Fukuoka 10 - マンダラケ = Mandrake

On my Saturday afternoon during my recent trip to Fukuoka, I stopped by one of my favorite shops in town.   In English its called 'Mandrake', but the Japanese name comes out to be 'Mandarake' (マンダラケ). 

Its a bit of an OTAKU PARADISE... full of anime, manga, toys, games and other collectables. Its quite huge by Japanese standards, like 4 or 5 stories.  Unlike a lot of Japanophiles,  I actually have almost zero interest in Japanese anime. (except for 宇宙戦艦ヤマト and マクロス...)   but this place is still pretty cool. 

I snuck a few pics during my return visit of some of the random stuff.

Actually the reason I used to come here when I was living here was because of my an interest in retro-gaming.   In Japan's used CD shops, you can get a LOT of 2nd hand OG games for cheap.  I used to come here for 1st gen Game Boy games,  but since I long since put away my GB Color,  This time I just checked out the Famicon and Super Famicon systems on display.

In addition to racks and racks of new and old comics and DVDs,  they also have some collectible toys of all sorts:

I don't even know what most of these things are, but the prices are all in the hundreds of dollars.  that one in the middle labelled 'ハチ女' (aka '蜂女' or Bee Woman), is from 'Kamen Rider' apparently.... and its price tag is about US$1,200 at the current exchange rate!

This is what the character is supposed to look like!   The girl on the right, with realistic 'stinger action' is actually former AV idol Oikawa Nao (及川 奈央)...

Speaking of AV...  since this is Japan and its Otaku paradise... you can't ignore the p0rn...

actually this isn't even p0rn... they're just creepy nerd products...

The top two rows are actually anime character themed Pillow covers... for what kind of pillow?  LOVE PILLOWs ( 抱き枕) of course... :-O

(bet you regret reading that last sentence... don't you!)   

If you want to know more about this disturbing part of Japanese otaku culture... click here!

Not that I read p0rnographic Japanese comic books, but one other display case in the store I thought was photo worthy was this one (not work safe btw!). 

Its not just p0rn... its not just comic book p0rn... its RETRO collectible Japanese comic book p0rn!

A bit eye opening in some ways...  just in case you thought the genre of school girls being tied up and sexually molested by space aliens was a NEW invention... apparently its been popular in Japan for many decades.

Prices range from about US$7-$50..  this is just the few things I took photos of... there's about a million times more.  I'll save it for the next visit. :-P