This article is from the official account Liao Xinzhong, ID: lxztaiwan. Reprinted with permission from Japan Pass.
Traveling around different cities in Japan, if not a city of class like Tokyo and Osaka, the night is usually boring. I often go to shopping malls like Book off and Surugaya, which sell second-hand toys, and I start shopping after eating, and I go for hours until I get hungry.
The products on the shelves of the second-hand toy store are dazzling, and at first glance they are a bit chaotic, but those who understand can see his placement logic.
Most of these second-hand toys are old toys that have been cleared out of other people's homes and resold them, and there are also some unsalable items that have never been opened, and I don't know how many times they have been resold.
I often see old toy stores in some relatively depressed rural cities, secretly, from the outside I don't know whether there is a store or not, the store shelves of toy models are old and new, many old toy boxes have been yellowed, a look at the know that it will not sell for a long time.
The boss doesn't seem to care whether the business is good or not, and sitting in the store every day has become a part of life.
A country toy store
I once met an old woman in her 70s, she said that she has been running a toy store for almost 50 years, and now, there are fewer and fewer people in the city, and there are fewer and fewer children, and most of them go to those big shopping malls to buy toys, and one day the store will close if it can't be opened.
Maybe the second-hand toys I saw on the shelves have gone through how many toy stores have closed down, and finally ended up here after decades.
If you're more knowledgeable, you might want to visit the Broadyway in Tokyo's Nakano shopping street. This is a shopping street with a strong period flavor, and Broadway is more like a street in the street, which is like a honeycomb grid by grid, in addition to anime peripherals, there are old toy shops, old tea shops, massage shops, hairdressers, jewelry and watch shops, karaoke shops for the elderly, used books and money stores...
What's fascinating about it is that it's so complex, young and old alike can enjoy it.
Nakano Shopping Street
In those chain second-hand toy stores, the clerk will check the online price of the goods one by one, so the prices are quite transparent.
And here in Nakano Broadway, many old stores may just mark the price according to the owner's own pleasure, and they may buy more expensive ones, or they may miss them.
In recent years, it has gradually become well-known to European and American tourists, so the premium of old toys is getting higher and higher, and it is becoming more and more difficult to find leaks.
Still, every time I come to Tokyo, I make a special visit to this place when I have free time, and it's a place that brings tears to my eyes as I walk around.
After all, most of the goods are from the same era as me, and many bosses are also old two-dimensional who were watching anime before I was born, and the smell is the same.
Nakano Shopping Street Broadyway
In these second-hand toy stores, I always see a lot of toys that I couldn't ask for when I was a child: old models, Chogokin robots, the original SD Gundam, handheld game consoles.....
I remember that some classmates from wealthy families in elementary school, just like the kind of classmates in Dora Amon, who would always bring newly bought toys to school when they came back from Japan United States during the winter and summer vacations, and played with everyone according to their friendships.
I regret it afterwards, isn't it just a few good words to play with those things!
I once saw a box of unassembled first ZZ GUNPLA at a second-hand toy store in Omiya, a one-hour drive from Tokyo, and I gasped, I didn't buy it, and when I returned to Shanghai, I was full of that box of models, and I regretted it, and a month later I went to Tokyo again, and went straight to Omiya, but I didn't expect it to be still there, it was like finding a long-lost cat, with tears and a smile, "I will never leave you again!" ”
Worthless forty-year-old model
I remember when I was in junior high school, I saved a month's lunch money, secretly bought it back, got up in the middle of the night and took it out from under the bed to assemble it, put it together little by little, and misspelled it so that it couldn't stand up straight like a lame, but I still treated him like an ancestor on the table, and bought it a lot of miscellaneous soldiers as protectors and offerings.
Especially before the junior high school entrance examination, I love to build models, and it looks like I'm reading, but I actually open the drawer and secretly build models.
At that time, my academic performance was not very good, and my parents often sighed that if I didn't like to study, then go to vocational school! But I knew that they still wanted me to go to a regular high school, so I had to follow their wishes and say that I still wanted to study.
It's just that I don't know how to read, even if I can't do well in the entrance exam, and I don't want to read when I'm under a lot of pressure, so I continue to open the drawer and put together the model.
Later, on the grounds that I had abandoned my studies, my parents threw them all into a box in front of me one night, plus the comics they had collected, and they were all taken to the suburbs and burned in front of me.
I looked at the rising flames, and I was so angry! Rage is incompetent.
Although it is really not environmentally friendly to deal with it in this way. I haven't built a model since high school.
I used to have this version of Seiya, too!
Generally speaking, there are more strange toys in small city stores than in big cities, and they are cheaper in terms of pricing than in cities.
Shopping for second-hand toys is like finding treasure in the garbage, although those models are old but not valuable, but each item has a different value in everyone's heart.
For me, it's bits and pieces of childhood. Memories that have been hidden for a long time always resurface with the pictures on the box.
Toys need to be played with to show their value. I don't care if these are second-hand toys, sometimes I guess that it was once liked, played with, maybe tired of playing with it, childish when it got older, or because the people who cleaned it didn't know its value.
Among the thousands of toys on the shelves, I saw it, and it also met a new owner, and it was not a connection between one life story and another.
Just like in "Toy Story", Woody and Buzz Lightyear's little owners grew up and were left out in the cold, and the toys lost their meaning, but fortunately, they met a new owner after twists and turns, so a new story was born.
That's a Chogokin robot!!
Once in a store full of old toys, I saw that in the inconspicuous corner of the cabinet, there was a doll of the protagonist of the first 70s version of "Space Battleship Yamato", which was not as delicate as the current figures, ugly and blunt and out of proportion, very characteristic of the times.
When I look at the price, it's 10,000 yen! My heart is crying! The pale-haired boss cautiously squatted sideways to accompany me, "Ancient Jin, insider!" ”
Then he pointed to another corner that I hadn't noticed, "And President Desla!" "Looking at the little doll with a crooked blue face, it also costs 12,000, and it seems that my heart has been stabbed again.
Well, okay! Take it all out! As a result, the boss's face sank again, and he said complainingly, "Do you only want ancient times?" Don't you take Ah Xue with you? ”
I said okay! Then take all three! At that moment, the boss raised the corners of his mouth, "That's right!" He sang the theme song "Universe ~~ Now Dry ~ Pressure ~ Code ~ Head ~~ Wait for the Wait ~ Wait for the Wait ~" As if the BGM was played at the moment when the jackpot was announced.
Speaking of which, I often see middle-aged buyers in second-hand toy stores. As the saying goes, children make choices, and adults want everything. It is not uncommon to see teenagers looking at a certain product, picking up the box to play with and putting it down. And the middle-aged man didn't think about it, so he just took it and left, only to see the young man's eyes, and I don't know how many hearts were broken in the toy store.
This reminds me of a hilarious skit I watched by Ken Shimura decades ago: a child in shabby clothes lying out of the window at night in a shopping street with a warm glow, and a child in shabby clothes lying out of the window, staring at the shining violin in the window, for a long time.
Suddenly, beside him, a gentleman came and asked him kindly, "Son, do you like it?" The child nodded vigorously. The gentleman walked into the shop, talked to the owner, and pointed to the violin. The child outside the door seemed to understand something, showing an expression of disbelief, happiness and expectation.
The gentleman walked out of the door with the piano, and the child greeted him, and the gentleman raised the piano case and said to the child elegantly, "I like it too!" "Turn around and leave, leaving the stunned child, the lights dim, and the play ends.
I don't know why I was particularly impressed by this three-minute drama among Ken Shimura's many works, and it probably automatically brought in the child's mood.
However, when I see children in toy stores who have been hit by adults, they just say "hehe! Come on boy, you can do whatever you want if you have money. ”
Rather than picking up products on websites like coal stoves, I prefer to go directly to the cluttered second-hand toy stores, like rushing into the crowd of thousands of horses to get the head of the enemy's generals, and buy what I want without hesitation.
It's like a master who moves between the lightning and flint, sometimes a step slower, and seeing other middle-aged uncles holding anime peripherals that they also like, it's suffocating and comforting, "Presumably Mr. is also a fellow practitioner!" "Bow to him.
You know that in this world, there are also people who liked those anime as much as you did decades ago, and although they have taken different paths in life, they all want to get back all the memories of their childhood.
My personality is still quite childish, and every time I buy these old toys or comics, I don't necessarily take them back to my home, but deliberately put them back in an obvious place in my hometown's room, just to show them to my parents.
They can't help but ask how much it is, and I will also falsely report a figure that they feel is not worth it at all, unbearable.
"All the money-wasting things you lost before, I've bought them all back now at a high price!"
Then the next step is to turn on the mutual complaining mode:
"Buy those useless stuff again!"
"Ah, don't you buy a lot of useless things for TV shopping!"
"How old are you still buying these!"
"It's not costing you money"
"Why don't you save a little if you have money?"
"You didn't lose it to me before, so I don't have to spend this money!"
Anyway, it's just to make them look at it and find it an eyesore. Presumably, falling in love and killing each other is a way for an unmarried middle-aged man to maintain a relationship with his elderly parents.
Ever since I left my hometown, my room has been used as a warehouse, and little by little the space has been occupied by miscellaneous items, and then I have slowly forgotten what was hidden deep in the inside of those boxes.
Sometimes when I go back to my hometown to find something, I have to remove the boxes one by one like mining, and after moving to the bottom, I often find that "Huh! So you're still there! ”
Perhaps, I once owned some fantastic items, but forgot about them! It seems that I have buried many time and space capsules at home, and the moment I dig them up again, it is like talking to my childhood self.
I've finally reached the age where I don't have to worry about the price of toys, and I can buy whatever I want with a lot of money, and take home everything I wanted.
But when I have it, it's a moment of loss, and I don't know who else to show it off.
※ This content is the author's independent view and does not represent the position of Japan Express.
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