Unleash Your Inner Child At Hakuhinkan Toy Park

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The great thing about Japan is how seriously they take their toys

. Perish the thought of denigrated industrial mass-produced junk quickly to a pile of broken plastic limbs and antennas. We're not in China anymore, Dorothy. This is Japan! The country's unique toy-subculture stems from (or is perhaps a product of) its reputation for ground-breaking videogames such as the Final Fantasy franchise (which has one of the biggest adult and young adult videogame cult followings in the world) and being the birthplace of anime and manga. "Toys" in Japan is no longer a word only evocative of pigtailed little girls clutching their Raggedy-Anns and little boys making "vroom, vroom" noises with their Transformers trucks. It's about a plethora of trillion-yen franchises that appeal to a global market comprising not only children yanking on their parents' credit card, but also serious collectors and adult geeks with money to burn.

Tokyo's "toy parks" are a new trend that has emerged in the recent past in response to this widening of the toy market demographic. Ginza's Hakuhinkan Toy Park is a case in point. This trendy toy Mecca is neither the oldest nor the largest in town, but it's already beating out the competition in a big way. If you talk to its adult clientele, they report that this success is partially due to their friendly staff. It's not easy to find a place that can keep a child amused for hours while also keeping their patience and temper intact. Also, the park clearly has the traditional toddler-to-preteen age demographic in mind, rather than keeping their eye fixed on the adult geek market.

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This multi-storied explosion of color, which appears to be a mash-up between an amusement park and a toy store, is rather an eye catching landmark feature of Ginza's shopping area. Lego bricks are piled atop tables laid out in the pavilion and the inside is a miasma of teenage girls in anime masks, grown men enthusing over anime dolls (they don't even require you to call them action figures!), the squawking flash-bangs of hot-off-the-press video games and squealing children cheering a mini-war between robot stag beetles. Interspersed among the technological madhouse are delicate ceramic figurines which are collector's items and what feel to the touch like the plushest stuffed animals ever invented. In any other venue all this may seem like a tailor-made recipe for pratfalls, crowding issues and a bad accident or three. But Hakuhinkan appears to be one of the rare retail centers which knows how to manage their clientele - the floor area is just spacious enough to be cozy and provide everybody with leg-room for their toy car races and robot wars without being so large that small children may get easily lost in a crush. All in all, a place that's definitely worth looking into whether you're an adult fan of dolls and anime or an adult trying to shop with a child in tow (in the latter case, you probably won't have much choice in the matter).

Ginza has its fair share of shopper's dreams, but it is debatable whether staying in this central prefecture is the best choice for a visitor. Many people prefer to stay in the marginally more subdued districts such as Minato, where the shopping in Roppongi is nearly as good and the Tokyo Tower dominate the landscape, promising panoramic views of the city's numerous draws. When in Tokyo accommodation and transit is not much of a problem - it's a very well laid out city with convenient transit links. In the business districts, travelers are increasingly showing a preference for a serviced apartment Tokyo, such as Somerset Azabu East in Minato, near Roppongi, much coveted for its proximity to the shopping district and major subways.

by: Pushpitha Wijesinghe

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