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Nakano Broadway Guide: Navigating the Mandarake Maze for Vintage Toys and Rare Manga

Published September 21, 2026 · Wayfinder

Nakano Broadway is a single building, and inside it is the strangest shopping experience in Tokyo's collector scene: Mandarake, the secondhand manga and toy dealer, spread across more than 30 separate storefronts on several floors. There is no one "Mandarake" here. There are dozens of small ones, each a specialist, tucked between unrelated shops. Understanding that before you walk in is the difference between a great afternoon and a confusing one.

Getting there: five minutes through Sun Mall

From Nakano Station, the route is simple. Exit on the north side and you're at the mouth of the Sun Mall, a covered shopping arcade. Walk straight through it, past the drugstores, cafes, and clothing shops, and after about five minutes the arcade delivers you directly to the entrance of Nakano Broadway. You can't really miss it: the arcade ends and the building begins.

The covered walk is worth noting for rainy days. You can get from the train to the collector floors without opening an umbrella.

How the building is organized

Nakano Broadway is a shopping complex, and the ground floor still feels like a neighborhood mall. The collector shops are concentrated on the upper floors. The trick is that Mandarake's storefronts are not clustered in one corner; they're scattered along the corridors, and each one has its own name and specialty. You'll walk past a watch repairer, then a Mandarake full of vintage toys, then a clothing shop, then a Mandarake full of animation cels.

Do not try to "find Mandarake." Instead, walk the corridors of each upper floor systematically and read the signs. Most of the storefronts are small, some barely wider than a corridor themselves, and the best finds are often in the ones that look least promising from outside.

What the storefronts sell

Between them, the Mandarake shops cover most of what a collector could want:

• Vintage toys: Tin robots, sofubi (soft vinyl) monsters, boxed figures from decades past. Glass cases here can hold items priced like used cars, alongside bins of cheaper loose pieces.
• Rare manga: First editions, out-of-print volumes, complete runs of old series. This is the place to look for something you couldn't find new.
• Animation cels: Hand-painted production cels from the era before digital animation. Each is a unique physical frame from a real episode or film, and browsing them is a small history lesson in how anime used to be made.
• Retro games: Cartridges and consoles, sitting alongside the toys and manga.

Because each storefront is specialized, the staff usually know their stock well. If you're hunting for something specific, showing a photo or writing the title down works even without much shared language.

Hours: later than you'd expect

Opening hours vary from shop to shop, but roughly speaking the collector floors run from around noon to 8 p.m. This matters. Turning up at 10 a.m., as you would for most attractions, gets you an empty corridor and shutters. Plan Nakano Broadway for early afternoon or evening, which also lets you use the morning for something else.

Honest caveats

• It's a building, not a scenic spot. The corridors are narrow, the lighting is fluorescent, and the charm is entirely in the shelves. If you don't care about collectibles, an hour is plenty.
• Prices are collector prices. Rare means expensive. Treat the top-shelf items as a museum you can touch (with permission) rather than a shopping list.
• Condition matters. Secondhand goods are graded. Look at the label and the item, not just the price.
• Space is tight. Leave large bags in a locker at Nakano Station.

If you want the walk laid out

With 30-plus storefronts across multiple floors, the honest problem at Nakano Broadway is order: which floor first, which shops to skip, and how to avoid doubling back.