Holiday Tokyo 21st October 2012 need advice please with hard off hobby off stores ?

I found that while we were over, Book Offs were a great resource for grabbing PSone titles (I hardly had any before we went over, but I took my wishlist and managed to pick up everything on it, so a good 50+ titles) and occasionally had some Saturn, Famicom and Super Famicom titles depending on location. I dropped into Book Offs in the major cities we went to, they're not hard to stumble across, and the one in Shibuya has a second hand clothing store on the basement which I know my wife enjoyed browsing while I nerded it up in the Book Off gaming sections on the ground floor.

In Akiba, I found that Mandarake and Super Potato were both really good sources for stuff outside the more mainstream gear on the second hand circuit (i.e. not PS3/PS2/PS1, XB360, Wii, DS/3DS), though pricing wasn't bargain-basement, but generally cheaper than hunting on eBay (and in a couple of cases, much cheaper). You're paying for the convenience of it all, but when you only have limited time for nerd shopping, it's a good solution. We dropped into some Trader and Liberty stores when we went looking for retro games, but didn't have much luck. The Hard Off next to Mandarake only stocked awesome audio gear, but no gaming stuff, and the Sofmap on the same street as Club Sega had some cheap PSone titles and cheap DS Lites if you're interested in those. Not sure if others here could recommend any spots because I probably missed them

I spent more cash in Osaka though - take the subway to the Ebisucho station and check out the Super Potato and Game Tenteidan stores via exit 1-B (props to Sebaattori for the info which I found useful). Pricing's a bit cheaper than Akiba for the most part, and I found the selection really good. Bought a lot of stuff from there and had a ball. Nipponbashi's a bit seedy everywhere - they don't have all the super-bright-happy-time neon gaudiness that Akiba has to mask the porn with a bit of charm, and I know my other half felt more comfortable nerding it up in Akiba compared to Osaka.

Again, the prices aren't as cheap as the spots outside the usual suspects, but its convenient and there's a good variety of gear to look at and buy. I'm slowly uploading the notes I took during the trip to my blog, but time's getting away from me at the moment so it's taking a bit of time to get everything on my blog, but you're welcome to have a read in the interim if it'll help. From what I gather when reading up SGUG and Yakumo's massive and impressive collation of info between Segagaga Domain and his Retro Core undercover shoots, the good gear at really good prices only crop up outside the city centers, but the time factor means that if you're on a tight schedule, it can make things a bit tricky.

 

maybe we should have a Assembler guide to buying classic games in Japan.
We get this topic every few months or so

 

I can sum it up in one line:
Get a Yahoo Japan Proxy account and bid.