Geeking out in Hiroshima

Hello everyone and welcome back to Tiro Finale for our third and final part of our Hiroshima trip. In the first two parts, we took a look at the various attractions located around Hiroshima city that would ideal for a day trip. And for this part, we will be taking a look at the various anime/manga shops that you should check out while on your trip here.

The first shop I would like to highlight is the popular hobby store, Yellow Submarine, which has a branch located in downtown Hiroshima. Much of the shopping and retail stores in Hiroshima are found on the main Hondori Street and Yellow Submarine is located right at the start of Hondori. The shop has several stores covering different sub-groups of hobbies such as figures, Gunpla and trading card games. Definitely worth a visit especially since their Gacha prizes do not have the vastly inflated prices that is present in Tokyo. 

The next store you would like to check out for all your hobby related goodies is, Lashinbang. Another popular hobby store, Lashinbang is located on the street parallel to Hondori Street and is just a 3 minute walk away from Yellow Submarine. Definitely worth taking a look after you are done with Yellow Submarine as Lashinbang has an even larger collection of new and used goods. 

Lashinbang shares the same building as various other anime stores namely, Animate, C-labo and Melonbooks. All of which also carry a healthy dose of character goods that you can spend hours looking through. Do not let the location fool you though as there are some proper rare goods that can be found here. 

Further down Hondori Street and you will certainly not miss the large Jump Shop. This store is catered to all the fans of Weekly Shonen Jump and is home to many of the merchandise featured in the magazine.

Lastly, we have the largest single hobby store in probably the whole of Hiroshima, Volks. Located on the fourth floor of the Hiroshima Sunmall, this hobby store is rather low key and very easy to miss unless you are looking out for it. There are no visible signage from outside the mall making you easily second guess yourself even if you are actively looking for it. 

Once you are one the right floor of the building though, you would not miss the unmistakable front fascia of Volks with its long row of glass display shelves featuring merchandise from the most popular series. 

The store itself is fairly large too and is roughly the same size as their outlet in Yokohama. Walking through the store, you get the sensation that this is certainly a locals-only place as this is likely the best place to get newly released merchandise especially figures. Most of the other hobby stores in Hiroshima either do not have a range as large or focus partly on other media. 

I would have loved to take more photos inside these hobby stores that were visited. Unfortunately, this can always be a touchy matter in Japan and it was best to not ruffle any feathers during my visit. 

All in all, Hiroshima's hobby scene certainly surprised me with its wide selection of the latest releases and a careful curation of rare goods. So much so, that I even found myself collecting three Mami trinkets as souvenirs from Hiroshima. With that, we come to the end of our Hiroshima trip in its entirety. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments section below. Until the next time, thank you so much for reading and have yourself a wonderful day ahead!