mario45.jpg Intrepid Wired News columnist Chris Kohler has marauded his way across to Tokyo, where he's blogging furiously and visually on game-related matters, and there's already some fun stuff up there - for one, a tip on the 'Best Video Game Store In Japan', apparently Mandarake Galaxy.

Kohler notes: "Besides being great for finding extremely rare games at very reasonable prices -- this is where I got a 64DD and all the launch games for about $250; note that I said "reasonable", not "cheap" -- Mandarake Galaxy also had some of the lowest prices and best availability of more recent games." Also revealed: "The soundtrack recording to Super Mario Bros., on a 45. Very few things make me as holy-cow as this did." Woot!

Also fun - an Xbox 360-related blog post in which it's noted of the general lack of enthusiasm for the hardware in Japan: "What this store did to advertise the fact that they had an Xbox 360 in stock was to take the original faded-ass display box for the Xbox and slap a label on it saying that they had Xbox 360s in the back." Youch.