Jungle Nagoya Store Tour

Hello everyone and welcome back to Tiro Finale! In my most recent trip to Japan over the autumn season, I spent a good amount of time in the city of Nagoya. Part of the recent I chose Nagoya over all the other, arguably more popular, tourist destinations is because of the large number of hobby stores located in Nagoya's city center. This includes big names in the hobby market such as Mandarake, Jungle and Rashinbang which are probably the 3 biggest re-sellers in the business. Having spent a good portion of my days at museums and tourist attractions, I made sure to set aside a good portion of my evenings to check out as many of the hobby stores as I could.

As part of my little Nagoya special, the first shop I will be highlighting is Jungle's Nagoya branch. Located on a street corner, this established hobby store has a fairly large two story outlet that you are surely to not miss if you were ever around the area. Just like almost every other Jungle stores in Japan, this one is a certified tax free store too. So tourists can take advantage of the tax benefits when shopping here.

Take a step into Jungle and there is an immediate sense of familiarity to it all. If you have ever been to any of Jungle's stores be it the ones in Nakano, Sapporo or Akihabara, you would immediately get a sense of deja vu. And it a good way too. As every section is neatly organized on the shelves according to series. This makes it extremely easy to navigate the stores looking for figures of your favorite character.

Unless of course if you are a Re:Zero fan in which case, all you will be getting is Rem, Rem and more Rem (and the occasional Ram). Although if you are a Rem fan then, this would be extremely convenient. 

Most of the figures on display on the open cabinets were either prize or Kuji figures. Considering the high turnover of these relatively inexpensive figures, it would certainly make the most sense to display them there. And when it comes to prices, Jungle has one of the best offers around on top of offering great transparency by appropriately labeling each pre-owned product according to grade. Their Nagoya branch was no exception.

On the other hand, the premium figures were behind well lit glass cabinets. Some opened, other sealed, one thing is for sure, seeing so many premium figures together sure is a sight to behold. Moreover, the staff at Jungle also made their best efforts to arrange the figures according to series as well. Prices here varied a little because of character popularity and the rarity of each piece. As such, I was not able to appraise the price to value proposition of each and every one of the premium figures Jungle had for sale.

One thing I will add is this RAH Tomoe Mami that I found lurking on the top of the shelves, where all the larger than normal figures are placed, was pretty decently priced. 11,000 Yen for a opened box figure in otherwise perfect condition is not that bad of a deal. 

Head up to the second floor, and you will be immediately greeted by Ultraman! 

I initially thought the Ultraman statue was a very elaborate shop decoration that Jungle had put in. But as it turned out, this was on official scale replica!

And the most surprising part was that it was actually for sale. It turned out not to be a decoration but, just another one of the store's products instead. To be honest, this was one of the last things I had come to expect seeing in this branch of Jungle. 

In fact, Ultraman was not the only large size official scale for sale as there were several other options laying around in store. I could not help but wonder what if someone had accidentally bumped into it! 
Of course, large statues were not the only thing on sale on the second floor. Where the first floor catered to bishoujo, shounen and cute figures. The second floor featured things such as mecha, scale model kits and action figures. 

Oh, and the R18 section too. Good call not placing this section on the first floor but, I do not think that sheer lack veil actually does much in way of blocking what is actually within. Not that there was much to stop anyone underage to wander in to begin with. 

Stepping into the forbidden land, I was pleasantly surprised to find the offerings available in the adult section to be pretty tame. I was even wondering why this particular Galko-chan figure was doing here until I realized it probably had some form of cast off feature.

which is pretty much what you could expect from a good number of the adult figures on sale which I actually bring up for a pretty good reason. Long have I equated cast off part figures to being off a lesser quality especially when it comes to fit and finish. But looking at these newer releases, I was fairly surprised to see how much they have improved with many of them hardly having a noticeable cast off point. 

While I would have loved to have stayed longer, taken more photos and browsed even longer. I just did not have the luxury of time as the closing time of 8:00 PM meant that I had to cover as much ground as I could within the limited time that I had. Hopefully in my next visit to Nagoya, I would be able to spend much more time at Jungle's Nagoya branch. And if you ever find yourself in and around Nagoya, make sure you pay this awesome two story hobby store a visit! Of course, there are other options too like the earlier mentioned Mandarake and Rashinbang. Both of which I will be covering in future articles here on Tiro Finale. So make sure you stay tuned for that. Until the next time, thank you so much for reading and have yourself a wonderful day ahead!