May 2026 Japan Trip Day 2

Fujifilm X100VI 23mm f/2: 19mm (Wide Angle Adapter) 1/2000s, f/4, ISO800

Our first mission on this trip to Tokyo was to shop for some Magic: The Gathering Cards, so we navigated the train/subway system over to the nearby Akihabara. One thing we discovered about the city, is that many of the businesses open after 10-11am.

Fujifilm X100VI 23mm f/2: 1/125s, f/5.6, ISO3200

We looked around the train station area for a bit and found a Vie de France Japanese-style bakery that was open. It reminded me of St. Germaines when that was a thing back home. I grew up on St. Germaine’s Curry Fry’s and Zippy’s grilled cheese sandwiches. These are very nostalgic brain associations that I will always love, so I could not stop myself from ordering a Curry Fry. I also split the tomato bacon panini with Jei and she had a cinnamon thing-a-magig. One other thing to note about Japan is the even the fast food coffee is on another level and this was no exception. After breakfast, we had a bit of time to kill. We walked around the area a bit to get a lay of the land then went into the Yodobashi-Akiba Multimedia store so I could find some camera batteries and cables I forgot to pack. For the uninitiated, Yodobashi Camera is like a Japan BHPhotoVideo!

We started by navigating to what’s widely regarded as the best Magic the Gathering shop in Japan called Tokyo MTG. I regret not taking establishing photographs of many of our shopping excursions; like many of the Magic the Gathering stores we visited, this one was located on the 3rd and 5th floors of a nondescript looking building that is easy to look past. We did even walk past it the first time. This shop was as good as advertised. It was all Magic the Gathering, no other TCGs. It had nice accessories, a good store layout, organized bulk trays to look through, a computer section to search their database for specific valuable cards with both English and Japanese navigation, nice glass displays with popular single cards sorted by color, a buy-counter for people looking to sell cards back to the store for credit, and English speakers to help those of us needing language assistance. The store did start to get a little crowded as it grew later in the morning, but it never felt cramped. We found many of the cards we were looking for at this first stop. This took a lot of pressure off of finding the other shops on our list, but we went to look for them next. It turned out that many of the other places like Hareruya and Card Kingdom in the area did not carry Magic the Gathering cards at all. Instead, they featured other games like Duel-Masters, Pokemon, Yugioh, and some One Piece. Akihabara started to get VERY crowded in the afternoon. We almost skipped the last shop on our list, Big Magic, because there was a line out the front of the department store to get on the escalator going up! Ultimately we did go up to the 7th floor to find a very narrow three OSHA-uncertified aisles of card showcases from various TCGs that thankfully included some Magic the Gathering. There seemed to be a Yugioh event going on here, so we looked quickly through the showcase displays to see if there was anything we needed. We found a great deal on a Japanese language Bolas’s Citadel for ¥298! We left Akihabara a bit exhausted just because of the sheer number of people there. Initially the plan was to eat dinner in Akihabara, but we came back to the hotel to reset instead before going out for a non-Tonkatsu restaurant.

Fujifilm X100VI 23mm f/2: 1/500s, f/4, ISO800

After a short rest, I used the Maps application on the phone to search for nearby restaurants with Tabelog ratings in the 3.5-4 range. We had learned that locals don’t really give 5-stars for the good places, tourists do. This rating system seems to sort touristy spots from local favorites. I chose Ramen as our food type for the evening and found Kunichan Ramen. It turned out to be one of those places where you place your order through a machine and took the receipt to the counter and we didn’t feel all to comfortable ordering with that method, so I searched again for another nearby spot which led us to a food court called Ryogoku Edo Noren which featured many sumo-wrestler owned restaurants.

We walked around the place and discovered Tadokoro, a Hokkaido style Miso Ramen restaurant that has changed my mind on the merits of Miso Ramen. It was very good and filling! That concludes the Day 2 adventures of Brandon and Jei in Tokyo.