Forum - View topic

Answerman - Is California The Otaku Promised Land?

But in the age of the internet I just import stuff from Mandarake. Import stores here are a rip-off. If all you care about is Japanese merchandise the internet is much better off.

As you implied towards the end of the article, nothing beats online. Ever since I figured out I can buy directly from Japan via distributors like HLJ, I haven't felt the need to go to a physical store. If you know what you are looking for and stay on top of new releases, this is the way to go. And if you don't know, nothing is stopping you from browsing their giant stock.

The only exception is that I will hit up the dealers rooms at conventions to see if there is anything there that I want but for whatever reason can't find online.

That is pretty much my approach to merchandise. I used to wait until the local convention rolled around since I wanted to directly examine the products. However, limiting myself to once a year, and only what was available that weekend, wasn't cutting it. Things like product reviews make easy to research the product, and shipping out of Japan can be pretty reasonable if you look around. The only down side is the waiting, but I've learned to treat it as a nice surprise when the item finally arrives.

This sounds incredibly sensationalist, and aren't nearly as extreme as they sound. These things are not exclusive to CA, nor are they worse off than many other states that suffer from other more severe, constant natural disasters.

Full disclosure: I live here.

But aside from that, what makes California so nice in terms of 'otaku-ness' is just that it's an absolute mecha of everything.

You can't pay me to move to California. Sanctuary cities everywhere, sheltering criminals. Earthquakes, droughts, no water, high taxes and expensive gas... I don't care if it's the anime promised land. I'll stick to ordering things online.

Are there any problems with bootlegs of merchandise?

I am enough weary of online shops as it is and wouldn't trust half of those advertising on UK anime mags. But with online ones you can at least do some research on the products and the stores themselves and eventually develop a feeling which stores to trust enough to go back to.

Going in cold into a small shop however, of course the well-known brands(Good Smile etc) should be easy enough to recognize on things like packaging et al, but I'd probably still feel a bit iffy...

I would have mentioned San Jose in this article. It's in the SF Bay Area, but it's far enough from San Francisco to consider it its own area. There is a large Japanese population there as well, and the Mitsuwa in San Jose is pretty nice (also happens to be in the same complex as Daiso). Pretty much whatever you can find, food-wise in Japantown, you can find at Mitsuwa...just without the hassle of actually getting to Japantown as SF is a pain of a city to drive in.

You can't pay me to move to California. Sanctuary cities everywhere, sheltering criminals. Earthquakes, droughts, no water, high taxes and expensive gas... I don't care if it's the anime promised land. I'll stick to ordering things online.

A couple of things to mention: There is also a place called Toy Mandala in Sherman Oaks. It specializes in merchandise of all sorts of animation, but it has enough anime merchandise to be one of the biggest local vendors at Anime Expo. I believe it's currently at San Diego Comic-Con too. Right across Ventura Boulevard is aahs! though that is more oriented towards pop culture in general. If you're looking for hard-to-find merchandise, the Frank & Son Collectible Show in City of Industry is basically a year-round convention exhibition hall, though open only on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Competition between vendors is fierce though, and some of them can even undercut online prices. I recommend anyone who collects small items and lives in Los Angeles County or San Bernardino County to visit Frank & Son at least once (provided you can find parking). Finally, there is Critters in Montrose--not really the place to go for an anime fan, but it's good if you're looking for just plain weird merchandise.

Yoshinoya is the biggest teriyaki bowl chain in the world, and they've long had a stronghold in southern California. We've had a teriyaki boom as of late though, but it's the only one that made its way over from Japan. Whether you like the food at Yoshinoya or not is a different matter, but it is a lot more distinctly Japanese in style than any of its competition, which are more American in style (containing chunks of steak instead of Yoshinoya's strips of beef, for instance).