animemiz’s scribblings..

What a dreadful soggy day. Weather and reality aside.

Okay I found out tonight as my friends and I made a round of bookstore hopping like always, and a sign was posted on Asahiya’s entrance, and it was saying that the store, due to circumstances was closing permanently. Their last day is on October 31, 2009. My friends and I were pretty crushed. One of my friends actually asked if it was a bad dream or not.

I also recently wrote an entry about them as well..

This feels like when they closed their location at Vanderbilt all over again.. no wonder there were having mad sales like mad. Now it would be more final.

They’re not using their point card system or not, rather – they’re not stamping any new marks. They’ll honor the stamps, if you have a full card, and then incomplete cards.. they’ll be counting each stamp as though it was $0.25 a mark.

I am wondering if Asahiya is closing for these reasons – Recession. No Sales. Competition from Kinokuniya nearby. I’ll try and see if I can take any more pictures to place up as a memory situation.

They would be having sales on DVDs/CDs toward the time of when the store is nearly closing. They cleared out a good portion of their anime sections already. My friends have been purchasing Nico dolls, Haruhi Suzumiya, and Lucky Star little figurines. There are some CLAMP in 3-D Wonderland figures available. I see trading cards, jigsaw puzzles at pretty insane prices. Some Evangelion, Bleach, Gurren Laggen accessories are still there… (sighs)

So another Japanese bookstore bites the dust. A long time ago there was four, and now with Asahiya closing, there would only be Bookoff and Kinokuniya left.

Okay this bookstore is tucked away on a side street, so most people would go over to Kino or BookOff, here is Asahiya. It is located on E45th street between 5th and Madison. It use to be located on Vanderbilt and as other people would often say that the selections here wouldn’t be as much as Kino nearby. This place is a complete contrast to Kino, in only selling Japanese mangas, and no English graphic novels. Most of the products are also shrink wrapped, so it protects the products.

The bookstore is only one floor, as you walk into the store, there is a large row of magazines that get updated on a near weekly basics. You can also browse the magazines here, whereas it is shrink wrapped at Kino. The magazines are also more updated than Kino’s. So if you like to browse before you purchase then Asahiya is a place to go.

The cash register as I would place as a point of origin, is in the center of the room, with CDs/DVDs on the right of the room if you look dead straight into the room. The Japanese animation/mangas are in the back of the room to the right end, with a cart of discounted CDs/DVDs nearby. There are stationary products behind the cash register section. Also a Japanese learning section with the store’s few English titles on the left of the register. Toward the back of the room on the left side, before you go into the right end of the room, there is a small set of stairs with a television set.

What makes this place stand out is the point card that this store uses for customer loyalty and points aspect. BookOff did away with the system a while back, so only Asahiya of the three NYC bookstores would keep this style. If you fill up a card, it would be about -$10 discount. Each stamp is worth about $5.

Recently though, there have been a great deal of Japanese anime/stationary sales at this location. I picked up several plushes that were marked down really cheaply. Stationary, CDs, DVDs were also heavily discounted toward the back. A friend of mine picked up so many figures.

This is a bookstore to at least sample on a visit to New York City, it may be considered to be small, but quaint. On Fridays the bookstore cloes at 9pm, so my friends and I usually are at Asahiya until they close, and I have never noticed a PA system, rather their way of signaling closing is to to turn off the lights. Still this is a blog entry on featuring Asahiya, if you want more opinions or reviews, I would point out that there are more opinions of this location at yelp.com.

All right… I live in one of the most renown cities in the world. Well everyone should know it.. New York City. Now what makes this a great place for Japanese lovers? Other than the abundance of the Japanese culture things, like supermarkets, restaurants, clothing and department stores, there are the bookstores. I am going to be mentioning the three Japanese bookstores I frequent, and most of these places have branches in Japan as well. Those stores are what the tags indicate.

So if you are a book lover, knowing about these places do make time pass when you are in New York City. I have been thinking about this writing feature for months, and recently because of the spring weather decided to go out and take updated pictures of the bookstores themselves. I figure that as a frequent customer, I can mention what products they offer, and probably any of my tips for these stores. I do know that I can probably do this in Yelp.com, but since there are plenty of smaller reviews there, can do a bit of a cohesive review here.

So this is an announcement for a small feature of about three posts, with pictures, and what not. I googled these bookstores for a little bit and couldn’t seem to find much blog or web page activity other than Yelp to introduce much about these stores.