Osaka, Japan

[F1Xena]

This place is awesome for model builders. I visit regularly and always come home with my suitcase groaning under the weight of new models and tools.
My favourite stores are listed below. I'm sure there are others, but without speaking Japanese, they can be hard to locate.

Yodobashi Camera, Umeda.
Kita-Ku District.
This large department store is located between JR Osaka Railway Station and the Umeda Subway Station. It is a huge building and hard to miss! Ostensibly a camera shop, it is in fact a "one stop shopping experience". As well as every possible consumer electronic, computers/peripherals/expendables, home appliances, musical instruments, clothing/shoes, there is also a large toy and hobby department on the 5th floor. The hobby section is well stocked with models from all the main Japanese manufacturers with aisles for cars, planes, ships and trains, as well as Gundam robots by the ton. There are several aisles of tools from the well known model companies, and also the cheaper "knock-offs", as well as airbrushes, paint booths, paints/glues/fillers/polishing compounds etc etc.
Yodobashi is a bulk purchaser, so their prices are good...always less than the RRP on the box, and when on sale even cheaper. Last time I was there, they had a pallet of Fujimi MP4/6 kits for 1800yen (v RRP of about 4500) The only thing they don't seem to have a lot of is PE detail sets. Usually a small number of S27, and the ones put out by Tamiya and Hasegawa. There are no resin or 1/43 kits, but that doesn't matter as 200m along the road is............


Model Garage Romu-Romu

[f1m]

You know that you can list your favorite hobby shops on the main site?

http://www.f1m.com/node/add/hobby-shop

Eric

[F1Xena]

Hi Eric,
Yeah, I know that and will do so when I get the proper addresses (japanese ones are a bit tough) This way I can put in a decent discription as well. I'm away from home at the moment so don't have access to my local maps etc.
Cheers
T

[jaykay]

Yeah, please try to put all those shops you went to in Japan and wrote about in the GPMA-Group in the list. Don't know if i'll ever get a chance to go there but that would be invaluable information collected in one place :-)

[F1Xena]

Model Garage Romu-romu.
http://www.romu-romu.com

5th Floor Umeda Seiwa Building
2-6-30 Shibata
Kita-ku
Osaka

Hours: 1200-2030 weekdays, 1100-1830 weekends and holidays. Closed every Tuesday, and first 2 Mondays of the month.
More details including holiday closures on left bottom of webpage.

This little gem is less than 800m up the road from Yodobashi Camera, but very well hidden. I will include detailed directions below.......I only found it with the help of a Japanese speaker.

Romu-romu is a small shop, but from the moment you open the door, it will take your breath away. These guys (and girls) are seriously into cars!Glass shelves line the entrance with diecasts in mainly 1/43, but also 1/18 from CMC and other "high quality" manufacturers. Once inside, the rest of the stock is revealed, with top class built-up 1/43 kits from BBR, MR Collection, Tameo and Romu's own builders. There are kits aplenty here too.......resin/metal in 1/20 and 1/24 from Studio 27, Model Factory Hiro and Profil24 (and some larger scale things too) and a huge number of 1/43kits. Tameo/SLK are well represented with almost every kit in stock (I picked up the Brawn and F60 on my last visit quite soon after their release), along with TWU, SRC, SMTS, BBR etc. Tameo spares/accessories are plentiful, along with PE/decals from S27, Acustion etc for all scale cars and 1/12 motorcycles. There are also paints/tools, Japanese language magazines (incl F1 Modeling) and almost anything else the car model enthusiast could ever want (with the exception of mainstream plastic....they may have one or two of the newest F1 kits, but these are obviously not their specialty)
Although they only speak limited English (but a million times better than my Japanese), the staff are very pleasant, knowlegable and helpful. Maybe car fanaticism is an international language!
If you are ever in Osaka, you owe it to yourself to visit Model Garage Romu-romu and Yodobashi Camera.

To get to Romu-romu, head north along the main road from Yodobashi Camera building (away from JR Osaka Railway Station). Staying on the left hand side of the road, cross one side road, and Romu is in the next block. There is a coffee/icecream shop, then further along, a menswear shop (Aoyama Clothing) with an awning above it. Just before the menswear shop is a doorway with a green and white sign in Japanese telling what is on each floor of the building. Go in this door and take the elevator to the 5th floor. Turn left into the corridor and Romu-romu is the first door on the right (you can't miss it with all the model company sticker/flyers stuck all around it!) There is no signage on the streetfront, so without a bit of knowlege, you would never find it.

[smirkoff]

In Osaka you can add the enormous hobby store in Den Den Town, the street of electronics' stores. It's a five-store building with each floor dedicated to one or more kinds of model making and collecting. There you'll find everything of what is in the catalogs of the japanese manufacturers plus some from the garage kit makers, and there's always something in offer for reduced prices. It's a place where is easy to spend a lot more than you can...

Den Den is near the Namba Station, and not far from it there is a small kit car store, in the second floor of a corner building. I've found another one, very sophisticated and focused in garage and 1/43, near Shinfukushima subway station. I've found these stores by wandering around the streets, so I don't have the exact addresses. When I was there years ago, unfortunately (or not, for my wallet's sake...) both of these small stores were closed for a week holiday...

[F1Xena]

The Den Den ones were going to be the subject of my next report. They are branded "Kidsland" and are part of the Joshin retail chain.
You will know exactly how hard it is to find the little shops without being able to read Japanese then!!

[Kanzo]

My Den Den heaven.

[generationx]

There is a Joshin in Hamamatsu - I was there on business but managed to find a couple of hours. It was fantastic and I was lucky only to come away with 3 kits and a load of accessories...