Romping Round Tokyo: Day Three: The Gaijining

On the morning of our third day in Tokyo, Ayumi departed to take a bullet train to Kanazawa, so she could visit a friend who just had twins. Next time, I will definitely go there to meet them, but this time Caleb, Erin, and I, explored together the more "さすがジャパン" kind of places in Tokyo. That means we basically spent the day in Akihabara, where all the crazy stuff you see on the internet with a headline like "Japan has a Gundam cafe," or  "Japan has cafes where maids make you dance."

I've been to Japan three times now, and up to this point had still never really seen that side. It's the sort of thing to which a degree in Japanese tends to give you an aversive, knee-jerk reaction.

But at some point, you gotta do it. And honestly, even if I feel guilty to admit it, I was excited to.

Rush Hour in Tokyo

Before that, I wandered around a bit in the morning, during rush hour, to get a feel for the city. Big cities always have their own vibe, along with the neighborhoods in them. In this case, I went to Rainbow Bridge at Shinagawa station, and tried to take in just how many people there are in the world's most populous city.

TAITO STATION: Akihabara

When getting off at Akihabara station, you're greeted with signs pointing you to "Akihabara Electric Town." Electric Town is made up of a few blocks of bombastically-decorated buildings and bright facades. I'm sure there are good food places somewhere here—but we didn't find them, which in a way, made the whole experience even better. This day was sort of all about "being bad," in my mind.

None of my photos of the street turned out, so here's a stock photo of Electric Town:

Akihabara at night: nothing but signs and lights! Gorgeous.

Taito Station is an arcade chain with several locations and, if I recall, more than one in Electric Town.

The one we went to had six floors, each of which had a different theme:

• B1: Purikura (Print Club; the photo booths that make your eyes crazy)
• 1F: "UFO Catchers" (Claw Machines)
• 2F: Prize Games
• 3F: Card & Arena Games
• 4F: Fighting & Rhythm Games
• 5F: Race & Fighting Games
• 6F: Race & Miscellaneous Games

The card games on the third floor were crazy. Not only do you bring your own cards that somehow are detected by the game (RFID?) , but you actually play the arcade game using them. It was kind of a VR Yugioh thing. As Erin noted, this is a brilliant money maker: you get the cash from card collecting, and from the players having to go to the arcade to rank up. It actually looked really cool, albeit way too complicated for any of us to pick up in a couple hours.

I played a game of Initial D, a racing game my friend Tim turned me on to, on the top floor. I got a player card!

My hometown in the world of Initial D is Tokyo.

Then we continued by going down one floor to play some fighting games. It wound up being like a Dragonball Z fight, with a lot of back and forth. I properly slew Caleb at Street Fighter. He responded by changing to another character, and ripping me a new one. We yelled at each other over the screens, which were positioned between us like a wall, about how "This isn't even my final form," etc.

After we ran out of Senzu Beans and Final Forms, we went and played rhythm games instead:



My favorite find in the arcade, though, was this game called CHUNITHM. A very addictive rhythm game that had a decent musical selection. There were some guys near us, who were playing with gloves and were working up a sweat.



Do want. Do want.

One thing I don't love about a lot of places in Japan is the smoking policy. Basically, smoke anywhere except the streets of Hakata city. This happens to include arcades. So once the smell of cigarette smoke was too much, we booked it and found the nearest ramen shop.

Undisclosed Garbage Ramen Shop

Long story shot: the ramen sucked. It was a greasey, gamey tasting mess of oil and particles, and I couldn't even finish my bowl. We probably should have done a little more research, because that ramen shop wound up being a gastronomical adventure through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Erin somehow beasted trough it like a champ, and Caleb did too. My heroes.

Somehow I had the feeling that not all food in Japan was amazing (you know, because it's a real-life place), but now I have actually experienced it. Having that experience is really grounding, in a way. And even though the lunch sucked, it was kind of awesome. Sort of how you have to buy a knock-off watch when you go to Manhattan.

I've got a theory that, because they're on the main-street front of probably the most touristy place in Tokyo, that their business model relies solely on one-time customers.

Christmas Macarena

Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention originally. We heard a Christmas Remix of The Macarena, somewhere in Akihabara, as we wandered around. I don't have a good recording of it, but I found it on YouTube.

Pachinko Parlor

Caleb wanted to try pachinko, since it's a pretty well-known element of contemporary Japanese culture. Somehow braving the cigarette smoke, he gave it a shot. Just like when you go to Vegas, you gotta put five bucks into a slot machine, right?

I really don't get pachinko. Probably none of do, even after trying it. Basically, you shoot steel balls into a thing, some pointless rules that are probably made to be difficult to understand happen, and then you have a chance to get more steel balls. When you're done, you exchange the steel balls for a prize. Then you have successfully paid the Yakuza some money.

But just like everything else, this was about the experience. And that was definitely one more thing to cross off of the list.

"Maidreamin" Maid Cafe

Perhaps the highlight of the day. Let me explain. Basically, it's a cafe where your waitress is dressed as a maid, and sort of flirts with you. She acts as cute as possible, like sickeningly, hilariously cute, and does things like decorate your coffee with a chocolate-syrup bunny, or makes you wear cat ears and pose. That's it!

We bought the minimum package, which did not include the private show (probably a pop song and dance memorized by the waitress). But we did get cutely decorated coffees, dessert, a couple photos, and were allowed to put a doodle into her guest book.

There we are, in all our Maid-cafe glory

Worth noting that our waitress, whose alias was Kiiru, was about 4'10" at most. I was worried that the atmosphere would be kind of creepy, because maid cafes tend to attract a somewhat seedy crowd, but it was pretty dang fun, looking back on it. How often do you get to wear a bunny-ear headbands in public, and get pictures with a world-class chocolate syrup artist?

So, we three can now say we've done this, and that's about all I have to say about that.

Purikura

If you haven't seen purikura before, it's basically a photo booth on steroids. Almost all of them automatically rounden your eyes in each shot, and they let you do things like change your hair color, add makeup, and draw cute shapes.

So this happened:

Click the image to see it full size. The machine got my beard mixed up with my lips. Damn do we all look great.

We've got more purikura from Fukuoka too, with all four of us. That's upcoming.

Izakaya: Tori-Tetsu

To finish off the night, we decided to avoid taking the train during rush hour, because Tokyo trains during rush hour are almost precisely as crowded as YouTube depicts them. Instead, we found an Izakaya near the station and had some surprisingly good food. Not going to make particular note of anything, but it was a good place to hang out (great atmosphere and very quiet).

Conclusion

For me, a highlight of the day was that it was the first time I really, truly, was on my own in Japan. Ayumi always does a great job of taking care of everyone she travels with, especially if you're in Japan and are not a native Japanese speaker. This time, I had to rely on myself to talk to people, ask train attendants questions, order food, ask for help in a store, and so on. And it all went pretty smoothly, as if I had studied the language and culture for many years.

Ayumi very adorably kept checking on us, making sure we weren't lost or anything like that. And we really missed her, which is why we were so happy to see here again in Kyoto!

Besides that, it was pretty great to finally try all the weird stuff I'd been subconsciously avoiding. Life is about experiences, including things like maid cafes and bad ramen. All in all, the day was pretty grand.