kago, Umezu, Hanakuma, and Tsuge goodness from TACO CHE.
Sorry for the lull in posting, friends. I have a list on the wall by my kitchen of posts to write (nine and counting...) but keep getting distracted. Now that we're past Thanksgiving here in the states, I wanted to share a holiday shopping guide for folks heading to Tokyo in the near future.
As mentioned previously with the launch of the Same Hat Guide To Everything (SHGTE!), Nakano Broadway Mall in west-central Tokyo is my favorite shopping area in the world. In addition to stores selling beetles, maid cafes, replica weapon stores, forgotten item shops, and TACO che (the greatest indie/weirdo manga shop in the world), Nakano Broadway is home to a complex of Mandarake shops - 22 individual stores spanning 3 floors! Each shop varies in size, and is dedicated to a different subgenre of manga/anime/toys/fandom. From my trip earlier this year, here is a map of Mandarake, in English:
(click for a giant version of the map - 450k)
You can take a look above and plan your shopping route, specific to your own interests. For me, the greatest shop in Mandarake was the 4th floor shop, Mandarake Maniac Store. There I found a treasure trove of old and rare manga, weird collectibles, an insanely knowledgeable (and rather fashionable) counter staff, and their own in-house manga zine, TRASH. If you're a Same Hat reader, this is the shop for you:
Here are a few shots from my trip earlier this year, of the magical Mandarake Maniacs Store...
Behold the wonder of their stacks! It's a small shop but full to the brim with amazing stuff.
On one wall, there is a glass case for rare stuff and 1st editions.
Lovely and unique books, including a $200 copy of Red Colored Elegy by Seiichi Hayashi
Incredible! An early, $175 edition of Kage by Kazuo Umezu
Sexy ladies and blue tales.
What wonders are hidden in these shelves? This is where I picked up an old copy of Toiretto Hakase for Johnny!
Oh, I'm sorry... were you interested in every issue of Garo ever published?
Or were you looking for the COM back catalog?
Also in effect, nice & cheap paperbacks of Hideshi Hino classics.
Okay, I can't even keep track of this shit anymore.
There are too many freakin' branches here-- Give yourself at least 5 hours at Nakano Broadway to hunt. SERIOUSLY.
And don't forget to check out the UFO Store, Gacha-Paradise, and the Deep Store (Check the map above for details!)
Have you been to Nakano Broadway or the Mandarake shop in Akihabara? Share your stories or recommendations in the comments on this post. Next up: Pics from TACO che, finally!
Sorry for the lull in posting, friends. I have a list on the wall by my kitchen of posts to write (nine and counting...) but keep getting distracted. Now that we're past Thanksgiving here in the states, I wanted to share a holiday shopping guide for folks heading to Tokyo in the near future.
As mentioned previously with the launch of the Same Hat Guide To Everything (SHGTE!), Nakano Broadway Mall in west-central Tokyo is my favorite shopping area in the world. In addition to stores selling beetles, maid cafes, replica weapon stores, forgotten item shops, and TACO che (the greatest indie/weirdo manga shop in the world), Nakano Broadway is home to a complex of Mandarake shops - 22 individual stores spanning 3 floors! Each shop varies in size, and is dedicated to a different subgenre of manga/anime/toys/fandom. From my trip earlier this year, here is a map of Mandarake, in English:
(click for a giant version of the map - 450k)
You can take a look above and plan your shopping route, specific to your own interests. For me, the greatest shop in Mandarake was the 4th floor shop, Mandarake Maniac Store. There I found a treasure trove of old and rare manga, weird collectibles, an insanely knowledgeable (and rather fashionable) counter staff, and their own in-house manga zine, TRASH. If you're a Same Hat reader, this is the shop for you:
Here are a few shots from my trip earlier this year, of the magical Mandarake Maniacs Store...
Behold the wonder of their stacks! It's a small shop but full to the brim with amazing stuff.
On one wall, there is a glass case for rare stuff and 1st editions.
Lovely and unique books, including a $200 copy of Red Colored Elegy by Seiichi Hayashi
Incredible! An early, $175 edition of Kage by Kazuo Umezu
Sexy ladies and blue tales.
What wonders are hidden in these shelves? This is where I picked up an old copy of Toiretto Hakase for Johnny!
Oh, I'm sorry... were you interested in every issue of Garo ever published?
Or were you looking for the COM back catalog?
Also in effect, nice & cheap paperbacks of Hideshi Hino classics.
Okay, I can't even keep track of this shit anymore.
There are too many freakin' branches here-- Give yourself at least 5 hours at Nakano Broadway to hunt. SERIOUSLY.
And don't forget to check out the UFO Store, Gacha-Paradise, and the Deep Store (Check the map above for details!)
Have you been to Nakano Broadway or the Mandarake shop in Akihabara? Share your stories or recommendations in the comments on this post. Next up: Pics from TACO che, finally!
I'm working on organizing the 600+ photos I took on my recent Japan trip, and hoping to start posting a recap (with tons of pics of manga, t-shirts and other Same Hat-related oddities) this week. But before that, I wanted to first blog a flyer I scanned today featuring an illustration by Suehiro Maruo.
While at the Tower Records in Shinjuku, I came across a free flyer featuring Maruo's art and grabbed a pile of them. This piece is from a similar set of drawings in the opening section of Panorama-tou Kidan. (I'm hoping to send flyers to folks that buy Electric Ant or win a future Same Hat contest of some sort).
Here is a tour flyer, featuring Suehiro Maruo's cover illustration for the CD/DVD 呪恋 by the band 犬神サーカス団 (Inugami Circus Troupe):
I feel like I've read the name before (also known as Dog-God Circus Troupe online), but never heard their music. For more info you can visit Inugami Circus Troupe's website, or check out their videos on YouTube. Interesting to note, Wikipedia says that "They started in 1994 when Kyoko placed an advertisement in Garo, a manga magazine."
Other album covers by Inugami Circus Troupe include a parody of King Crimson's famous In The Court Of The Crimson King cover, and an album called Panorama of Hell, with a cover illustrated by Hideshi Hino:
I'm working on organizing the 600+ photos I took on my recent Japan trip, and hoping to start posting a recap (with tons of pics of manga, t-shirts and other Same Hat-related oddities) this week. But before that, I wanted to first blog a flyer I scanned today featuring an illustration by Suehiro Maruo.
While at the Tower Records in Shinjuku, I came across a free flyer featuring Maruo's art and grabbed a pile of them. This piece is from a similar set of drawings in the opening section of Panorama-tou Kidan. (I'm hoping to send flyers to folks that buy Electric Ant or win a future Same Hat contest of some sort).
Here is a tour flyer, featuring Suehiro Maruo's cover illustration for the CD/DVD 呪恋 by the band 犬神サーカス団 (Inugami Circus Troupe):
I feel like I've read the name before (also known as Dog-God Circus Troupe online), but never heard their music. For more info you can visit Inugami Circus Troupe's website, or check out their videos on YouTube. Interesting to note, Wikipedia says that "They started in 1994 when Kyoko placed an advertisement in Garo, a manga magazine."
Other album covers by Inugami Circus Troupe include a parody of King Crimson's famous In The Court Of The Crimson King cover, and an album called Panorama of Hell, with a cover illustrated by Hideshi Hino:
Sorry for the lack of juicy content on the site... things got supremely busy at the end of last week... But, I'm feeling 100X better right now for two big reasons:
NUMBER 1: The Secret Project that Evan and I have been working on for over 6 months is DONE! We finalized all of the book pages last week, and passed them to the publisher the day before I left the country. This is a massive relief mentally, and it's really odd and satisfying to be done with it. All that's left is fun stuff, like helping go over the printing proofs, announcing the book, pressuring all our friends and readers of this blog to BUY IT, and then some cool events around the release. AWESOME!
aaaaand
NUMBER 2: Holy fuck, I'm in Japan! My GF and I arrived Friday and have been spending our first few days running around Tokyo. So far we've been shopping at TACOche, Uniqlo, saw rockabilly daddies at Harajuku's Yoyogi park, and ate yakisoba and saw cherry blossom (and right-wingers) by Yasukuni Shrine, just to name a few. It's been really rad so far, although I'm obviously and weirdly not over my jet lag, typing this up at 5:30 am on Monday...
No real pics 'til I get back, but I grabbed some amazing stuff at TACOche to blog about (and some stuff like Suehiro Maruo pins to give away... SH contest soon after we get back?).
So that this post isn't just all about my crap, here is the Google.co.jp homepage doodle that debuted today, celebrating Astro Boy's birthday (according to Tezuka in the manga, Astro Boy was "born" 4/7/2003).
PS: No, I have not found Umezu or his house... YET! :B
Sorry for the lack of juicy content on the site... things got supremely busy at the end of last week... But, I'm feeling 100X better right now for two big reasons:
NUMBER 1: The Secret Project that Evan and I have been working on for over 6 months is DONE! We finalized all of the book pages last week, and passed them to the publisher the day before I left the country. This is a massive relief mentally, and it's really odd and satisfying to be done with it. All that's left is fun stuff, like helping go over the printing proofs, announcing the book, pressuring all our friends and readers of this blog to BUY IT, and then some cool events around the release. AWESOME!
aaaaand
NUMBER 2: Holy fuck, I'm in Japan! My GF and I arrived Friday and have been spending our first few days running around Tokyo. So far we've been shopping at TACOche, Uniqlo, saw rockabilly daddies at Harajuku's Yoyogi park, and ate yakisoba and saw cherry blossom (and right-wingers) by Yasukuni Shrine, just to name a few. It's been really rad so far, although I'm obviously and weirdly not over my jet lag, typing this up at 5:30 am on Monday...
No real pics 'til I get back, but I grabbed some amazing stuff at TACOche to blog about (and some stuff like Suehiro Maruo pins to give away... SH contest soon after we get back?).
So that this post isn't just all about my crap, here is the Google.co.jp homepage doodle that debuted today, celebrating Astro Boy's birthday (according to Tezuka in the manga, Astro Boy was "born" 4/7/2003).
PS: No, I have not found Umezu or his house... YET! :B
