Day 7 Notes

Ippudo Ramen — It’s in Ebisu on Meiji-dori. Looks like an older establishment — old rushed wooden frame, sliding doors. Really great ramen. The broth is flavorful. You can feel it in the back of your throat. The noodles are firm and I believe hand made. I got the lunch special with gyoza and rice.

I went to Shinjuku afterwards so I could see it in the daytime. So it’s basically like a part underground city. The JR and subway lines lead right into this long underground stretch of tunnel that connects a whole bunch of different skyscrapers (i.e.. the Cocoon) together. After walking that long stretch you exit into a view dominated by high-rises. There’s the Tokyo metropolitan government building which has two towers. There is a pickle shaped building called the cocoon. As you keep walking you come up against Shinjuku-Chou Park. It looked to be half under construction.

There also seem to be a great deal of homeless people here. Including a shanty town by the Shinto shrine. The tents are all made out of blue tarps. These guys have their own bikes. One guy even had an analog clock hanging on a tree limb. There were a ton of homeless guys — or guys that looked homeless — sitting around the park and laying on benches. They didn’t seem to bother anybody. I watched stylish looking girls, school girls, business men walk through the park wearing their headsets jamming away to music completely oblivious to them. The homeless didn’t attack them for money — by far maybe the most pleasant homeless people? The ones in SF are the worst — they demand money and they’re shameless about it. The homeless guys that worked the street corners in downtown Los Angeles were okay. Crazy in the head. Anyhow I’m no expert on Japan’s homeless problem and nor do I want to turn this travelogue into a sociological discussion about it.

After Shinjuku I went back to Akiba for a second round. Well technical a third. I bought all of the K-ON girls so I can form the entire band sans the little girl the picked (the new first year) — apparently you need to buy them all to get Ritsu’s drum set — that’s another reason why I like the figures there’s some pretty neat hardware that comes with each girl — keyboards, guitars, drum kits.

I looked for Maria-sama ga Miteru gasaphon again. I thought some of the nameless and faceless stories would have them in little baggies which would make my life easier, but no. They don’t. I had to ask the store clerks which made me feel dumb especially when I had to spell it out for them. All of the Gasaphon stores failed me — all the ones I found anyway. There’s just the one machine in all of Akiba where you cal get the Rosa Chinensis family of characters. So now I have Youko, Sachiko (hooray), and Touko — I was really hoping for a Yumi, but I have two Toukos instead. She’s a crazy bitch.

After I did my last minute shopping, I had some time to kill because I missed the 19:00 train back to Mito. I figured I would take the 21:00 train. I stopped by Club Sega and got my ass handed to me in Street Fighter 4. Only 100 yen to play. It was fun regardless.

Then I decided to do the ultimate otaku thing: I went to a maid cafe.

I went to Maidreamin. They’re on Chou-dori — right along the strip on the 4th floor of one of the nondescript buildings there. A maid is standing outside trying to hustle people to get inside and I figured, what the hell. I’ll do it. I needed somewhere to sit for a bit because I was tired. If they served some cake or ice cream that might hit the spot. Tea would be better for my sour throat.

I went up to the fourth floor and I was immediately greeted by a girl in a frilly maid outfit. I don’t remember what she said to me but she bowed very deeply. My first reaction was to ask: “Where’s your bathroom?” Which I think they ignored and went on to try and sell me on coming in. The girl noticed that it was my first time so she explained it to me. She spoke fairly decent English (thank god). I’ll try and explain what she told me here:

First you pay for the time you spend in the maid cafe. There’s the option to sit at the bar or at a sofa. The bar is 500 yen for 30 minutes and 1000 yen for 60. The sofa is double that and is better for groups of people instead of lonely nobodies — uh, like me. Yeah…

The place was colored…how shall I put it. Colored in pink. The sofas were pink. The bar was white with a pink heart at the end. The walls, pink. This isn’t a big room we’re talking about, and aside from the bar and the sofas/tables that make up the rest of the cafe there’s a small stage that is used for performances and photo-taking as I found out later. Also…there’s a disco ball. Oh yeah.

So I sat down at the bar. A maid came over and set down a cloth wipe, a small plate of rice crackers and peanuts, and my maid shows me the menus. They have an Engrish menu written with some epic broken Engrish. They even mention that they learned some recipe from a “Mr. size Baba,” whoever that is. There’s a lot of jib-jab in the menu about a grandmother that left bend recipes. “A time to remember with your favorite maid!” was the tag line for the photo taking option that costs 500 yen. “Sometimes playing games leads to violent inappropriate fighting” (or something like that) was the tag for the various games you could play with the maids, which amount to Jenga, a Crocodile game, and some game that you could play for up to 5 minutes. I ordered Maple Strawberry tea, a parfait because my maid recommended it (she was fairly insistent about it, probably because its pretty expensive at 1300 yen, re, and good, good as in diabetes sweet.)

A different maid brought out my tea and she put it in front of me and crouched down on the otherside of the counter. “Here is your tea, master!” She announced as she presented the kettle. She poured me a cup and held up a pixie stick and a small container of milk. “Sugar or milk?” I opted for both. Oh before she served me, she had me do a little, shall we call it an incantation. Using her hands she made a heart over her left shoulder than her right and then dead center and spread her hands out towards me and told me to do the same. “Coopie, Coopie, Coopie, nayooh!” And tea was served.

It wasn’t half bad either. I had gone there hoping to get some tea since my throat’s sour from the cold I got and it did help.

I got my parfait soon after. I did a similar incantation with the girl but this time we were to draw a heart with our fingers and then end with a neko pose. (Nyah, nyah!)

I dug into my parfait. By the time I finished I was certain that I might have diabetes. It was a glass of cornflakes and del monte soaked in syrup fruit in a can with ice cream scooped over top. On top of that whipped cream and fudge. A wafer pie bowel and in that small cylinder of puddling and sitting on top of that glued to the top with whipped cream with a small dog faced, kawaii, animal formed out of cookies and frosting. I ate the whole thing.

Everything here is very saccharine sweet. The girls run around in their maid outfits talking in high pitched anime girl voices — I’m sure that drives the otaku nuts. They really got into things. Some of the other japanese costumers really get into it too laughing and having a good time. At one point during my stay all of the girls started clapping and goading someone on — I don’t know why or what for since it was out of my field of view.

In the end I opted to have one photo take with a maid. She brought me onto the makeshift stage and wear a pair of pink cat ears. The other girl brought out a polariod camera and snapped us together. My maid server went and drew cat drawings all over the picture and returned it to me. I also bought a “magic candle” from her for 400 yen. The only thing I didn’t do was play a game with her, but I honestly didn’t feel like it.

So… you basically get an allotted amount of time that you can stay at the maid cafe. My time was up at 8;45 pm, but I couldn’t stay that long because I was going to catch a train. So I left early and went on my way.

Of all the girls, my server knew the most English. She came by a few times and asked me where I was from and how long I was in Japan and where I was staying. A great deal of my time has been spent observing Japanese people — sadly, she’s the first one I’ve really interacted with on a level more than “sumimasen…”

I rode the Super Hitachi from Mito to Ueno Station. I planed to write it back. One hitch, It’s for reserved seats only. That threw me for a loop. I went back to tell the station manager that I needed a ticket and he just pointed at the machines. Double dumbass on me. Using the JR pass you can get a reserved seat for free on a limited or limited express train. I didn’t know that since it was 2 minutes until the train was going to leave, I was sweating from running, and in a pinch trying to figure out how to use the ticket machine that threw up nonsensical characters to me. A very kind and gracious lady, whom I hope got on the train, helped me out. God bless her and her ancestors.

I made it back to Mito just in time for the rain.