One last non-cosplay-related post before the competitors start arriving in Nagoya next week. The weather (fingers crossed) is looking good, and everyone is excited for the events leading up to the Summit and the competition.

This time I’m back to attractions in Nagoya, and focusing on manga and doujinshi goods. There are plenty of places around the city that carry a wide variety of manga, such as Animate near Nagoya Station, or Wonder Goo in Osu, or the second-hand store Mandarake, which I talked about in an earlier post. The largest of them, though, is the Nagoya branch of the nationwide chain, Toranoana. This shop specialises more in manga and doujinshi-related products than the others, carrying new fan comics from almost every series you can imagine.

Toranoana is in Sakae, but the easiest way to get there is to take the Sakuradori subway line, and get off at Hisaya-Odori station. If you come out of Exit 2, you’ll see the store pretty much in front of you; it’s seven floors high and bright orange, so it’s hard to miss.

Like many Japanese stores of this kind, it doesn’t open until 11:00 on weekdays and 10:00 at weekends; but it doesn’t close until 8 or 9, so it’s good for an after-dinner browse if you’re in Sakae.

The first floor is the ‘Media Floor,’ carrying CDs, DVDs and doujinshi software and other original goods; the last time I was in there, they had an incredible amount of Touhou Project stuff, so fans of this series will be happy.
The second floor (my personal favourite) is the floor ‘for girls’; here you can find manga, novels, boys’ love comics and doujinshi, as well as artbooks and some cosplay magazines.

Unlike Mandarake, everything here is new, with many recently-released doujinshi; so if you like a particular circle and can’t get to the conventions where new releases are normally sold, you may be able to find what you’re looking for here. The goods on this floor tend to be of fairly recent manga and game series’, like Hetalia; I did manage to find an Evangelion doujinshi too, though, which made me happy:

The next floor up is where you’ll find ‘general’ manga, magazines and novels. You have to pay for your purchases floor by floor, which can be slightly annoying if you’re buying goods from lots of different sections, but the variety makes it worth it.
The fourth floor is mainly manga and novels aimed at guys, with some second-hand doujinshi. The fifth is doujinshi yet again, for all ages, and also goods like doujin figures and model kits; some of these are really pretty, but the best ones on display are mostly already sold.

The sixth floor holds software, games and doujinshi ‘for guys’. This is pretty much the adults-only floor. If you keep going up, though, the seventh and final floor has a lounge with vending machines and a space where shoppers, presumably exhausted with buying stuff, can relax and eat.

If you were to explore Toranoana top to bottom, it would literally take hours. While there’s not much chance of finding old or rare items as you might in Mandarake, this store is brilliant for new manga and doujinshi. It also has notices about events like conventions around Japan, and carries the official catalogue for Comiket, which is coming up in August.