An endless sea of Pikachu plushies is splayed out before me, each of them cradling a giant bowl of ramen. The Pokemon Center pop-up shop at the Pa♐cifico Yokohama National Convention Hall snakes back and forth so many times it’s impossible to figure out where it begins and ends. The store has every Pokemon item you could imagine: keychains and pins, figurines and wall art, hoodies, jerseys, and t-shirts.
There’s stationery, hats, deck boxes, playmats, sleeves, rice bowls, bento boxes, Switch cases, folding fans, and pencil cases, and all of it is branded with the Pokemon World 2023 logo -exclusively produced for this one-time event. Staring at those adorable Pikachu plushies, my 20 gallon shopping bag in hand, I’m beyond overwhelmed. My time at the Pokemon Center is a blur, an intoxicating blend of excitement and FOMO, and when all is said and done I ended up with a receipt as long as my arm and a desperate need to buy another suitcase for the trip home. Let’s just say I made some choices.
I’ve been to a Worlds Pokemon Center before. Last year, London’s pop-up Pokemon Center had a very sꦺimilar set-up to this one. It too was filled with Worlds-themed items and exclusive merch that would make any Pokemon fan salivate. On top of that, this was the first Worlds event to be held in three years, and the excitement around it was palpable. It may have looked the same on the inside, but last year’s Pokemon Center had nothing on this one. While London had long lines and hard-to-get items, visits to Yokohama’s Pokemon Center were in such high-demand that it was practically impossible to get into, and by the third day almost everything had sold out.
It’s no surprise the store was so popular, given this was the first time Worlds has ever taken place in Japan. People from all over the country came to Yokohama to experience the competition and, perhaps more importantly, shop for exclusive merch at the Pokemon Center. This year, The Pokemon Company was forced to utilize a lottery syst🅠em to grant access to the shop. If you🌊 weren’t lucky enough to get your number pulled, you probably weren’t going to get in. There was only a two-hour window every day where spectators were allowed to line up to visit the store, but the line ran so far through the North Annex of the convention center, extending through multiple floors, that many never made it in at all, or only got through once a lot of the high-demand items were sold out.
While most of the things at the store were Worlds-themed, only six items were exclusive to in-person visitors of the Pokemon Center during the weekend, and not sold online. Last ♓year you could find the exclusives on the store shelves, but this year you had to pick up a ticket for each item when you entered the store - one per person - and trade the ticket for the item at checkout, which were kept under strict supervision behind the counter. These six items were three playmats, two coin & damage counter sets, and a commemorative Yokohama Pikachu deck that came with a special promo card. Naturally, I bought all six.
That was just the beginning of my shopping spree. My big mistake was entering the Pokemon Center without a plan. I figured I’d buy some shirts and any Umbreon merch I could find, then see what else grabbed my attention. When I saw how tightly controlled the exclusive items were, I grabbed one of each ticket and figured I’d decide at checkout which ones I actually wanted to buy. If I didn’t buy them right then, I’d never have another chance. This mentality was ultimately my downfall, as I packed my shopping bag with more 🍃and more merchandise.
At first I just wanted to pick up the obvious things. Beyond the exclusives, there was a shirt that featured the aforementioned Pikachu-eating-ramen, so I grabbed that. Then I saw pins featuring the three Paldean starters, which will look great up on my pin board, so I grabbed those🃏 too. I got a shirt for my partner, and another button-down shirt with a cool ocean pattern and lots of hidden water Pokemon. I felt like I was starting to reach a satisfying amount of product when I encountered an entire aisle dedicated to Umbreon.
This feels like a personal attack on me, one o൲f the world’s most outspoken Umbreon fans. I didn’t think twice about grabbing one of everything, which included two playmats, two sleeves, and a plush. If I had made it out then, I probably wouldn’t be too▨ scared to open my banking app right now, I probably wouldn’t be eating cold cuts and ramen for the next two months, and I probably wouldn’t be pacing around my apartment with a Wailord-sized﷽ pit in my stomach. Unfortunately, one big-ticket item completely eclipsed the cost of everything else in my bag: the exclusive Pokemon Worlds 2023 Bear Walker skateboard.
I have a couple of Bear Walker’s handcrafted Pokemon skateboards already (they’re both Umbreon-themed, shocker) so when I saw the shelf full of ramen-eating Pikachu boards, I knew how expensive they are and chose to mind my own business. I almost made it all the way out of the shop, but I foolishly doubled back to look for one of my media compatriots, 𝓡who I found back at the front🅠, holding a skateboard.
“Everyone keeps telling me I need to buy one of these,” he said. “They say they’re super exclusive.” It’s true, they are. Only 500 Yokohama skateboards were produced, and each one comes with a card that certifies its authenticity with its exact number. All 500 of them are sold at this specific Pokemon Center, so the only way you could possibly get one is if you flew to Japan, won the entry lottery, and got in before they all sold out. We were in ♚the perfect position, one of the lucky few that even had a chance to buy the skateboard, and as we stood there agonizing over the decision, a Pokemon Center employee walked by and said “Those are going to be completely gone in an hour if you don’t buy one right now.” So of course I did.
The price of the deck was 49,500円, a little over $340 USD, and almost the exact price of everything else I purchased combined. My total for this trip to the Pokemon Center was 100,431円, and among the group of games ✱journalists I traveled🏅 with, I was the biggest spender of the day. I should also mention this was only the second of three Pokemon Centers we visited during the trip, God help me.
As anxiety-inducing as the total was, if I could do it again I’d make the same decisions every time. Yokohama Pokemon Worlds was an experience I’ll never forget, and it’s nice to have some things to commemorate my time there. Maybe I went a little overboard on the Umbreon merch, and maybe I didn’t need all the exclusives. But if you were in a once-in-a-lifဣetime 🥃situation like this, what would you have done? You would have bought the skateboard, that’s what.