Akihabara Redux

Links once again to the pics I snapped at the bottom of this post. Pics now sorted by day.

The next morning we were up at the crack of noon. Thanks to a combination of the heat and the down duvet supplied to each bed, I managed to only get about 4 hours of shuteye. Waking up bleary-eyed, we decided to head out to the Imperial Palace, nominally a 10 minute walk from our hotel, but in reality a trip that took us 25 minutes as I searched for a convenient store for a cell-phone recharger that uses standard AAs. With my phone back up and being charged (albeit slowly), we headed into the Palace grounds proper.

The Imperial Palace grounds are huge. While I don't know the exact size, it was certainly enough to be a district of Tokyo in and of its own. A 10x10 city block area might be an exaggeration, but not by much. There wasn't a whole lot to see though, other than your usual tourist trappings. Beautiful trees, interesting looking buildings, the massive walls and ramparts, and the ruins of the old Edo donjon. OK, but only fun in the sense that playing tourist is fun. It was a good wind-down to our previous night, and walking around was a relaxing experience.

Things picked up when Jon and his buddies showed up, as things inevitably do when a bunch of young guys go anywhere. We revisited some of the places Ian and I had gone to, but soon we were off, back to Akihabara.

Despite my initial impressions, I was keen to head back there. After all, there is nary the geek or otaku that can resist the call of such a place, and I qualify under both columns. Our intention was to find one the shrines of otakudom, the maid cafe, and armed with fliers and maps in hand, we set off. The first place we checked (porn-shops not-withstanding), was an over-heated bust. Our next stop seemed more promising, but it was small and we would have needed to break our group up, and still wait for a while for seating. We left our names and decided to check elsewhere. We, or at least 4 out of the 6 of us, ended up at a place call Cos-cha. I enjoyed it on a sort of basic level as an experience in Akihabara, but I as foreigners, the maid/waitresses were a little intimidated. Add to that our complete inexperience with the whole thing, we ultimately were a little disappointed...until the show.

While all we did was sit and have some drinks and oggle a couple of the maids, some of the more experienced Otaku (note the capital "O", for they were very obviously uber-otakus, made up from parts of lesser otaku like myself) decided to partake of the pancake eating game. This attracted the attention of all the cafe. The rules were simple. One of the maids and the customer face off in a pancake eating contest. If the customer can eat 2 pancakes faster than the maid can eat one, then the customer wins and gets something (I missed what the actual prize was), and the other patrons of the cafe can get a picture with the losing maid, a priviledge normally paid for. However, if the maid wins, the customer is punished. Easy-peasy lemon-squeezy, right?

WRONG!

Admittedly, the guy tried hard. He lost by one or two bites, but when he got up, his cheeks were definitely channeling some chipmunk. The maid on the other hand, somehow managed to combine pancake-gorging with dainty elegance. Must be a maid secret power. By this time, we had recieved a call from the other cafe, and we were settling up. Most of us were looking back at the antics going on with the losing customer and the maid with sort of casual interest, mostly because there were making some noise. Suddenly, we were treated to perhaps the funniest sight of my Tokyo experience:

As punishment for losing the pancake game, the maid got to BITCH-SLAP the customer!!!

That got a rise out of the rest of the customers, as well as the gaijin about to leave. I don't know if there was some pent-up aggression behind that slap, but it was loud.

We headed around the corner to the other maid cafe, Mefle. By this time, Jon and crew had to jet, so it was up to Ian and I to troop on. Ian was a bit reluctant, but I was determined to try at least one more place. We made out way to the cafe, and were treated to a much more authentic experience. At the risk of sounding too lecherous, I enjoyed myself and have pics to prove it.

Afterwards, having completed that holiest of rituals, we started to explore Akihabara with renewed vigour. For me, that meant hitting up some of the local hobby stores. While I didn't find what I had come to look for, I ended up with some neat stuff to make my Marui M4 more "tacticool", while Ian managed to flesh out his soundtrack collection even more. As night fell, we headed back to the hotel.

It was not for sleep though, at least not yet. Tired as we were, the night was still young. So after a brief rest at the hotel, we searched out a local izakaya (bar). After 2 jumbo-sized beers, and some good izakaya-chow, we ended the night full and slightly sauced. I'll admit that the otaku in me was still ultimately unsatisfied with my foray in Akihabara, and the beer allowed me to voice my conviction to return there and buy something outstandly geeky, a souveneir par excellence of my time in otaku-Mecca. For now though, we called it a night relativly early, determined to get the most out of our last day...

Pictures Here.