Express Shopping at Mint Ikebukuro and Mint Shibuya

For those that haven't been to Japan, it is a wonderful place to live and visit!  I took another trip to Japan over Spring Break with my family and we spent the last day in Tokyo where I was able to hit up a few card shops, albeit rather quickly as I didn't want to bore the family with my browsing.  We had other fun family things to do so I wanted to limit the amount of time card shopping.  I was able to hit up three stores though: Mint Ikebukuro, Mint Shibuya, and Yellow Submarine in Akihabara.  Dave over at the Japanese Baseball Cards Blog did a great 4-part series on a bunch of card shops in Japan so I won't recapture what he has there, but his stuff in his blog is extremely useful when picking and choosing where you want to spend your card-shopping time.  One of these days, I would love to make a sports-only trip to Japan to watch baseball, basketball, sumo wrestling, and go card shopping.  I think the end of March I could probably hit all those up over a two-week period.

I spent about 20 minutes in Mint Ikebukuro (groan....right?  only 20 minutes...ha!)  I was able to browse their sumo and pack selection and walked away with another box of 2017 BBM B.League Basketball Fast Break 2nd Half as well as an assortment of random packs that I will open up on my next blog post.  The staff was really helpful and we chatted for a few minutes in my horrific Japanese about collecting Brandon Laird, Yuta Tabuse, and Sumo Wrestling.  Unfortunately, they didn't have any older menko cards, but it was a fun browse!

Mint Shibuya was a quick walk from the station and we were mainly here to do the Shibuya Crossing where everyone crosses the street at one time and in force.  It was definitely fun to people watch here and do the crossing.  My son got a kick out of it.  We headed over to Mint Shibuya and I was intrigued about the bar they had in the store to drink while breaking card boxes.  As tempting as it was, I had to resist bellying up the bar to throw one back as I am sure it would have turned into two and three and my son was with me.  The store was a little smaller than I was expecting, but I did walk away with a sweet deal on a 2015 Sumo Wrestling Box and some more packs.

The last store I headed into was Yellow Submarine over in Akihabara.  I actually didn't see a whole lot here and we were in the area for the arcades anyway, but it was pretty neat to check out all the floors.  A lot of gaming and idol cards here and I didn't end up walking away with anything.  Booo, but I did have fun browsing.  No pictures unfortunately.


Here is what I did end up getting in my bag to haul back home.

I was able to fill in most of my Members Card...hopefully I can spend a bit more at some point to get my ￥500 discount......stay tuned for some pack breaks!