We did not make it down to Hiroshima. We spent 2 days in Kyoto, 2 days in Osaka, and then the rest of the time in Tokyo. As for big shopping areas, cripes, Osaka and Tokyo are both like gigantic malls!! In Tokyo, we went to Takea****a Dori (<----OMG, the forum **** the middle of that name, funny), which was amazing for shopping, as well as Nakano, Akihabara, Shinjuku, and various other meccas for shopping.

Shopping over there, is on a WHOLE DIFFERENT LEVEL than it is over here. I mean, its hard to describe if you have never been there. For instance, we visited just about every Mandarake we knew of. Mandarake is a chain of stores that sells anime, manga, toys and all sorts of other nerd stuff. Most of these stores are several stories high with floors specializing in various things. Like an entire floor for manga, and 2 whole floors for toys, etc.

Volks in Osaka was amazing. Seven floors of hobby stuff, an entire floor for model planes, an entire floor for model cars and tanks, an entire floor for trains, an entire floor for ball jointed dolls, an entire floor for Gundam and robot models, etc. Just amazing. And the clothing...my god the clothing. I'm a die hard jeans and t-shirt kinda guy, but if I was rich and about half my size I coulda spent a small fortune on fasion. Never before have I seen such an immense variety of different kinds of clothes, much of which was totally awesome stuff. I think I bought 9 t-shirts, and I bought 2 jackets. I would have bought more but I barely fit into their stuff over there. It was rare to find an XL shirt. And shoes? Forget about it if you are bigger than a size 8 or 9 mens.

Bart

PS - Got some IDs:

The white car is a Cedric Gran Turismo, made by Nissan I guess. The little VW busses are not VWs at all, they are "kei vans" with a VW clone body kit. Check it out!

http://ll.speedhunters.com/u/f/eagam...ngs/sight4.jpg

The black van thing is indeed a Mitsubishi Delica and according to ubs_lover
on the planet, it is a 4x4 version.