Mandarake!

[Lint]

I'm planning to visit when I go to Japan this September. Is it very easy to find? I'm pretty sure the group is going to Akihabara, hopefully I can find it quickly, since I don't think we have much time around.

The Akihabara one shouldn't be hard to find. It's a big black building on a street corner with multi-level pop-culture madness.

The Shibuya store is in the basement of the BEAM mall, however keep a lookout for the sign/logo on street level.

The Nakano stores were a pain in the arse to find as they were inside a mall and up on the 3rd floor or something. However it was closing time and I was in quite a rush.

There's better stores in Akihabara but most will take effort to find, which may not be fun if you're travelling in a group.

[TAAUBlaster]

The Akihabara one shouldn't be hard to find. It's a big black building on a street corner with multi-level pop-culture madness.

The Shibuya store is in the basement of the BEAM mall, however keep a lookout for the sign/logo on street level.

The Nakano stores were a pain in the arse to find as they were inside a mall and up on the 3rd floor or something. However it was closing time and I was in quite a rush.

There's better stores in Akihabara but most will take effort to find, which may not be fun if you're travelling in a group.

The Nakano store was the easiest to find I thought You basically walk straight out of the Nakano station, and right across the road is Nakano Broadway. Mandarake is inside towards the end if I recall? The manga section is on the ground floor, and a couple floors up is the TF section.

[GoktimusPrime]

Don't forget that if Mandarake opened a store here, it would be subject to loads of Australian govt. import taxes, levies, duties -- that's why a lot of import stores are so expensive, many of which have now closed down in recent years. 10 years ago, Sydney had a good number of specialist import stores, now there's what? Two? Most likely because it's always been cheaper to directly import toys privately from Japan; and I guess with the increase in online shopping, most specialty import stores just haven't been able to compete.

I've never ordered anything online from Mandarake, but I have purchased from their stores in person, and I found their service to be pretty good. One thing I quite like is their honest policy about the nature of the toys; each toy has a sticker on it which tells you the condition of the toy. For example, I got my Alternity Convoy there for about 3000JPY; I was wondering why it was so cheap, and it was because it wasn't sealed. It had been opened and resealed, but never actually transformed or played with... so it was in loose mint condition. And while I personally don't agree with them selling unlicensed toys (incl. counterfeits), at least they do label them explicitly telling you if the toys are fake. So I've had pretty good experiences with their in-store shopping, but no experience with their e-shopping so I can't comment on that.

[TAAUBlaster]

And while I personally don't agree with them selling unlicensed toys (incl. counterfeits), at least they do label them explicitly telling you if the toys are fake. So I've had pretty good experiences with their in-store shopping, but no experience with their e-shopping so I can't comment on that.

I don't want to badmouth Mandarake too much, but they have sold KO's marked as vintage on a few occasions. Things like US TF's Dinobots and the Decepticon cassettes have been spooted in their stores. Granted - I don't think they label them as vintage to deceive buyers, but it doens't change the fact that they are there. So you should still be cautious.

Don't get me wrong - I love Mandarake, and I will shop there everytime I visit Japan. But just because they mark it as vintage, doesn't mean you shouldn't do your homework first.

[GoktimusPrime]

I don't want to badmouth Mandarake too much, but they have sold KO's marked as vintage on a few occasions. Things like US TF's Dinobots and the Decepticon cassettes have been spooted in their stores. Granted - I don't think they label them as vintage to deceive buyers, but it doens't change the fact that they are there. So you should still be cautious.

Don't get me wrong - I love Mandarake, and I will shop there everytime I visit Japan. But just because they mark it as vintage, doesn't mean you shouldn't do your homework first.

Are you certain that the sticker explicitly stated it was original and not fakes? Did you mention/complain to management?

[TAAUBlaster]

Are you certain that the sticker explicitly stated it was original and not fakes? Did you mention/complain to management?

As far as I can remember. The prices certainly seemed to indicate they were vintage - and they were in one of the big display cabinets outside the store (at the Nakano branch) surrounded by other original items. There was one other KO inside the store that was in a cabinet with some loose figs. I'm sure the tag said "KO" (I thought it was strange because I didn't think KO was a commom term in Japan) whereas the other tags didn't have it. I didn't complain because my Japanese was not anywhere near good enough to converse with, and I wouldn't have been able to get my point across.

[noel0leon]

Love this place. I haven't used the online store as of yet but when we visited Japan last year I dragged my girlfriend to no less than 4 different stores in 4 different cities.

Wicked place. It seemed to me that it was a department of geekery heaven and that they buy and sell second hand stuff as well as new items (There was a special section for people selling their collections to the store in the Kyoto branch).

It is an excellent resource for Macross Stuff (which is what I was after) as well as a healthy collection of Transformers (both Japanese and US)

Its also a heck of a lot of fun to just browse through as well. The first one I spent 2 hours on there.

[GoktimusPrime]

I'm sure the tag said "KO" (I thought it was strange because I didn't think KO was a commom term in Japan) whereas the other tags didn't have it. I didn't complain because my Japanese was not anywhere near good enough to converse with, and I wouldn't have been able to get my point across.

What you need to look for on the tag is the Kanji 海賊版, which means "pirated." They can be pretty damn expensive, but if you see any toy in a Mandarake store with those Kanji on the sticker, then it's a counterfeit.