Magic In The Hood

In and around Kyoto there are hidden Magic Shops. They’re not hidden from the radar, but you’re not likely to pass them on a random walk. This one isn’t on a ‘main’ street. In fact, it’s in a residential area. Very local. So check this one on google maps (Gmaps Link) and see if you live close.

Game Shop Bricks -> Wiz Link -> Gmaps Link

Notice the upgrade? Before, it was an old rusty building. Now it’s a bustling game store. From the outside, you’ll know it’s a game store too. They’ve got gatcha pon machines out front and dozens of posters featuring our favorites Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon, lots of others and of course our favourite, Magic the Gathering.

The inside is rather narrow but the place is laid out the best it could be in such a tight space. There are walls of nice staples you may be after in glass display shelves. You can get the sleeves you always need. Yes, ultra pro is sold here.

Just around the corner there’s a shelf about the height of your heels that shouldn’t be missed. They contain four ofs of most of the commons and uncommons from just outside of the standard sets. For now it was M13 and the Innistrad block.

Near the counter we have rares, staples and a bunch of cards under a certain threshold. Most stores have them. This one is not exempt. Who doesn’t find lots of cards stacked neatly in clear plastic cases, sleeved and on shelves attractive anyway?

Games Workshop merchandise fits right at home in any gaming store but much like many other stores around Japan, it lives in a lonely corner collecting dust. There are a few other card games played here as mentioned above so their schedule is set for Friday Night Magic nights, pre-releases and special events. Tonight wasn’t one of those nights.

The seating arrangement makes for a tight fit but allows more games to take place. The store could house around 16 games at a time I’d imagine with a crowded chicken shuffle. I visited on a rather lonely night so I was able to walk around and breathe a bit. All and all, it’s a great shop with staff that’s willing to help a foreigner.

Give it a visit!

The Good Shop

I don’t know how I missed it last time. Maybe because it was overshadowed by the Big Magic shop across the street. Maybe because they didn’t have enough signage and neon lights for me to notice them but the the shop I found today was a gem of a find. The service was great, the store clerks super friendly and well stocked.

Game Shop Sakaiya <- Wiz Link

This awesome little paradise of MTG heaven is the local shop of Osaka. It’s small, homely, comfortable and has a warm atmosphere. When you enter the shop, you are greeted with a beautiful display of Magic the Gathering goodies.

Most of the big guys in Japan have multitudes of dual lands from way back, hundreds of $200 plus cards on display at all times. Sakaiya does it a little different. They care more for how the goods are displayed rather than showing off the quantity of their riches. The entrance display is humble yet manages to strike the wow factor.

There are “Wanted” posters hanging all around the store with pictures of cards they… want. Also, what they offer for certain cards is quite healthy as opposed to the bigger stores.

Their card range is almost equal in number from English cards to Japanese cards which is surprisingly awesome. They have on display staples for top tier modern decks and legacy for your eyes to feast and concoct.

The store clerks here know their game. Customers would come in and ask for advice on their deck and the staff were happy to help as they did with me. I plan on winning the Grand Prix in Shizuoka next week 🙂 and the staff gave me honest advice on the meta and what has a high chance of winning. Hopefully their good advice won’t be in vein.

The play area is small, very small. But I guess they’re lucky to even get a place to rent in one of the main city parts of Osaka. To me, this gives the shop it’s homely, local feel. It means if you come twice, people will remember you.

With the small space they do have, they have done right and stock all the goods you need to feed your Magic addiction.

Just like many other shops, Sakaiya also use the folder browser for singles. Although the cards on the pages are written in Japanese, they do have English versions in stock. Prices vary from card to card, some being more expensive than the competition and some cheaper, but again, very well stocked.

On my way out, a couple of girls entered the shop and used the Gatcha-Pon machine to get some cards. The good staff at Sakaiya have put a card vending machine in their shop and have made up their own boosters for the customers. On the outside are the cards that are in the machine, some marked off with little photos of the people who won that rare / mythic. I asked her if I could look at her prize. It was a shop made 15 card booster with Melek as the rare. Packs were ¥300 for the chance to win a nice and expensive standard card and ¥500 for the higher end cards. The ¥500 packs are a great way for people to open a booster that has a chance of winning something that boosters of today just don’t contain. I was thinking about it, but the cards come in Japanese and I still can’t read them yet.

So, if you’re in Osaka and are looking for a magic shop, be sure to stop by Namba and give Sakaiya a visit. You won’t regret it.

Jace, The Great Pull

So it was Magic Celebration day and I had to go. We made a three and a half hour trip to conquer this event and get free packs of cards. Here’s a link if you didn’t catch wind of it. What happens is: you show up, get a free booster, open it, choose which sample deck color you want to go with, add / swap cards from your booster to make up a deck, have three matches then get another free pack of cards. Well, that was how it was supposed to go. On Saturday we made the trip all the way to Matsue. From the Wizards locator radar that little shop seemed the most inviting of stores near (I say that loosely) us. I had no idea what to expect so what the hey 🙂

Table Game Square Rise <- Wiz Link

We arrived about an hour early and upon entering the shop we greeted with a western saloon welcome, you know, when you push through the pair of batwing doors then the bar abruptly goes silent and everyone looks up and glares at you for a moment, you walk in, then they return to what they were doing. This was just like that. Not the warmest welcome. But you could understand seeing a foreigner and a girl both wearing bright colors walk in to a geek zone can elicit such a reaction.

There were around six people there playing games of MTG with the owner and a few others hovering over. Looking down I saw genuine dual lands on one side of the field. I remembered a Savannah, Scrubland and a Bayou challenging the fellow on the other side with four unsacrificed fetchlands from onslaught and a few shocklands back from the original Ravnica. I didn’t stay long enough to see what their game was about but I deduced that these guys played the game as more than just a hobby.

The shop is very small and run by one man who is a card game lover who runs and manages the store so he can live his life every day surrounded by the people and card games he loves. I find this admirable. As for running the event, he was somewhat lazy but much more easy going and relaxed compared to other stores. By lazy, I meant he didn’t have any idea how to run the event as he was only interested in ‘high stakes’ events. But, he was happy to give every one free boosters and give a choice of a sample pack. The store could handle twenty-four players but being such a small town in a remote part of Japan, only a handful of people showed up. I would say there were about ten people there including the two of us. From what I saw, he had around a hundred of those sample packs. The first thing he did wrong was that he asked which sample pack you wanted then gave you a free booster. It was supposed to be the other way around so you could pick the strongest color according to the booster then choose that color to make a deck from.

Well, I wasn’t upset. Everyone was playing with the same handicap and hey, free cards! So we got our free booster, check list and sample deck. I chose blue.

Then I opened up the booster and low and behold Jace, Anime Adept was in there!!! Not only was he the perfect rare for the color I chose the booster was seemingly biased toward blue. As pictured below, Time Ebb, Frost Breath, Cancel, Phantom Warrior, Millstone and Elixir of Immortality. Of all the cards, the one I wanted to see was Tomb Scour. This was not in the pack but I was not disappointed at all. Quite the opposite.

That is possibly one of the luckiest pulls I have had in my history of Magic.

So here’s the cool thing about the owner. There were so many sample decks that he made up the rule that after every three matches he allowed everyone to get another booster and sample deck. Therefore everyone got three to four boosters and sample decks that night. People were making new decks between matches but I was happy just playing this deck and opening the other boosters later on.

• So my first match I was playing against black and won 2-0 by beating the opponent down both games strangely enough.
• My second match was a 1-2 loss against red first game a turn 2 mill stone creature lock down,  second game being overrun, third taking too much damage to the face.
• Third match against black 2-0 win, beat and a Millstone mill.
• Fourth match against red 2-0 win, two slow games with millstone mills.
• Fifth match against white 2-0 win, locked and countered his creature while mine were giving him beats on the first match. Second game was a looooong drawn out life gain creature locking out eventual mill. Elixir of Immortality really helped me out here giving me the life I needed while the Millstone came late.
• Sixth and final match against black 2-1 win. First match I lost to Sengir Vampire enchanted by two Dark Favor’s. Second match I locked him with Claustrophobia and slow milled him with Millstone. Last game finally Jace came out turn five and milled his ass!

Booyah! Five games out of six.

So back to the shop, I bought some countdown dice from a bucket full of them for ¥50 yen each including one from Graveborn usually ¥500. Singles were inside enclosed boxes. There were mostly bulk rares that he sold for ¥10 each. Silence and Chandra’s Phoenix and a few others were among them.

All and all a great shop to frequent often if you want to hone skills with serious local Legacy players. He stocked English boosters which was a bonus for me.

Big Magic

Welcome to another great find in Japan. Today, I am in Osaka and I have found another great gem. Finding this place was a nightmare. Actually finding which part of town this place was in was a nightmare. It’s amongst a number of Magic the Gathering shops clumped together in an area called Namba which is famous for the Glico Man. This time I had a map with me and I was asking locals to no avail. When I eventually found it, my feet were aching. So if you’re visiting here, I am not the best candidate to give you directions. It may be somewhat of a miracle that I found the place because the store moved a week prior to my visit. Fortunately the Wiz Link has the updated information. If you make the journey and find it, it’s a great place to come on tournament nights. Many friendly people frequent here and the atmosphere is great.

Big Magic <- Wiz Link

Fist off, awesome logo and poster. It’s large enough to be seen from a distance. Big Magic is a franchise. It’s somewhat unique to have a blue dude with an afro wearing sunny’s as a logo for a gaming store. I believe their store in Nagoya is holding a Pro Tour Qualifier next week. They are not a dedicated Magic the Gathering store but they have the biggest MTG following of all the shops in this area.

The new store is now two stories high and the second floor is dedicated to Magic the Gathering. On top they can host what looked to be around 40 players. Tonight is game night but I arrived a bit late to enter the FNM so I staked out the cards.

The cabinets were brimming with awesome rares with no neglect to modern or legacy. Pretty much all of their stock is behind the counter. If they’re not displayed in the cabinets, there are folders to go through that have printout representations of the cards with prices to flick through. You write the cards down you want then present them at the counter.

Under the folder are boxes of junk to sift through. There were mostly commons all from mixed sets, most likely cards that they just don’t want to deal with. This is most likely how I would expect a shop to be cataloged back home. No chance for petty ‘sleight of hand’ theft and encouragement to talk to the workers.

They were very well stocked but prices were rather generic. As pictured, uncommons were mostly ¥‎50 which I think is bloody lazy and overpriced. It can be good if you want to stock up on cards like Boros Charm if they don’t catch on but bulk box rares go at an average of ¥‎19 in the majority of other shops. This discourages players in the area to build up cheap decks that can compete and can scare players that are new to the game. Sort after rares were priced appropriately but decks aren’t built completely from rares only.

I’m noticing from my visits to Magic stores around Japan that many of the larger ones that have a bigger presence for Magic tend to have these cabinets of ego. They primarily have power of nine cards and dual lands. With the land cards being mostly around US$100 each and above and close to US$800 for each of the power of nine cards, save the Black Lotus which they’re asking US$1500, it makes me wonder if there is any turnover with these monstrosities. That is a lot of cost in a piece of cardboard.

On the way upstairs you can find the latest news for events and tournaments and for my next shop, it’s Magic Celebration Day all the way on the other side of Japan in Matsue. Stay tuned.

The Yellow Submarine

And in the middle of Akihabara, the mother-ship of gaming stores hovers above them all. It is what I would expect to see in such a neo-cyber-metropolis. This store has nothing to do with any kind of ‘local’ atmosphere about it. It is a huge chain store, spread all throughout Japan and have an online presence although they don’t sell single cards online as of yet.

Yellow Submarine Akiharbara <- Wiz Link

Strangely enough, they are listed one the Wizards locator site as ‘イエローサブマリンマジッカーズ★ハイパーアリーナ’ which translates as Yellow Submarine [majjikaazu] Hyper Arena. I’m not sure what ‘majjikaazu’ means; Mixed Cars?,  Serious Cards?, Magic Azu? I’m not sure. Help?

Usually gaming stores are restricted to one floor and tight space due to the high cost of rent in the city. Yellow Submarine has no such restriction.  Their store is three stories high and spans the width of two buildings. That is nothing to cough at considering they are about five minutes walk from Akihabara Station and make their profit selling little bits of cardboard and game products associated with that paper. Well, this store is anyway. They have the support of all their other stores nationwide and are also linked with G-Shop which sells all sorts of model and hobby products. It’s just a couple of blocks walk from Yellow Submarine too.

Yes, they have lots and lots of cards plastered all throughout the store and have hundreds of thousands more stacked on shelves behind the shop counters. They may not be the cheapest card store but they are sure to have the cards you’re after and most likely in every language. Each floor is dedicated to one or more card games; this floor, obviously to Magic the Gathering.

This is something I love to see. Little bundles of ‘junk’ cards for cheap. Here they sell 250 cards for ¥‎180 which is excellent value. It’s a great way to get beginners into magic or to get your children into magic so they can wreck these cards and then start getting them more valuable cards as they grow older and learn to take care of them. It’s also a great way to rock up to the store with a friend, pick up a random pile and have a junk-sealed match on a rainy day.

As you can see, there is plenty of space to have that match. They host magic events often but not often enough. With a store of this caliber, they should be able to host events every day. It’d be better for everyone right?

So, if you’re near here check this place out.

The ‘Local’ Gaming Store

Akihabara is the epicenter of Japan’s electronics, maid cafes, geeks, nerds, freakazoids and gatchapon madness. If cyborgs were among us, this is where they’d hang out. There are bright lights, girls who dress up as school girls or bunnies who lure middle age men to shops, spacies galore,  strange looking people in general and this is a paradise for electronics enthusiasts where they can visit high tech traders who bargain off a plethora of cyber junk goodies.

Of course, all that amazing stuff isn’t what I came here for. I am looking for a ‘local’ gaming store. I’m not looking for a chain store giant that tries to fit all card games into a few square meters. I’m looking for what I found at Hareruya. I’m looking for something privately owned by a Magic The Gathering enthusiast who built the shop around Magic The Gathering. Akihabara. Easy task? Not so. Of the seven shops I visited, the last was my prized scout.

Dream Shop (夢屋)<- Wiz Link

Awesome. The front of the shop is what I’d expect. But is it the front of the shop? No signs, no neon lights, nothing to really indicate that there is even a local gaming store there. Well, lets hope our Wizards locator is as accurate as the directions of the picture saved to my ‘dead’ phone that can miraculously still view pictures from google maps… from.

And Jackpot. This is a gaming and it does have an owner who plays Magic the Gathering and it does have lots of cards and it did meet all my expectations for a magic store and exceeded them. Finally, another store completely dedicated to Magic the Gathering. Do people casually play and have Friday Night Magics?

Yes They do. For some reason, the people that work at the gaming stores that are dedicated to just Magic the Gathering seem to be generally happier and more approachable than that of the bigger stores that offer other trading card games. Again I was approached before I approached the staff. He asked if I played Magic The Gathering and if I’m going to be around tomorrow for a draft. Unfortunately I wasn’t but just that little bit of contact goes such a long way in stores like these. That is why I prefer the ‘local’ ones.

This store with brimming to the teeth with merchandise and has the most rares I have seen stacked into boxes in a single store. They were incredibly cheap and abundant. They had many, many cards in English and Japanese and were sorted beautifully. They had box upon box of ¥19 rares. It had me searching through like it was Christmas.

And here was the form again. I had learnt this time to fill out the set to make it easier for the owner to search. It’s a form that you fill out to get or ‘order’ cards that you see in the glass cabinets. This time though, the store clerk had a sound knowledge of the cards and was able to find the ones I wanted just by the name of the card. Although, noting down the set is important to get the card from the set that you would like eg. Birds of Paradise may set you back a few dimes if grab one from that set (Limited Edition Beta).

Also, something that isn’t common outside of Japan is the ability to browse through bulk rares and pack them all in cute little miniature laundry baskets. ¥19 Clones,  Elite Archanists, Quickens, Tidebinder Mages and Traumatizes are a great way to start off a mono blue deck from M14.

It still amazes me to see cards like a Foil Dark Confidant in a small local gaming store in Japan. Then it occurs to me that the card is slightly overpriced. It retails in the US for about $150 but in this store US$200. Although I’d definitely make the effort and the wait to save the $50 and buy it from overseas sometimes people just need it on the spot and I’m glad that this store provides. Also, in Akihabara, there is plenty of foot traffic that have money to blow.

If you’ve got some good cards handy, these guys will give you cash. Unfortunately I left my stack of Foil Jace, the Mind Sculpters at home so I had none to spare. This board get updated daily according to what the staff are after at the time.

And for reference they post their sanctioned events on the whiteboard at the front of their shop. They have events every day at 7pm and on Saturdays at 1pm. This is a ‘local’ gaming store and the store clerk said that they have no intention taking their store online. It’s great that they wish to keep the store local but I guess I can only buy the cards if I make the 10+ hour trip to Tokyo. Well, I guess that is what a ‘local’ gaming store is all about. Nothing beats meeting people face to face and being in an environment that people can share the game they love.

Thank you Yume-Ya and Magic the Gathering!

Amenity Dream

I visited another shop in Shinjuku which was a great find. It’s near one of my favorite Ramen shops in Japan and there is a 24 hour 7-Eleven across the road for snacks. This shop is:

Amenity Dream <- Wiz Link

Amenity Dream is also a chain store with many shops throughout Japan. This one is one of the better ones I have come across. Just like many other trading card game shops, this one was up a narrow staircase and down a skinny hallway. It’s much to be expected due to high rent in Tokyo. When I entered the shop, there was a secret ‘wow’ in my heart. This store has cards.

For some reason I was only focusing my photos on the MTG parts of the shot. But that’s because that’s what I’m focusing this blog on. There were other card games in the store but seemed to be dominated by Magic the Gathering cards.

I had to do what that guy was doing. These boxes are full of goodies and each card is bagged. They have cards going way back to Antiquities and Legends, and of course none of the more expensive ones were sleeved for people to sift through.

Oh baby. ¥19 rare boxes. All of the card boxes were sorted into Set then by rarity. There was no order after that, but that was not a problem. This store has a lot of stock. Sifting through the cards was like playing a slot machine that’s set to win 80% of the time. Only thing is, it gives you cards instead of cash. And soon, my cash would dwindle. But wait! I hadn’t looked in the cabinets yet.

Oh I need all of those dual lands for all of my legacy decks and hey, it’s the power of nine, all in one place, better get them before someone else does. May as well grab that Bazaar of Baghdad too. What?! One million yen?! (about USD$10,000) … Oh well, umm… I guess I’ll just take the Pillarfield Oxen for now. It seem like these guys are one of the trading card hoarding giants out there. I have never seen so many expensive cards in one place.

And they had all the good cards you need to whip up that Legacy deck you’ve been meaning to make. As you notice, a good deal of these cards are in English. I guess because back then, that was the only language they were printed in. I’ve never tried Force of Will or Land Tax because I’ve never owned them but they will all suffer to my Reanimator deck.

And it looks like there is not much room at the front of the shop for workers. Now this is something you wouldn’t see in New Zealand. People may boast that it is such a safe country and what not but you just wouldn’t leave packets of cards displayed openly for little kids to steal. Especially when all of the workers have their heads down sorting through cards 90% of the time. It may seem nice that these shop attendants don’t have to deal with that sort of nonsense but the real thieves in Japan are the Land lords.

This place is busy most of the time, even when there isn’t an event happening. It is near one of the busiest stations in the world. [Factoid: On average, about 4 million people pass through Shinjuku Station every day. New Zealand’s population is about 4 million. The population of NZ passes through Shinjuku Station every day. That blows my mind.] From a fraction of a distant decimal of that population they have room for a 36 player tournament if everyone squishes up.

The staff service I got was not so good as to be expected from such a busy store. It was mostly due to my part in not listing what set the Gideon, Champion of Justice and Frontline Medic came from. I didn’t know how to say Gatecrash in Japanese and before I could write ‘GTC’ on a piece of paper, he went searching for the cards starting from M14 backwards. He didn’t give me the mandatory thank you which triggers the store wide thank you. I had no problem with that. I got my cards in mint condition. I was happy. He was unhappy. But most importantly, I was happy.

Amenity Dream has a web site which lists a few of their products and directions to their shops around Japan. A pity as they could definitely cash in if they made a move on their online presence. They have the stock and the workers.

I wasn’t able to attend a game night but I can recommend this shop to anyone in Shinjuku who wants to shop and play. Good gaming.

MTG in Shinjuku

Although Takadanobaba is in Shinjuku, I went to the central business district to find Magic the Gathering shops. Here I found three shops that were listed as selling MTG cards and have space for Friday Night Magic. Unfortunately it was Thursday. So unless any of the shops held a tournament on a Thursday during the midday, I wouldn’t be playing at their shop. Here’s what I found:

Mint Collectibles <- Wiz Link

So, the first shop I found was called Mint Collectibles. It’s a chain store than can be found in some parts of Japan. Their other stores offered more. This one was not so good as a Magic the Gathering store.

Mint Collectables isn’t a shop dedicated to just magic the gathering. They have other card games such as Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon and what not.

Of all the shops I went to in Japan I must say that Mint Collectables had the most organized card collection. They were neatly categorized in plastic trays and sorted by set, rarity, color, and in alphabetical order. Their stock was reasonable and focused mainly on standard. There were a few modern trays but not so much legacy stuff. From sifting through them, I found about 30% of the cards to be in English.

The featured cards were mostly standard and only cards that exceeded ¥200. There were also card recommendations from the staff. It was great to see Doom Blade in there. It wasn’t great that it cost ¥200. About half if these rares and mythics were English cards.

I talked to the staff a bit and found out that both of them didn’t play Magic. I asked them who gave the staff recommendations for the cards in the display. They told me they mostly came from the Internet. When taking a look around the shop I couldn’t find any evidence that a Friday Night Magics took place here. There were no tables or space for playing. I’m guessing for the events they clear out a space and put tables out. The wizards locator has listings of when the events take place.

Here’s a link to the Mint Collectibles, Shinuku website.

Game Space Kashiwagi <- Wiz Link

The second place I went to was some walk from Shinkuku Station but not so far away from Okubo Station. Unfortunately it wasn’t open. This would be one of the stores that I would have loved to visit on the Friday. It was small, located in an apartment block and had the super ‘Local’ atmosphere. Later I was to find out that Tomoharu Saito visits there every now and again for a draft or game night.

And what a logo for the shop. I couldn’t find any where on the net to find out what “Sekisyu” is. In all the cards I have seen across all the games, this is the first card that I have seen where the hero is holding a cigarette. 100% Awesomeness. (and why didn’t “Awesomeness” show up in the spell check?!) On their website they have the slogan “The way of the Kashiwagi”. This also warranted a web search. Apart from a big boobed Yuki Kashiwagi and an oak tree, again I couldn’t find anything.

So without further ado, here’s a photo of the door 🙂

I must note. If you go here, it is on the third floor and is in among other apartments. So being the paparazzi  ninja I am, I propped myself up and took a photo through the window.

Looks great! It is an apartment. To the side there was a sink and cooking amenities. I can’t say I’ve seen those kind of facilities in any other gaming stores. They could learn a thing or two from this store.

Well, if you want to check it out, come at 8pm on a Friday night. If you do go, ask someone what Sekisyu and Kashiwagi means and relay it back to me. I’d love to know.

They have their events listed on their website. Go there.

Hallelujah!

So I went around Japan for a bit looking for some shops where I could either buy or play Magic The Gathering. The places I looked were in Tokyo; Akihabara, Shinjuku, Shibuya and Takadanobaba. I also went to Osaka; Nara and Shigino. It was my little magic tour of the two big cities in Japan.

Now I know there are more and possibly greater stores out there but I just didn’t get the chance to visit them due to the time frame. What I was looking for mostly were cards and atmosphere. Finding shops in the big cities is no easy task when 1. Japanese is not my native language 2. I don’t have a working phone and 3. it’s averaging 33 degrees celsius with 87 percent humidity at night.

The first place I went to was Card Shop Hareruya. If you’re just looking for directions, scroll down to the bottom for details. In a previous post I mentioned this shop’s name was a play on the English word Hallelujah and the Japanese word Sunny Shop. That’s what first bought on interest. I bought a duel deck from here. Divine Vs Demonic:

for ¥8000 or roughly US$80. For me this was exciting. It was something I thought, did not exist any more. This shop also sells singles online which is relatively rare in Japan. By the way, that was a link to their shop. The package arrived the next day in the outbacks. It was also Sunday. Amazing. I still haven’t opened. Sign of a true geek.

I had to go there. I lived in Takadanobaba for around a year and this place was under my nose the whole time. I would have walked past it every day, twice. Unfortunately I wasn’t into Magic back then. Revisiting the place was nothing less than nostalgic and filled with great and heavy memories.

So upon entering the place I can make an educated guess that there are frequenters here that play competitively. Upon closer inspection I noticed that this store has Magic The Gathering cards and accessories, and nothing else. This store is completely and utterly dedicated to Magic the Gathering. Jackpot!

There are some lovely cards in that cabinet. You’ll have to go there to see it for yourself. I was met by one of the shop staff that asked if I wanted to be entered into tonight’s FNM. It wasn’t what I planned but what the hey. I had a stinky Boros deck and ¥500 to spare so I signed up.

At the start of the match the games-man lays numbers on the tables then sticks the match-ups on the wall for everyone to see. All you have to do is find your name and number then find the matching number on the table and sit. This was startlingly simple as when travelling through Canada, most shops would call out everyone’s names and their opponents then there’d be ten minutes of chop sui name yelling and musical chairs. Not here. It was super organised and everyone knew what they were doing, even me (for a change). The announcer then announces details of the match much like an announcer would at a notched down boxing match then everyone bows and wishes everyone to ‘do well’ (yoroshiku onegaishimasu). Wow, I felt like I was at school again. It was starting to get exciting.

My first match up was noticeably more nervous than I was. I lost quite completely. He played what seemed to be a Grixis Vampires deck. I won the second round due to a fantastic draw of three Wojec Halberdiers two Muggings, a Plains and a mountain which is most likely the best the deck could offer. But that would be the only round I’d win that night. The second guy used a Blood Artist  sacrificing combo. And the third guy was a ‘Bye’. For the uninitiated – that is when there is an odd number of players and you’re randomly put on standby for the match. It counts as a win though so not all is lost.

At the end of the night, the prizes were announced and I won a pack of cards. Amazing. He even gave me a pack of cards printed in English. Later I opened them up to discover a Boros Reckoner and a Boros Charm in the same pack! That was icing on the cake for a fun night. From that, I have anointed Card Shop Hareruya to be the best Magic the Gathering shop in in Japan. Well at least until I visit more. At a cafe, I took a photo of my winnings:

Maybe you noticed like I did that this pull is suspiciously geared for the Boros family. Arrows of Justice, Boros Elite, Boros Charm, Boros Reckoner, a foily Sunhome Guildmage and to top with a Boros Token… did they have the foresight to predict that I was to come to this shop randomly this night and to tailor order this pack especially for me because my Boros deck sucks and needs a boost? Either way, this shop rocks. It definitely gets my thumbs up. Go there if you’re in the area. They hold tournaments every day and post the timetable outside the door and here.

As of 2013, Hareruya is the biggest Magic the Gathering dealer in Japan. They have an enormous  tournament centre not far from their main shop. Because they deal with only Magic the Gathering and they are not a franchise, they are never too busy to help you. Oh what a wonderful place to be. Hareruya!