One of the places I visited with friends in the Phoenix area is a new Daiso in Chandler! It provides an identical experience to a typical Daiso in Japan. Items just cost more than 100 yen, of course. When we used to live in Arizona, these types of items were available at Asiana Market and other Asian stores, but now Daiso officially exists in Arizona. Wow.
Walking into the store, it looks so much like a typical Daiso store.
Lots of neat crap for kids, of course. I wasn’t expecting to find Touhou merchandise!
Gudetama and Cinamarroll stuff too.
Yep, this is typical Daiso goods! Straight from Japan.
Price conversion charts are posted about the store to let people know how much the items cost in US dollars.
On my trip to my hometown of Phoenix, AZ during my summer vacation, I was able to visit a Book Off on Bell Road! It opened within recent years. There have been Book Off stores all along in California. When Mayu and I used to live in America, we would visit the Book Off locations in Torrance, Garden Grove, Los Angeles and other areas. But now both Book Off and Daiso stores have opened in the Phoenix area.
Here are the signs outside.
Look at all the books! The books are in English, of course. Otherwise, the experience is just like a Book Off in Japan. This makes Book Off a direct competitor with the long-standing Bookmans store locations in Arizona.
The store clerk says that so much of this stuff is imported from the Book Off locations in Japan. I guess they buy so much stuff that they just export it to the USA for sale there.
So many anime figures for sale in the display case.
So many pin buttons, keychains, and small figures. Just like a Book Off in Japan.
They have import Famicom games from Japan! Star Wars, Red Arima, Parodius, Galaga… neat stuff!
Import Famicom and Super Famicom games too.
Domestically-released modern games are sold used there as well, of course.
This is the Grave of the Fireflies movie soundtrack on vinyl record. I was surprised to find this.
Huge selection of used, English-language manga. I bought several used volumes of Spy Family.
Gunpla! There were also other model kits there too. I even saw an Eggplane Girl resin figure by Hasegawa there, and for a good price. This is so cool.
Dollar books. Very neat. I didn’t have time to look at the SF book selection there. It would’ve been nice if I had more time to spend, but I had quite a busy itinerary with my friends Kevin and Brian. (Our next destination was Andy’s Hobby HQ which I featured in my previous blog post.)
