To be fair, Book-Off is part of a larger overall brand of thrift stores. Pretty much every Book-Off has kind of a mini Hard-Off inside it. Hard-Off is a store specializing in “hardware”. In this case, that means games, computer components, musical instruments, and random electronics. Mandarake is more directly comparable to a Hobby-Off.
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I’ve never been to a Hobby-Off, but I tried Hard-Off and Home-Off Off-House before 
Looking at the list of stuff handled by Hobby-Off, it is indeed similar.
I’ve only been to one Hobby-Off. They’re definitely a lot less common than Hard-Off and Off-House. Heck, you’d probably find more "Book-Off+"s, which tend to carry most of what you’d find in a Hobby-Off.
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Hehehe…
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Yes, yes, we’ve all giggled at it.
That said, it really is a great store. My first trip to Japan, an Air Force friend of mine drove us to a few Hard-Offs and a Hobby-Off around halfway through the 2-week trip, and it ruined/massively improved the rest of the trip.
That is, we missed out on a lot of the more ‘traditional’ vacation fare because we were constantly checking to see if there were any Hard Offs or Book Offs near where we were going. We spent a significant portion of the rest of that trip thrifting for games, books, figures, etc.
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I… actually never realized. Well, it’s not like it was missing in my life 
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Just an update: Still works great.
Just picked up a couple dozen books (And a figure that vexed me at multiple UFO machines last time I visited Japan). Cost about $95 total, shipping included. Put in the order at 3:00am on Monday, the goods had been packed, sent off from Japan, and delivered to my doorstep by 5pm on Thursday. I’m still astounded by the efficiency of this shipping.
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first time meeting Sharpevil-さん and already nerding out >:o
@Sharpevil-さん thanks to you I have a hole burning in my pocket!!!
I kinda knew that reading your thread was going to entice me to actually go to the site and start browsing. Then as most browsing does, stuff gets added to the cart. Then more gets added to the cart because you recognize this series and that series. Then there is a rush because you found a few items so you keep looking 
Long story short, I got a fairly heavy box on the way and I have no idea who entered my credit card information at the screen…
I only have a tracking number for now but I promise to share some pictures when they arrive. As you said, it’ll only take a few days. I followed the parts where you wrote DHL and I was glad to know that was the route they chose for my order. I still have another day before the tracking number is updated per their email but the suspense is killing me! 
The shipping was more than the cost of what I bought but yes, I justified the big hole burned because you had the very great idea to work out the cost per item. I did the same and I think I am ahead? I dunno, this is the first time I have bought anything from Japan.
gaaaaaah! I blame you for all this!
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Hey, I mean, look at it this way. A manga in the US costs, what, $10 if you’re lucky? And we don’t exactly have a burgeoning used manga market. If you pick up a used manga from Mandarake for $3 and pay $3 on shipping, that’s still a lot of savings.
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It was me. Someone had to do it
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Yes, yes. Please don’t get me wrong, the spirit of my post was in jest! 
I was not really blaming you, just me trying to be funny and justify my own@Kumirei’s mad spending.
y-you have access to my credit cards? h-how did that happen? w-were not even officially together yet so how…
PS - btw, @Kumirei and @Sharpevil, any suggestions for beginner manga series that are not on the bookclubs yet? I’m at early N5 at the moment. Thanks.
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Doraemon and Chibi Maruko-Chan are both pretty easy, but I also found them terribly boring
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I used to watch this as a kid. They dubbed it and I thought the show was pretty funny. The compete manga set is available at this Mandarake site and was wondering if I should get it 
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M- maybe just start with one volume?
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If you’re at “early” N5, you’re probably more building up a stock of manga to read later. In that case, yeah, go with simple/children’s manga like Yotsuba and Doraemon, as well as any manga you already know the story of well that doesn’t seem too difficult. Picking something you’re familiar with will help you avoid getting lost and needing to stop to look everything up.
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I got the first volume of Doraemon and like it. Didn’t love it, but enjoyed it.
I often stalk the complete Dragonball set on Mandrake and Amazon Japan (would need a tenso type place), and have eyed Doraemon sets, but can never get myself to bite the bullet.
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Okay. I will share the photos here when they arrive, hopefully the ones I picked are fairly easy for a beginner
Bite the bullet! Whoops, wrong bullet
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Hello Sharpevil,
The package arrived last Thursday 
! But I have not had the chance to open it and document. Too many other things happening in life atm. Will get pics soon but yeah I placed the order late pm PST on 9/25 and it arrived noon PST on 10/1. I thought that was pretty quick given the pandemic. But I’ll get to it in more detail on a later post.
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This sounds amazing, I’ve been hearing about Mandarake around, and your honest and outgoing review is extremely helpful.
Slightly scared to buy though, because custom charges here in the UK are horrifying (I’ve bought a £50 coin from Australia, and a £60 hoodie from the US, and I ended up paying double when hit by those hellish import taxes)
Anyways, I will surely try though… It’s just gonna take me some time to recuperate my bank balance… 
Since I used this topic to decide whether I would purchase last week, I figured I’d also post my experience: I ordered a complete set of Deadman Wonderland from Mandarake Complex (Didn’t know about their system, put in two orders to see what the shipping would be, planning to cancel if they were too pricy but this would get me banned which I didn’t know. Cancelled one order which NEARLY got me banned so I decided to keep the other one even though the shipping was super high). The cost for the Deadman Wonderland complete set in C grade was 1500 yen, shipping was 3440 yen-ish. Ended up paying 40 euros through paypal for delivery to Belgium with DHL express. It arrived today at 11 am. Shipping was really fast and they packaged it very well. The condition of the mangas for being C grade (they were advertised to have yellowed edges) is pretty good. The yellowing doesn’t bother me as much as it did in the pictures and the state of the mangas themselves are pretty decent. Not as bad as I was fearing at all. Also there were no custom fees, but this may just be because the currency exchange at the customs office put the order below 39 euros. Next time I’ll put in a pricier order to see whether I get hit with customs or not.
Edit: Just a side note, try ordering from Mandarake Sahra since you get to see shipping fees immediately and also get to pay immediately.
Edit2: Oh god I ended up replying to someone else’s post. This wasn’t intentional lmao. Sorry
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