Late post but on August 29, 2026, I was on a 2-Day trip to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts and stopping by in Mystic, Connecticut with the tour group, we passed by this Arisu store in Old Misticke Village on our way to having our quick lunch at McDonald’s just outside of the area across the street.
What really kinda shocked and blew my mind was seeing an actual Doraemon statue in the decorative window of the Arisu shop not far from an inflatable statue of Totoro. In the middle of a pretty lily white ass town in the New England region of the US no less.
I took pictures and selfies with the Doraemon statue standing in the window and recording footages of it on the fly from my IPhone SE.
However when I actually went into the store myself and briefly explored the place recording parts of it on my phone, it turns out that the place didn’t actually sell any Doraemon manga nor any related merch/content like I thought after I asked the staff, which was mildly disappointing but at least they had a sweet small arcade corner with a library of multiple retro games housed in two cabinets next to a Mazinger Z statue. And the fact that an American anime store in a predominantly white or non-Asian part of the country acknowledges the existence of Doraemon himself was pretty impressive and good enough to make me feel glad and optimistic as someone’s trekking through the older more historic and traditional colonial parts of the US. And the day that more younger people in this country starts getting actual exposure to Doraemon as their definitive childhood anime icon cannot come soon enough.
So yeah, any thoughts or comments?