March 27, 2006

• Japan At Last! Part 4-Akihabara, Izagaya, and Maid Cafe

  After wandering around Harajuku for a while, Andy and I decided to take
  a walk down tokyo’s equivalent of rodeo drive. This is a normal sunday
  crowd. Well, maybe not entirely normal, since a new department store
  was opening up, but nevertheless, there were a lot of people there. And
  if these pics arent showing up, go here or click on the pic itself, as i have hyperlinked the photos to where i posted them individually
  
  From the shopping mall scene, we caught a train over to akihabara, also
  known as electric town. Why might it be called this you may wonder?
  well wonder no more! After ww2 the army and navy sold off their
  surplus electric
  equipment here…students would buy the parts and make radios then
  return to akihabara tio sell them…ever since this is the place to buy
  electronics in japan, no matter how strange or unwieldy…in search of
  electric nose hair clippers? well this would be your best bet to find
  them!
  
  This is an alleyway in Akihabara. An alley. at night. electric town starting to make more sense now?
  
  
  But i get ahead of myself…You see akihabara is not just a place
  to by various electric geegaws and doodads or even whatchamacallits. It
  is also a place with video game arcades stretching up 7 stories high,
  and department stores even higher. Whoever said New York is the city
  for shopping has clearly never been to tokyo, where anything you can
  imagine is available for purchase…
  
  for instance, ipods and panties. The machines above the lights are
  called “dream gets” You place sen en (or about $10) into the machine,
  and a little opaque plastic ball comes out. Inside the ball will be
  ,depending on the display case, either a ticket for an ipod, a
  playstation two, or more commonly, a wadded up pair of womens
  undergarments. The picture was taken because i know you would not
  believe me
  

  ---

  
  steve, however, was only too happy to test the machines (this pic
  courtesy of my friend the machine, who will appear in a later post

  A famous chain store in Japan is Don Quixote. It pretty much sells
  anything you can think of. Hence the panties. Anyway, one other thing
  that Akihabara is known for besides electronics and randomness is
  maids. The Japanese have a strange fascination with being served and
  waited upon by women in elaborate costumes. So when andy told me about
  a maid themed cafe in Akihabra, I was all for it.
  
  which way to the good eats, ladies?

  You would not believe how many dirty old japanese men were clustering
  around taking pics of these two and every other girl so dressed up. But
  then again, since most of you probably consider me a dirty old man,
  perhaps you would…

  What Andy did not know however, were exactly how many maid cafe’s exist
  in akihabara, and how long the wait was. We found one in Don Quixote on
  the 5th floor,

  ---

  

  but the wait was over an hour, and no pictures were allowed
  inside…the dirty old man rule again. So we ricocheted from corner to
  corner until we found all 9 of the maid themed cafe’s, at each one a 1
  hour wait or greater. Seeing as how we were too hungry to wait that
  long, we opted to go to a maid massage parlor instead
  
  good decision…

  We paid for the back and leg massage which was about 20 dollars for 20
  minutes. However, since we were busy chatting up our masseuses in
  Japanese, we managed to stretch it out to about 30…score one for
  andysensei and The Josh on charm and wit…
  
  Now that’s what i call a happy ending
  Following the massage, as part of the service, you receive a cup of tea
  and a biscuit. Enjoying our tea, Andy and I began a conversation with
  the only other patron in this particular establisment. Well, Andy
  actually began the conversation because after almost two years of
  living there, his japanese is far superior to mine
  
  Anyway, we learned that the gentleman was named Sekiya San, and was
  a food critic for a well known tokyo magazine, which he is holding.
  Having learned this useful little bit of information, we invited him
  out to dinner with us, and then asked if he could recommend anywhere
  good, considering that i wanted to try a number of foods unique to
  Japan.
  
  btw, here are our maid masseuse. The one on the right is named
  maria, and speaks english and hindi in addition to japanese…hello
  kitty!
  
  I don’t actually know why they dress the maids up as cats, but i am
  totally okay with it. But I digress…Sekiya took us to a famous
  akihabara izagaya for dinner. An Izagaya is a japanese version of a
  tapas bar. You go with a group of people, and you order several
  different dishes which everyone shares.
  
  A few examples of what we ate from the top: grilled squid, chicken
  cartilage, broiled fish, and okonomiyaki, which is basically japanese
  pizza (DONT WORRY! It’s non dairy, i was safe…)
  
   
  If  you ever get the opportunity to eat with a food critic, by
  all means i encourage you to do so! Sekiya San kept up a running
  commentary on a number of the dishes being served to us while we were
  eating, and knew what things to steer us to and away from
  
  On the plate above, you are looking at chicken sashimi (the white
  meat) and basashi (horse meat) Now I am not a big consumer of the red
  meat, but if i go to another country, i suspend my personal dietary
  preferences to try things out, and ya know what? Horse meat is a hell
  of a lot better than i would have given it credit for…it is a very
  sweet taste and delicate texture. The chicken sashimi on the other hand
  tasted pretty much like you would expect raw chicken to taste like
  …not bad, but nothing to write home about. Except I guess I am
  writing about it right now. ANyway, If the Japanese prepare it raw, i
  will probably eat it
  
  I’m so hungry, I could eat a horse….oh wait…I AM!
  
  Mmm thinks andy…tastes like chicken!
  
  Another fun fact we learned from sekiya san. After WW2, there was
  no beer to be found anywhere in japan because the barley had all gone
  into food production. So students would go to these izagayas with very
  little money but wanting to get drunk. What they would do is order a
  bottle of super cheap sake, which was still in abundance, and then add
  to it some non-alcoholic hops, which were still plentiful. PRESTO! You
  now have a drink that is cheaper than beer, but tastes just like it,
  called hoppy! Hence the label on the bottle above
  
  The hidden skills of the people at the table next to us
  
  Finally, we finished our meal, and went our separate ways, although
  both Andy and I still have sekiya’s contact info, and I fully intend to
  look him up again.

  -J

  Fun Fact:
  The world record for holding ones breath is 16 minutes and 24 seconds.

  • 3:57 pm
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