brooklyn_haynes

I will come to Japan this March. In my travel plan, I will stay at Tokyo for 4 days, and then I'll go to Kyoto, Nara and Osaka.

I know about Akihabara, Animate and Bookoff. But are there any other stores that sell anime and manga things?

Also, I want to know more about the attractions in Osaka. Does the Osaka 1 day-pass worth the money?

Thank you for your answer.

LapLap

Have you looked into Nakano Broadway?

brooklyn_haynes

Oh, I haven't heard about it and just google that place.

Very nice, thank you for your recommendation

LapLap

If you’re looking up things in that area, bear in mind that the Suginami Animation Museum is in nearby Ogikubo.
https://sam.or.jp/english_home

Can’t give you a personal recommendation for that though.

If you want to go to the Ghibli Museum you’ll need to look into it now as tickets ideally should be arranged in advance. That’s definitely worth a visit.

brooklyn_haynes

Yeah, I did hear about Ghibli Museum, it's on my to go list. But I don't know that I should book ticket first, so thank you

I think my trip to Japan will be a great success, thanks to you.

LapLap

There are only 100 tickets available per day to foreign visitors. It’s hard to tell if you are actually “planning” a trip or if this is a post padding exercise, but if you are, you needed to have started the ticket booking process already:
https://www.jtbgmt.com/eng/ghibli/TicketSystem.html

Spit spot!

beep88

Ghibli online tickets are sold out within minutes on their monthly release day. If it's the wrong time zone, you'll have to get up in the middle of the night to buy them.

If you can't get tickets, you can also pay many times over the ticket cost and join a "tour" that includes some superficial (4000 yen city park walking tour) or not-so-superficial add-ons (USD 135 hotel lunch and bus tour).

LapLap

When we went back in 2015 we asked my father-in-law to buy our tickets as we were to be a mixed group of visitors (both foreigners and Japanese Nationals). The April tickets went on sale within Japan on the 10th March and by the 16th March (buying them had slipped his mind) there was just one 12noon slot available during our visit. I think the purchase was made on a machine at a Lawson convenience store.
So even if there are considerably less tourists than usual this Spring, Japan in 2015 had about 10 million less visitor arrivals than in 2018 (20million vs 31million). This isn’t a matter to leave to the last minute. Fortune favours the prepared.

beep88

We went in 2013. I booked online, no issue with availability. Tickets had to be picked up from the machine at Lawson.

However I couldn't get it to work at the store because I couldn't find a way to enter my name in English, to match with the online booking. So I had to start the process from scratch there, using that machine and typing katakana for my name.

Also because of that I know ticket availability online is same as in-store. Now the machine supports English input for names.

fimo

2013 ain't 2020. If you have specific dates and timeslots in mind, you'll have to make sure you check online the minute tickets are released. Usually the 5 minutes involves constant refreshing as the servers get overloaded, and when you finally get through after about 15minutes, then generally only afternoon timeslots are left. Morning slots are the most popular because once you enter you can stay as long as you wish, so folks go early to avoid the build up of visitors, and also to queue for the cafe.

beep88

See my original post?

brooklyn_haynes

Well, because I have so many places I want to go so my list is very long, and I can't check every places :">

Thank you LapLap and beep88 for your sharing. Hope I can try to get my hand on those tickets.

ksandness

If you want vintage anime and manga, you've received some good suggestions in this thread. Large bookstores, like Kinokuniya, also have extensive selections of the very latest manga manga magazines and compilations, with a few back issues.

If you live in North America, anime may be a problem. Japan is Region 2 for DVDs, like Western Europe, so unless you have a region-free player or computer with a disk drive, you may have trouble playing them back home. Blu-Rays are in the same region as North America, however.

If you have a JR Pass (which would make sense, as long as you return to Tokyo before flying home), then your Pass is good on the Kanjo Line, which is Osaka's circular commuter rail line, like Tokyo's Yamanote Line. But in most cases, these 1-day passes for transit are a good deal only if you're going to be doing a lot of racing around the city from one subway station to another. In Kyoto, your JR Pass will take you to Nijo Castle and Arashiyama, but the subway there is not the most useful means of reaching the tourist sites. For that, I suggest a 24-hour city bus pass. Nara is about half an hour from Kyoto by JR train.

I have no idea where your interests lie other than anime and manga, so I would suggest buying a guidebook and reading up on each city to figure out exactly what you want to see.

brooklyn_haynes

Thank you for your detailed reply

And no, I'm not live in America so don't worry about that problem

Yes, my friend did show me a website that help me to figure out what to see and do in each province of Japan, so I think my trip will be ok.

mrploddy

Do you have anything specific that you're looking for ? If you're just looking to see what you can find then that's cool however if for example it's a CD or blu-ray from a series from 2 - 3 years ago you may have a hard job locating it.

Although not as fun if you have something you ABSOLUTELY must get you can put orders in to amazon.co.jp and have them delivered to your hotel - but obviously this relies on you being in one place for 2 or 3 days and paying for priority shipping.

I was up in Yokohama for a week last year and changed the delivery address on the kanzenban version of Karakuri Circus and had it sent to my hotel and tried out same day shipping on a BanG Dream CD for kicks LOL

-mrploddy