GET’S日本橋

Families with kids

A capsule-toy shop on Otaroad rather than a row of machines in the corner of an arcade, which means the ranges are laid out to be read: one wall per series, with the current releases and the ones that stopped months ago side by side. Fifteen minutes and a pocket of hundred-yen coins is the whole visit.

To know · On Nipponbashi 4-chome, in the middle of the Otaroad stretch. Its own page on gashapon.jp lists the stock but not the hours, so treat the street's rhythm as the guide — roughly 11:00 to 20:00 — and do not make it the last stop of the evening.

Trap · Machines take coins, not cards or notes. Break a 1,000 yen note at a shop till before you commit to a wall of machines, because the change machine is the thing these shops most often do not have.