The Pokemon Center Japan - Your experiences

[KingMinun]

Hey guys, in the summer I was fortunate to visit Japan, and managed to visit 2 of Tokyo's pokemon centers plus its pokemon store at Tokyo station. For me, these places were wonderful and really were a highlight of my trip, the Mega store in Sunshine city was particularly fun because they had a promotion going on in the mall about Hoopa, although I didn't speak a word of Japanese I still managed to complete the tasks they had set, it was really hard and I spent a long time trying to decode exactly what it was I had to do, but I enjoyed it, and although the staff who were promoting it too didn't speak English, they were great sports and tried their best to assist me in the right direction.

I was also fortunate to get a place in the Pokemon Cafe in Sunshine city too, me and my brother went one day and that was around 12pm, they told me that the next available space was at 9pm, which shocked us, so we managed to come back early the next day and get a space for 4pm that day, during that time we visited another Pokemon center, which did take ages to find, which in a way was kind of fun in itself, it felt a bit like a pokemon journey. My only problem with all these stores was that my wallet took quite the bashing.

The Mega store had some sort of Slowpoke event going on at the time, there was tons of Slowpoke merchandise, as well as the many merchandise promoting the Hoopa movie (which whilst in Japan, I thought I'd take the opportunity to see, as I thought I'd only probably be here once, and I'd like to see a pokemon movie the way its intended to be seeing, in its original format and on the big screen, plus I got Hoopa too from visiting).

The Pokemon store in Tokyo station was pretty cool too, I picked up a Pikachu conductor plush there as well as a few pokemon foods such as cookies and biscuits.

So that's a summary of my adventures in the Tokyo stores, hopefully some other folk out there have been and would like to share their stories and experiences.

 

[Vale_Star]

I went to a Pokemon Center in Nagoya, Japan back in 2010. It was at the bus station. They had promos on for the BW Movie 14 on the screen there. Unfortunately, there were no events going on and I didn't bring my DS from Canada. I doubt it would have worked anyway, those event things are region locked and if it knows you have a non-Japanese DS it won't work. I didn't buy anything I was low on Yen so I couldn't if I wanted to. I heard that the Pokemon Center I went to back then is gone now, they moved to a bigger location. Five years is a long time I suppose.

 

[bobandbill]

Despite the opinion of one post I feel this thread is fine - but it probably fits better in the mech subsection we have, so I'll just punt this there.

I've been to a couple in my sole Japan trip a couple years back, one in Tokyo and another in Osaka (both which may have moved by now?). They weren't large and maybe could have had a better range (e.g. with Pokemon plushies) but they still had a heck of a lot stuff there and friendly enough staff. Good way to kill time away from the cold, haha.

In the Osaka one though my friend wanted to challenge some locals to a pokemon battle, and they declined. That bunch weren't very keen (maybe a bit afraid?) of foreigners. :V

 

[Tsukuyomi56]

Only went to the one in Tokyo but the experience is kind of like being a kid in a candy store, it was sort of hard to restrict myself to only getting plush toys of Yveltal, Darkrai and Jirachi (Jirachi was just too cute to pass up on) and a Mega Charizard X figurine. It is only after I learnt that local events are not region locked that kind of made me wish I had brought my 3DS with me for the Mega Evolution event running at the time.

 

[KingMinun]

Only went to the one in Tokyo but the experience is kind of like being a kid in a candy store, it was sort of hard to restrict myself to only getting plush toys of Yveltal, Darkrai and Jirachi (Jirachi was just too cute to pass up on) and a Mega Charizard X figurine. It is only after I learnt that local events are not region locked that kind of made me wish I had brought my 3DS with me for the Mega Evolution event running at the time.

Ah no! I thought they were region locked too, but I carried my 3DS everywhere with me whilst in Japan in case someone wanted to battle or trade with me, luckily enough i thought there was no harm in trying to see if the event would work, and luckily it did, so I booked myself a ticket to watch the movie to get myself Hoopa.

For years I've been wanting to go to a Pokemon centre, and I used to watch videos on youtube about them, there was one in Tokyo that I really wanted to visit, which loads of youtube videos show, especially during the DP era, so that was the one I wanted to visit the most, unfortunately it had shut down, but it turns out, out of pure coinicidence my hotel was on the street next to the old lot for the pokemon centre. I was so surprised and also gutted because of how close it was and how difficult it was to find the others.

Whilst I was there they also had Pokken machines in the Pokemon Centre, I didn't actually play it there though, on my first night in Tokyo, Me and my brother were exploring Chiyoda - Sotokanda and I knew that Pokken machines had to be in one of the arcades, luckily enough we found one, and that was so cool because I'd never been to an arcade before as they don't have them in the UK, but yeah that was a fun experience.

I'd love to see the Pokemon Centre at Christmas though.