Japan Jaunt
January 2020 [Vol. II, No. 1B]
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Hello, people. I am Steve De Rose {occasionally called “Pudgy”}. I have visited Japan, and specifically, Tokyo & Yokohama, fourteen times since December 2005. You may have read about some of those trips in old issues of "Incendiary Words", a soccer zine I used to publish. Much of my other activities while in Japan went unreported. "Japan Jaunt" is intended to flesh out all this content, as well as assisting you in planning to visit there. These articles are original, but ultimately did not see print.
In the years since I published the first volume of this zine, I have joined Japanese-orbiting social groups, interacted with costume players, and fielded more inquiries. Elements in Japan have changed, and shall continue to change leading up to the 2020 Olympics®. What is present now may not be in 2020. My last visit to Japan was in September 2017 for the Blue Note Jazz Festival (Yokohama), and I updated what I scribed back then.
If I need to encapsulate why I find Japan so enthralling, it would be because there I can switch from one interest of mine to another very quickly and easily, and without bewilderment from people who may or may not know me.
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Do you want to visit?
You could start by obtaining two atlases from a bookseller. "Tokyo Metropolitan Atlas" [Shobunsha: ISBN 978-4-398-20103-4] and "Bunkochizu Kanagawa" [Shobunsha: ISBN 978-4-398-47035-5]. The former is in book size, English, and includes two wards in Yokohama. The latter is pocket-sized, and in Japanese. There should be an English-language atlas for all of Kanagawa, but there is not. In each, you will be able to discern where the trains run. The train station names are on what you need to focus.

"How do I get there?"
From the U.S.A., I am pretty sure you're going to be on an airplane. I have actually visited Osanbashi Pier, which is where ocean liners arrive, but that is for people travelling a shorter distance. Cosmopolitan Tokyo has two airports: Narita Airport [ATA code NRT], which is in Chiba Prefecture, east of Tokyo; and Haneda Airport [ATA code HND] in Ota-ku, one of Tokyo's main twenty-three wards. (Consider a prefecture a county, and yes, Tokyo & Yokohama have wards, just like Chicago.) If you are using a bot, or surfing World-Wide Web travel sites, use TYO to search airfares for both airports. Haneda is to Narita what Midway is to O'Hare. If you can get a cheap non-stop or one-stop to Haneda, fly there. I have managed to fly into Haneda three times. Haneda is much closer to Yokohama, which is where I prefer to stay when visiting Japan. This leads to the question...
"Where should I stay?"
I prefer to spend as little money as possible for accomodations in Japan. I usually stay at hostels. 
I recommend Guest House Kanalian [http://www.kanalian.com/contact-address/]. I will stay there on my next jaunt. Lee-san, its host, takes holidays in Okinawa and other Asian countries, so there are days on which it is closed.
On the visit to Tokyo in April 2017 (for FlyerTalk.com's "Japan Do" #5), I found a new hostel nine minutes away from Shinjuku (where most of the Do events originated) on Tokyo Metro's Marunouchi line's branch to Honancho (mb05 - Nakano-shimbashi station), Hostel Fuji [http://hostel-fuji.tokyo/en/]. It is very spartan. It does not offer anything to drink or eat in the morning or evening. But it accepts a credit card, and is a mere one block from the train station. 
Browse http://www.hostelworld.com/ for more hostel details.
Even if your night time destinations are in Tokyo, I can recommend you stay in Yokohama.  Naka-ku has more registered English-speakers than any other ward in Japan. Speaking English in Tokyo & Yokohama is equivalent to speaking Polish in Chicago. As with many other topics, once you make the initial contact, other reliefs will follow. If you want to memorize some Japanese phrases, browse http://linguanaut.com/english_japanese.htm. The pockets in Tokyo and Yokohama where gaijin-friendly nooks are shall have free English-language publications which can steer you further along the paths.
If you prefer to stay in Tokyo, business hotels on its east side [e.g.: Ueno], are less expensive than business hotels on its south and west sides [e.g.: Shinagawa, Shibuya, Shinjuku].
This is the aspect which undergoes the most comprehensive renovation. Throughout the U.S.A., nearly all transit systems {Philadelphia, PA. being the last exception.} have implemented prepaid fare instruments. Chicago's is known as Ventra; Minneapolis/St. Paul's is the Go-To card. Japan has a few, but the one I will endorse is known as PASMO [http://www.pasmo.co.jp/en/]. PASMO is valid on all train lines in cosmopolitan Tokyo and Yokohama. It rounds down the charge to the last yen. The other one which gets much citation is called "Suica". It is affiliated with Japanese Railways, and for many years, including back in 2005, it was the only prepaid card which J.R. would accept. PASMO was the breakthrough unaffiliated prepaid card that J.R. began recognizing (in 2007). The largest advantage to a prepaid card is eliminating the procedure of punching on-screen and off-screen buttons on a machine to select a route involving more than one train operator. This does not mean you will never again have to engage with a machine: You may want to buy a special offer, or open ticket. (If you stay in Yokohama, there are special tickets which can give you a round-trip to | from Tokyo and unlimited rides on either [not both] Tokyo subway operator. The Keikyu Line will feed you to the four Toei subway lines. The Tokyu Line will feed you to the nine Tokyo Metro subway lines.) 
You will be able to purchase a PASMO card at either Narita or Haneda Airport.
Use the phenomenal Hyperdia W-WW site [http://www.hyperdia.com/] to find the trains which run to the station(s) near your hotel. Hyperdia is short for “hyper diagram”. It is powered by Hitachi Information Systems. Hyperdia lets you input the names of the train stations you are traversing, when you are going, and the class of the train. You sort the output [1-10 choices] on one of three variables: Cost, transfers, or time elapsed. Hyperdia is one of those rare W-WW sites whose facility is fun to play with (although some of its alternate routings are exasperating). You can choose to include or exclude J.R. trains, and specify stations through which you want to pass. {This is another way to force a lower-cost option - you specify a station that only the lower-cost train operator serves.} Ueno is "UENO", and the Keisei [pronounced keh-say] terminus is "KEISEI-UENO". For hostels in Asakusa, the destination name you want is "ASAKUSA(TOBU/SUBWAY)".
If your hotel is in Shinagawa, Shibuya, or Shinjuku (The station names are those, respectively.), hit Hyperdia and try permutations of J.R. and non-J.R. 
From Narita Airport to Yokohama via Keisei, Toei, & Keikyu [pronounced kay-q] trains is ¥1,500 via Keisei Sakura (via the Main line - you will have to transfer @ Aoto), or ¥1,690 via Imba-Nihon-Idai (via the Sky Access line - this is the route which usually through-runs onto Toei and Keikyu). There are a handful of trains each day which run direct from Narita Airport through to Yokohama (and beyond - usually to Keikyu-Kurihama). I caught one such train when I arrived in Japan in December 2012. It departed Terminal 1 at 16:04. If you play with Hyperdia, you can also find trains running direct in the reverse direction.
[I had better let you in on the time convention. Japan uses 24-hour time. This is mainly because of venues which remain open beyond midnight. The parlance is to add on to 24:00. So if a venue is open until 2 am, it would list it as "26:00". If it was 4 am, "28:00", etc.]
If you arrive at Haneda Airport: For Yokohama, the Keikyu train is ¥450. For Asakusa, a transfer to the Toei Asakusa line costs ¥620.
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What's with all these trains?

Japan may know how to manufacture quality automobiles; but I keenly advise you to not attempt to drive any of them while you are there. Traffic is left handed. The driver's seat is on the right side of the car. Fortunately, Japan's public transportation network is world class. A significant difference between Tokyo & Yokohama's train network, versus Chicago's, is that it does not consider public transportation a sop for the lower class. The amount of cooperation between public and private entities which provide train service is astounding. I grant you: As a railfan, especially of electric railroads, I like riding trains.
You may have heard the advice, "Buy the Japanese Railways visitor pass before you go." I inform you that I have never obtained the J.R. pass. I think you do not need it. I'm not stating you won't ride J.R. trains, but in too many instances, I feel buying the J.R. pass causes its purchaser to adopt the mindset, "Must ride J.R. - ONLY J.R." There are areas in Tokyo & Yokohama which you should visit which are nowhere near a J.R. line.
If you arrive @ Haneda, you will encounter the Keikyu Railways counter in the International Terminal. When I was there in 2011, I perused it, spoke briefly with its attendants (they know English), grommed a bunch of Keikyu promotional material (also in English), and threw them into my carry-on baggage to not be glimpsed again until after I returned to the U.S.A. Doh! Bad move on my part. Keikyu offers underpublicized discount tickets originating from Yokohama (not merely Haneda Airport). 
I distinguish these open tickets because the area's train systems otherwise charge distance-based fares, and each train operator has a different distance at which you and I have to pay an additional amount. (Hyperdia knows the fares, which is another reason why it is so phenomenal.)
Before I get away from open tickets, I must inform you about the special open tickets available only at Haneda and Narita airports. At Haneda; previously mentioned Keikyu has these offers [http://www.haneda-tokyo-access.com/en/info/discountticket.html] if you are staying in Tokyo. At either airport, overseas visitors can obtain special open tickets for ¥800 | ¥1,200 | ¥1,500 (1 | 2 | 3 days) which are valid on both Toei & Tokyo Metro. [http://www.tokyometro.jp/en/ticket/value/travel/index.html]. However, these open tickets are invalid for a ride from Narita Airport to Tokyo.
There is one last item I need to stress. Trains cease running at 24:00. In Tokyo, the last train on the J.R. Yamanote line runs clockwise from Shinagawa @ 24:38; counter-clockwise @ 24:45. If you miss your last train, you are facing a four-to-five hour gap before service resumes. A bar may be one of the venues where you wind up. If you would rather not have [more?] craftbeers, you can instead look for a manga kissa shop, where you can occupy a semi-private room with an internet connection, and which will even have a shower should you need to clean up.
It may take a while, but you will learn about the patterns of trains in Tokyo and Yokohama. Keep in mind that through-runs are your friends.

In the vein of this topic, in May 2012, I presented a show to the Central Electric Railfans' Association [http://cera-chicago.org/]. I publicized it using the title, "I Shot J. R. (& Keikyu, Keio, Odakyu, et alia)"; which was a twist on the then-recent revival of the 1980s television show "Dallas", and its protagonist | antagonist J. R. Ewing.
This was seemingly a bit too much for Tony Coppoletta, who was the emcee of C.E.R.A. programs in 2012. He publicized it as "Trains of Tokyo and Yokohama". 
I lost a substantial portion of my potential audience when the 'closing event' of Chicago Craft Beer Week occurred at the same time on the same evening (Friday). I would have wanted to attend that 'closing event'. Alas, I had been previously scheduled to do this show this night. 
But it was a good show. To illustrate that, I have now uploaded all the photographs I showed that night, and included the script in which I described the photographs. In a livid example of how Japan is changing, some of these photographs can no longer be replicated (e.g.: The grade crossing in Shimo-Kitazawa has been eliminated.).
The file has gone off-line a few times. After an incident at December 2014's C.E.R.A. show, in which we had a delay due to technical problems; I was asked if there was something I could show while we were trying to fix it.
Since then, I felt it should always be on-line somewhere.
The file [cera05-2012.rar] is 24.23 MB. 
My photographs are Creative Commons - Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike BY-NC-SA. Essentially, you can do whatever you wish with them, including making derivative works of them, as long as you do not try to make any money from doing so.
The file is now uploaded at http://intel.iobb.net/src/That%20is%200670.rar.html
The DLKey is 8124. The .rar password is "Keikyu_via_Sengakuji" {without the quotes}.

How Much Money Should I Bring?

I redid this article. I have no idea how much money you have to spend on a trip anywhere, much less to Tokyo and Yokohama. I submit you should be here for at least six days. Your round-trip airfare could be the most expensive element of your journey. The least expensive flights leave the U.S.A. on Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday. Know that if you depart on a Saturday, it will be Sunday when you arrive in Japan, and some venues where you would need to exchange dollars for yen may be closed. The cheap flight which I have booked from Chicago to Tokyo (nonstop) the last three visits, and is likely to be the one you will reveal, is scheduled to arrive at 20:30. But in April 2017, it was delayed 90 minutes on the tarmac at O'Hare [rain], and did not land at Haneda until 22:00. After going through immigration and customs, I was treading close to the time of the last train on a line. To get to the hostel near Shinjuku before it closed registration necessitated bypassing every other task I might have done at the airport. Contingently for me, I had sufficient yen from my previous jaunt to get there on the train. You may study changing some funds before you leave the U.S.A. Look at the costs listed beneath. Then decide how much you think you would go through. If you stay at a hostel, it will want the full amount of your stay in yen the night you check in. I recommend bookmarking my regular bookmark page [https://v.gd/sdr34]. Amongst many useful links, it has an interactive {with JavaScript|ActiveX® on} currency exchange page so you can compute how much yen you would get for your dollar. You will not actually receive that much, but it will give you an idea of the maximum amount. In December 2011, I was nearly eaten up and spit out by a pitiful exchange rate of ¥77.68 = $1. In April 2017, it was ¥107.4 = $1. You may have to exchange some of your dollars at the airport. Convert what you need to get to your lodging. Remember, if you're going to purchase any special train tickets only available at the airport, to include yen for that. Avoid exchanging at Travelex, because it has the poorest rate. Where you should strive to change is Daikokuya. It is a small chain of money exchange & ticket-reselling stores. On my general Foursquare Tokyo & Yokohama list [https://v.gd/tokyo1], I indicate where are Daikokuya stores where I have exchanged money. You can also contemplate making a deposit into a credit card account, preferably one which is currently carrying no balance. There are ATMs which you can utilize should you need an infusion of yen. The ones with the lowest fees are in Japan Post Office branches. Contact your credit card carrier for specifics. Ensure you have a four-digit PIN number (and only a number - English letters do not appear on Japanese ATM keypads). Also, more venues are accepting a credit card such as Visa® or MasterCard®. Realize that most bank-issued credit cards incorporate a currency conversion fee; but conversely, they also get a higher exchange rate than you may individually.
Ramen shacks can charge between ¥500 & ¥1,300 depending on how many items you add to your noodles. A pint of craftbeer will cost between ¥800-¥1,200. [Standard Japanese megabrews will run about 67% of that.] If you opt for pay-as-you-ride train tickets, figure up to ¥1,200 per day for that. [Remember, train fares are distance-based.] You will find chain restaurants such as McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Burger King, and even Shakey's Pizza. (I had the Shakey's lunch buffet one day in Yokohama. For ¥1,050, it was filling, good, all-you-can-eat, and not just pizza.) There are also Japanese quick service shops MOS Burger (MOS Burger's french fries are better than some Chicago hot dog stands'.), Freshness Burger, First Kitchen, Lotteria, & Kua’Aina. You can get a combination meal from them for ¥500-¥950. Bowls of beef with rice are served at Sukiya, Yoshinoya, Matsuya, and Tokyo Chikara Meshi stands for around ¥490.
I particularly commend Tokyo Cheapo [https://tokyocheapo.com/] for more options.
You can browse additional links in the Japan rubric on my regular bookmark page for other costs.
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Craft beer in Tokyo & Yokohama

There was a massive article with this title in this zine's first volume. But to put it succinctly, craft beer has detonated throughout Japan, especially in Tokyo and Yokohama. For me to suggest venues to you now would destine disclaimers: A venue may have closed, changed management (which might cause a shift away from offering craft beer), or it may have moved to a larger venue, or another ward of the city. Instead, seek these publications: 
1 Japan Beer Times [http://www.japanbeertimes.com/]
2 Beer Transporter [http://www.beertransporter.com/]
3 Beer Zen [http://beerzenjournal.com/]
and also these World-Wide Web blogs:
4 Tokyo Beer Drinker [http://tokyobeerdrinker.blogspot.com/]
5 Beer Tengoku [http://beertengoku.com/]
6 Taiheiyogan [https://www.taiheiyogan.com/content/category/locations/kanto-locations/]

One aspect I can reliably mention is there are chain craftbeer pubs opening up throughout the area. Many of them offer lower-than-average drink prices, but dilute the savings by not including the consumption tax in that price (10%), and | or charging a fee (otoshi), typically ¥300. I have never been enthused about travelling from one venue to another, and then another [i.e.: pub crawl], but were I, getting charged this fee would decide negatively against this endeavor.
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Ramen Irruption

Ramen in Tokyo & Yokohama is a world away from what you may contemplate as ramen in the U.S.A. The instant ramen commonly found here is barely recognizable from what is prepared in Japan. Ramen is not original to Japan, either. It is assimilated from China. What it is is a large bowl of noodles (which may be made on-premise or bought from an outside supplier), vegetables (green onions are the most common), a semi-boiled egg, and slabs of pork, in a broth which is each ramen shack's proprietary secret. The egg is frequently optional. You can find ramen which doesn't have pork, but the broth will almost always have been made with pork bones (finding a genuinely vegetarian or vegan ramen bowl is still inordinately onerous).

Real ramen is arriving in the U.S.A. It is seemingly about to erupt in Chicago, with the Furious Spoon chain in Logan Square, and East Lakeview (Belmont & Halsted), and other quality bowls to be had at Ramen Misoya, Kizuki, Wasabi, and Yusho. High Five Ramen is the shack which Brendan Sodikoff opened after touring ramen shacks in Tokyo with Brian McDuckston [http://www.ramenadventures.com/]. 

I am definitely not a ramen adept. There are over 20,000 ramen shacks in Tokyo & Yokohama. There are even two ramen shacks which have earned a Michelin Star (Tsuta, Nakiryu). On my regular bookmark page, I link to a machine-translation of the Supleks ramen review database, and nine English-language Japanese ramen bloggers. These reviewers know ramen. 

On my first visit to Japan in December 2005; on a Saturday afternoon in Shinjuku, I was trying to find an Indian restaurant which, according to an English-language pamphlet I grommed from the Tokyo Tourist Information Center at the Keisei Ueno station, had an all-you-can-eat lunch. I never found that restaurant. I was expecting it to be on the ground level, but it was on the third floor of an edifice, and I missed its sandwich board on the street. My search for it was curtailed when I turned a corner and espied a line of locals queued up for something. This remains a bit of advice you should heed. As the line made its way forward whatever this was, it was a ramen shack. It was Musashi, a ramen chain in Tokyo. This shack, like most shacks, had a ticket machine. Typically, the button in the upper left corner of the ticket machine is the shack's #1 seller. I still do not know exactly what it was that I ordered. I would guess it was miso ramen. I pushed two buttons and spent ¥850. I've since been to its shack in Ueno.

The best bowl of ramen I have had anywhere was the luxurious beef shio ramen at Matador in Senju-asahi-cho, Adachi-ku, east of the Kita-senju train station. I have also enjoyed the niboshi (dried fish, mainly sardine) ramen at Honbo in 2 Arai, Nakano-ku, north of the Nakano J.R. and Tokyo Metro station. You will likely never find a niboshi bowl in the U.S.A. due to health code regulations making its preparation impracticable, so have one here. There are any number of ramen magazines on bookstore racks, including Ramen Walker [multiple issues for different prefectures around Tokyo - http://ramen.walkerplus.com/, but each is in Japanese.]. What you can divine from it is the map of the shack's area, and a telephone number which you can type into a search engine.

The Rikaichamp add-on [https://github.com/birtles/rikaichamp] for Firefox v57+ can help you with translations from Japanese to English. 
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What to Bring Back from Japan

Dear reader, this is the article where I delve into an adult-oriented topic. 
Please be tolerant and mature. Thank you.
Yes, this article is proceeding to the 2nd Volume. I know nowhere else which describes this experience in English. North American cautiousness about the subject needs to be abated.

If you have read ‘lifestyle’ or ‘travel’ magazines either in print, or on the World-Wide Web, I know you have glimpsed at least one article about the ‘off-beat’ shops you could locate in Tokyo & Yokohama.
It seems that there is at least one objet d’art which receives no mention in these pieces: Japanese Adult Videos [JAVs].
This is confounding. The industry of producing erotica in Japan is a massive one. Crossovers between JAVs and ‘regular’ Japanese movies happen much more frequently. “Mainstream” Japanese publications, including those with English-language editions, have no qualms about referencing a certain JAV, or JAV performer.
JAVs, while manifesting explicit lewd acts similar to hardcore videos released in the U.S.A., feature a spectrum of fetishistic acts in them. They also continue to provide a plot as justification on which to hang these lewd acts. 
I am an erotica collector. I have a fairly extensive library of content on VHS videocassettes, VCDs, and DVDs. For 10½ years, it was the backbone of "Smut & Eggs" at the Twisted Spoke restaurant @ Ogden & Grand Avenues in Chicago. I believe I have a good center on what is worthwhile, and what is not. Good erotica should contain three elements: It should make you think, it should make you laugh, and it should make you orgasm.
There are solid bargains to be had at JAV shops in Japan. The shops wax and wane. The selection and pricing a shop had the previous time it might not have this time. Conversely, you might find a new shop which I have yet to unveil with selection and pricing.
Before I get to the shopping district about which you have certainly heard, let me toss out these four chain stores where I unexpectedly found inexpensive JAVs. The first is "Don Quijote" [http://www.donki.com/index_en.php?&gn=en]. The best way to describe Donki is, “Big Lots on an amplifier.” Donki boasts about its shopping entertainment, and it is. It is also one of the least-expensive department stores in Japan. I have bought lots of JAVs here in shrink-wrapped packages @ three | ¥999, five | ¥1,480, or recently, a spindle of thirty bare DVDs for ¥3,000. It was at a Donki in Shibuya that I found the notorious release in which the Romanian Olympic® gymnasts performed their routines topless [KNED-001].
Second is the "sell shops" of "Kintaro / Hanataro" [http://kin-v.jp/]. Kintaro / Hanataro is a chain of manga kissa shops in Japan. As such, it stocks current, contemporary JAVs. The sell shops are where it empties out its older rental DVDs. I have paid as little as ¥250 [buying in multiples of four] at its shops. There are deeper discounts at times. A Tweet from it had a photograph of shelves of one of its shops where some DVDs were marked down to ¥100!
Third is what still passes for a rental video store along the lines of what Blockbuster Video was in North America years ago: "TSUTAYA" [http://store.tsutaya.co.jp/storelocator.html]. There are still many TSUTAYA stores, and many of them are rental-only. But I encourage you to stop in any should you see one. In April 2014, in a store in Ueno, I found JAVs from K. M. Produce studio being sold off for only ¥300.
The fourth option is "Book Off" [http://www.bookoff.co.jp/]. Book Off is a store where second-hand books are sold. It has volumes of manga. If you look around, you will find a portion of the store with DVDs encompassing all genrés: Regular movies, Asian-produced movies, original anime videos, music videos, gravure idol videos, and JAVs. I have paid as little as ¥200 each for JAVs here.
Putting aside JAVs for a moment, Book Off still offers laserdiscs. A number of cult European movie directors like Dario Argento, Mario Bava, and Lucio Fulci have suffered edits to their movies when released in some countries, including the U.S.A. Yet somehow, these same movies came out uncut and uncensored on laserdisc in Japan! Buy those here also.
The first, third, and fourth of these chain stores accept a credit card. Further, if you spend at least ¥10,000 in one transaction at each of them, and show your passport, they will also remove the Japanese duty tax on the purchase.
These just strip {oops} off the topsoil. Anywhere in Japan which has a shopping street likely has at least one sell-off video shop which will have JAVs and | or idol DVDs. There are two in the shopping street west from the Keikyu Line's Keikyu Komata station.
Every Tokyo W-WW site mentions Akihabara, usually abbreviated "Akiba". The main vein of Akiba is Chuo Dori, a north-south avenue. The business which birthed Akiba was electronics. Since the 1990s, it has taken on the mantle of ground zero for manga and anime “otaku”. Akiba is where manga | anime's "Rule 34" ["If it exists, porn of it exists."] was birthed. If you are a devotee of manga or anime, eventually you have to wind up here. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government is trying to put a clean spin on the district. There are many purveyors making a profit off supplying persons with their fetishistic content. This includes JAVs. From meeting female costume players the last few years, both the cosplayer and I realize they are attempts at being the live-action, three-dimension example of a manga author's character, and most of those characters are ecchi, to put it mildly. Photographs of cosplayers will border on not-safe-for-work images. What is important to comprehend is the cosplayer is aware a photographer is going to attempt to take a prurient picture of her. This they do not find objectionable. For example, if the manga character wears blue & white horizontally-striped panties (shimapan), her authenticity on roleplaying that character hinges on manifesting that she is wearing blue & white shimapan. 
The south end of Chuo Dori is the closest to where the J.R. train stations are. The Chuo-Sobu line runs east and west. The tracks running north and south include the Yamanote line, the Tokyo-Ueno line, & the Keihin-Tohoku line. The Tsukuba Express train terminates here as well. 
To shop from the north, the subway station is Suehirocho on the Tokyo Metro Ginza line (G-14). Select Exit #3 if you want to go down the west side of the avenue, Exit #1 for the east side of the avenue. (There is a Donki on the east side.) I remind you to check each intersecting avenue off Chuo. In April & September 2017, I did well buying JAVs at Mulan. This shop is better known as the shop offering old(er) video games. Consider Mulan the close-out shop for Lammtarra, one of the big shops which sells pretty much every JAV studio's releases (but at full list price). Here is a photograph of its front entrance: [https://v.gd/atagaq] Note what it stocks on 2F and 3F. I shopped the 2nd floor. I also went an extra step this time: I asked the shop's clerks to break down the cases and give me only the DVD and the cover. This involves more time and work for them, but it trades that off by allowing them to immediately reuse the case.
Why do I encourage you to buy physical DVDs with adult content? Because Japanese studios get away with content which would land U.S. producers in trouble if they incorporated it. The most clear-cut example being the U.S. Federal Law which classifies any movie with content of somebody roleplaying a person under the age of eighteen in a sexual situation as a violation which it equates to casting an actual under-18-year-old person in an erotic movie. As I noted on synopses when I exhibited at the Twisted Spoke, "Fast Times At Ridgemont High", a major Hollywood movie in 1982, would run afoul of this law if it was to be released new today! I feel it is a matter of when, not if, pressure is applied to Japanese studios to cease making and releasing videos like this. Some of the Japanese studios try to keep the lid on this by encoding their DVDs for Region 2. But pretty much everybody who is aware of region codes and DVDs has a player (or found the firmware hack) which can handle all regions' discs.
There are JAVs on Blu-Ray® discs. I do not have a Blu-Ray player. I do not foresee buying one.  If you do not get the shop's clerks to break down the JAV cases, you should do so. JAVs in CD cases may be left alone. Bring a pack of plastic sleeves into which you can slip a DVD, or buy one there (Donki sells a big package.). Use a 10" × 12" × 1" (or larger) envelope in which to put the box covers.
Re-entering the U.S.A. has become easier. You will see a group of kiosks leading toward the border entrance desks. The kiosk will take a photograph of you. The main question is, "Did you spend more than $800 on items you are bringing back to the U.S.A.?" You do not have to break out what you bought.

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