14.02.2018 TOKYO
In the morning, we walked from our hostel to Tokyo’s district Akihabara, since it was only a few subway stops away. On the way, we came across numerous shops craddled under the railway arches and I bought a new cord for the necklace Manu got me from Rhodos (the old one broke).
Also, we took a few moments to take a look at the shrine we discovered on the way:
In Akihabara, we made our first stop at Yodobashi electronics store – we looked at some records, listened to J-Pop (totally intentionally), were amazed by the amount of Star Wars & Marvel merch and tried out a vibrating plate (it feels SO funny).
There was also a box of Star Wars figures in a box, performing the Imperial March (sorry for the audio quality, there are better examples in Youtube though):
Akihabara is known as an otaku cultural center (otaku being a Japanese term for people with obsessive interests, mostly used for hardcore anime and manga fans). Today, we decided to try out a thing that has its origins in Akihabara because of exactly that reason: visit a Maid Cafe. It’s a kind of cosplay cafe, where the waitresses dress as French maids and address/treat you as their master/princess. They made a real show out of everything (sitting down, showing the menu, ordering,…) and spoke with a squeaky voice; I had a really hard time understanding what they wanted to say. The whole place was decorated in pink/rose, we got bunny ears to wear and the music was pretty… special… as well.
Still in Akihabara, we tried some Taiyaki (pastry in fish-form with mostly red beans or sweet potato filling) without knowing what is was, or even if it’s sweet or salty and it turned out to be simply delicious. Later, we accidentally walked through a park with a big artificial lake in the middle, before making our way to another green area, the Hibiya Park, located next to the Imperial Palace.
We had dinner that evening at a nice place near the train station, where Manu had to follow some instructions on how to eat his dish: first, you put a scrambled raw egg into the hot soup and stirr, then one by one dip the noodles into the bowl (they would have been cold otherwise) and enjoy.
BGC: 15 (+3)