Book Off

Yeah, honestly, yeah.

And Book Off, we found, we saw some cool stuff in Book Off.

But Book Off really just had like a little bit of everything, right? But yeah, no, this stuff in terms of pure gaming nostalgia, what was on the next, pure gaming nostalgia and like toy nostalgia was really like next level.

So, yeah, like we get out there and we see the cathedral.

Right.

Oh.

Book Off, yeah, yeah.

So it's, it's, um, another brand of Book Off, yeah.

Oh, okay.

And it's called Hard Off?

Feels just like going to the used bookstore.

It's like going to BookOff or whatever.

Yeah.

And they have free shipping on orders of 35- uh, orders over $35, which I thought was pretty good for manga.

So yeah, that's definitely a place that I wanna check out in the future, because I was like, I had never heard of this place.

[laughs] This seems like a great resource.

You know, I literally just mentioned BookOff, and then I was like, oh wait, do we have BookOff on this list? [laughs]

No, but if you are lucky enough to have a BookOff in your area, I know they've been popping up a little bit more, uh, here and there in America, so-

I'm so glad we're in the future.

Cinci also says, my last trip to Japan, I picked up some anime figures at the Book Off subsidiary Hobby Off.

Oh, okay.

We talked about Book Off on that episode, episode seven.

And some laser discs at Hard Off that specializes in electronics.

So Book Off, Hobby Off, and Hard Off.

How deep does the Book Off rabbit hole go? Despite the discs being in the junk section, they looked pristine and play fine.

That's great.

It's all shops that I had been to, with the exception of Anime Castle.

I've never been to Anime Castle, but I listed, yeah, Japan Village, Teso X, Kinokuniya, BookOff, Akiba House, Anime Castle, Tamashii Nations, and All In Anime.

Yeah.

I've been to all of those except Anime Castle.

Mm-hmm

...

since they have the Daiso, BookOff, the, the food court, you know, Sunrise Mart.

It's, it's a really great place.

...

in the future, this v- So, you know there's BookOff, right?

Yeah.

The book, uh, where you buy and sell used stuff, and mostly books.

But anyway, I saw a YouTube video.

This guy.

In Tokyo, there's plenty of BookOffs, Hard Offs, right, et cetera, but those are all in a well-populated, dense area where tourists go.

And so if you're looking for nerdy biz, the prices at those places are gonna be high-

... um, you can find at The Drama Book Shop.

We go to BookOff, which is a great used bookstore.

It's actually an American outpost of a Japanese chain, and when you walk in, it looks like a nerdy memorabilia shop.

There's a lot of action figures, a lot of video games.

And then the other thing we were thinking about is, you know, if you're walking all around and doing all this book shopping, that you're gonna need some fuel for that, and so we also wanted to make sure we had some fun stops to get a coffee, a snack, um, something to sustain you along your route.

Was there a bookstore that you just didn't know much about, maybe it was a recommendation from someone on the desk, that really surprised you?

I had never heard of BookOff before I started working on this story.

I think that's just, like, a block in Midtown that I had not spent time on.