Kashiwa Anime Shopping Guide

Hello everyone and welcome back to Tiro Finale! Today, we will be taking a look at the city of Kashiwa and providing you with a quick guide to all the hobby stores located in the main hub of the city. Located in the Chiba Prefecture, Kashiwa is also known as "Little Shibuya" and is one of the few shopping hubs in the Chiba Prefecture short of Chiba city actual. The same applies for hobby/anime shops which are mostly centered in Chiba city and Kashiwa. Seeing as to how Kashiwa is only one stop away from where I live, I decided to pay a visit to the city to provide you with this brief guide on the hobby shops available here.

 

Starting with the ever reliable Animate, this one should be no surprise as Animate is easily the most popular anime store in the whole of Japan. Found in almost every major city, the Animate in Kashiwa is located on the fourth floor of Don Quixote which itself is located in the city's main shopping arcade. The shop is fairly easy to find as you only have to look out for the large Don Quixote store. Inside, you will find your usual Animate supplies focusing on manga, light novels, Blu-rays and DVDs. We will be doing a short tour of the store soon so, stay tuned for that.

The next three hobby stores are located in the same area, the basement floor of the Marui (0101) shopping mall located adjacent to the main JR station. In fact, these three stores are neighbors to one another. The first store you would probably notice upon entering the basement floor is Lashinbang. Besides being the most reliable re-seller here, they are also one of the few places to get figures be it premium or prize, brand new or pre-owned. 

Right next to Lashinbang, we have Village/Vanguard which from the outside does not appear to be a hobby store at all. But, do not let the exterior fool you as the interior sells a great deal of anime-oriented trinkets and merchandise too especially for the more popular series such as Love Live. The store is catered more towards teenagers and features more affordable goods on sale. 

Finally, we have Yellow Submarine which is the largest of the three hobby stores in this floor. Yellow Submarine offers a great mix of hobby goods from your typical anime figures and model kits to trading card games and Ichiban Kuji lotteries. The large variety of genres and products means that Yellow Submarine also has the most densely packed store among the three. 

Despite all these three stores being smaller than hobby stores that you would find in Akihabara and Ikebukuro, their products on offer are no less impressive. Yellow Submarine especially keeps up to date with all the newest figure releases. Just like Animate, we will be covering each of these stores in a separate post this week. 

With all the hobby stores covered, all that is left are the arcades which span the entire basement of the Marui shopping center. As long as you are able to find the aforementioned three hobby stores, you would be hard pressed to miss these arcades as they line the entire basement floor and are never short on visitors. 

With that, we come to the end of this brief look at all the hobby store offerings in the city of Kashiwa. Would I recommend you go out of your way just to visit these few hobby stores? No, I would not. But, if you do find yourself with a lot of time to spare and do not mind paying a visit to quieter neighboring cities of Tokyo to get an idea of how things really are in Japan, then by all means do pay Kashiwa a visit. For more information about the shops, do stay tuned for our detailed coverage of each shop. Until then, thank you so much for reading and have yourself a wonderful day ahead!