Tokyo Train Shopping

In my past trips to Tokyo, I had always visited the Kato Hobby Center near Shinjuku and Tenshodo in Ginza.  This time I wanted to visit some different shops and thanks to information posted on some of the blogs I follow and by members of the Yahoo Groups JR Forum, I was able to find some good shops.  Most were within walking distance of the Akihabara JR Station with one being close to Tokyo Station.  In addition, our friend Tamami took us to a shop in Naka Megruo but that turned out to be an all HO shop.

This is part my haul from visiting about 8 hobby shops.  Most of these items are also available on ebay but I thought I did well on price and of course no shipping charges.  In addition to the items I bought, Tamami gave me several other items so I brought home a good load.

Normally I will purchase a model set of a train we rode on the trip.  This time it was the Kato 7 car set of the E257 Azusa / Kaiji which we had ridden early in this trip.  These were available at most of the shops that I visited but found the best price by far at Hobbyland near Tokyo Station.  This shop only had sets, engines, and cars and no buildings or scenery items.  I got this for 10,500 yen while all of the other places I visited it was 12,000 to 14,800 yen so I was quite happy with this particular purchase.

This is the Hobbyland store near Tokyo Station where I bought my Kato Azusa / Kaiji set.  This photo I pasted from Google Street View which Nona and I find very helpful in finding places in Tokyo.

Here is where to find Hobbyland in relation to Tokyo Station.  It's quite close and is a quick walk if you know right where it's at and don't have to walk around looking for it.

I'd seen the Aoshima parking garage kit on ebay and noticed that they were in most of the hobby shops I visited.  I was impressed with how large these kits are.   Compare here to the stack of Green Max building boxes.