
Mayu discovered a store called Kuroda Toy Doll (黒田人形店)in Maebashi’s Central Shopping Arcade on the internet and on Saturday we went there to check it out. Shoutengai (商店街)are covered shopping arcades and a tradition of Japan. Unfortunately, sometimes these shopping arcades have grown unsuccessful over the years with empty real estate. In English they call this one Maebashi Rose Avenue and this is where Kuroda is located. We’ve only ever been to this shopping arcade once before, when we happened to be in the area during the Tanabata Festival in July several years ago.
Kuroda specializes in traditional toys, so basically nothing which involves video screens. The first thing I noticed upon entering was their selection of Tomica cars.

Misato’s car from Evangelion.


Macross and Gundam Tomica!


Back to the Future Part III and Castle of Cagliostro cars. I bought the BttF III Delorean with the ’50s tires at Village Vanguard earlier this year. I hadn’t seen the one with train wheels until now.

A nice, modest selection of plastic models was there. Here’s the Gunpla selection. I bought the F91 Gundam kit at this store.

Here are car, ship, castle, and other plastic models.

An RC Delorean from Back to the Future! I’ve never seen this before.


There were many older anime and game figures. Here’s Kasumi from Dead or Alive and Mai from King of Fighters.


Plenty of traditional, wooden toys too. A meow-meow tower and… a toy for Klingons? Oh never mind… that would be “Qapla,” not “Kapla.”
There were so many different toys there, such as kendama, plush dolls, and so on. My daughter Ulan wanted the bullet plushy from Super Mario Bros and I got the F91 Gundam model. It’s a neat store.