I took a 16 day holiday to Japan and got to see a lot of the country. I went to Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, Hiroshima, Fukuoka and drove all over Kyushu. My friend group went to many shrines, onsens and a few historical landmarks, and on a few occasions I went out on my own to see several Nintendo related locations. This includes Nintendo Store Tokyo, Store Kyoto, the Museum, their corporate headquarters, Development Center No.1 and the hotel that sits on their original founding location. There was also some amount of game shopping.
Nintendo Store Tokyo is located of the 6th floor of the Parco building in Shibuya. It shares a floor with Pokemon, Sega, Capcom among others brands. The store felt perhaps smaller than the New York store, but it was hard to tell given the NY location is on two floors. If you're in Tokyo it's worth checking out since there's other great shopping opportunities in the area, in both Shibuya and nearby Harajuku. The FromSoftware offices are also just a short train ride north in Shinjuku.
Nintendo Store Kyoto was superior to the Tokyo location in several ways. While most of the merchandise is the same they did offer a few more unique items and the floor space it self felt bigger. The Kyoto store also had Gashapon machines that dispensed relatively high quality replicas of sections of Nintendo controllers. My self and other tourist took turns trying to get Gamecube parts - to no luck. As a bonus there's a rooftop area you can go up to for a small photo opportunity with a Mario flag pool. That area was a controlled space so other tourists can't photobomb you.
If you were hitting up both Kyoto and Tokyo and had to pick one to stop at I would say definitely go to this store location instead. One funny thing about it however is that it shares a floor with a food market. As soon as you step out from the store you instantly smell cooking meat from small mom and pop vendors. I found the juxtaposition of Nintendo's colorful and clean aesthetics to the somewhat grubby food market to be hilarious.
In Kyoto I ran out one day to see the main development and headquarters building. Both locations are on the same city block basically. The area was somewhat rundown and industrial, sharing the block with a metal recycling center and some older dilapidating homes. The Nintendo buildings' uniform white tiles really stood out from the rest of properties in the area. Of course I wasn't able to get in without a business appointment so I simple took pictures outside. There's not much to see given the properties have 7 or 8 foot tall walls surrounding each of their lots.
That same day I quickly visited Nintendo's original location on Shomen-dori street. Today it's a hotel but you can see plaques and iconography recognizing the location's past. I poked my head in for a moment but there isn't much to see and I had no business there anyways so I left.
The following day my friends and I checked out the Nintendo Museum. I entered a lottery 3 months in advance to get the opportunity to the buy tickets. Their item collection was extensive. I thoroughly enjoyed looking at all their early toys and gizmos on display. They also had screens playing TV ads of their classic toys which was also quite entertaining to watch. To me the greatest thing of all was the prototype controller and console units they had on display in their "Storage" section. All of the weird patent imagines that came out over the years were true! Also visible in the Storage section was an original Disk System kiosk and several rare arcade machines, including
Sky Skipper. Unfortunately they don't allow photography in the collection area of the museum. Downstairs from that was the play area with all kinds of odd arcade-like experiences. There's some fun to be had there, but nothing out of this world in my opinion. It got busy quickly and I was pressed for time so I wasn't able to experience their cafe unfortunately.
The merchandise at the museum was decent enough. As you might have seen online, most of it focuses on the same set of merchandise for each one of their consoles. A shirt, mug, pen, pin, etc. for each of their respective systems. They had a really nice reproduction of the Ultrahand which I couldn't quite bring myself to buy, as I hope to buy a real one someday soon. They also had multiple sets of Hanafuda cards,
most of which could be obtained from their other stores. In some ways I was sort of let down by the mostly console-centric items. I hope they someday add more things that represent their pre-Mario, pre-video game history.
My biggest critique of the whole museum however was how the facility was totally focused on the products and not really their history, I would argue. There was not a single mention of any individual who made Nintendo possible. No mention of the Yamauchi family, Gunpei Yokoi, Shigeru Miyamoto or anyone. - Just a clean corporate experience devoid of personal flavor. I found it really ironic that just a few days after my visit it was announced that Miyamoto-san was inducted into Japan's Order of Culture, one of the highest civilian honors. Miyamoto also being the first video game related person to be awarded this honor.
Here's the video game stuff I ended up bringing back from the trip. Starting with the Nintendo Stores and Museum; Yoshi related plastic mug and bowling shirt, Shoe Mario plush, two N64 gacha keychains, one Super Famicom keychain, t-shirts for Tokyo, Kyoto and Museum stores, Zelda no Densetsu and Link's Awakening stickers, Famicom and Disk System pins and t-shirts, Hanafuda inspired glasses, Hanafuda card set, Disk System IC card (subway pass) holder keychain set, Nintendo museum booklet
I didn't get to do as much used software shopping as I would have liked but I did manage to spend a few hundred dollars.
I visited several places at Akihabara. Many stores only had a limited selection of truly retro stuff. I visited the infamous Super Potato store which had a large amount of games. I also went to a smaller store near Kamakura called Retro Games Store B-Dash which was really good. It was small but had a really well curated selection. Pricewise most things were roughly eBay prices - some better. I had sold my Pokemon Green copy a few years ago so I was happy to find another one in really nice condition. I also already had Legend of Zelda, but mine was missing the manual and outer case so I had to grab that as well. I was also happy to pick up a fairly nice copy of Helmet. There's a few dings on the faceplate but the screen itself is in excellent shape and operational order. I also grabbed a cheap GBA for a friend. The other title there some of you may not recognize is Gokujou Parodius for Super Famicom. The Parodius series is basically Gladius on crack cocaine; featuring Konami all-star characters.
