On Friday we woke up somewhat hungover, but not too bad, around noon. We got lunch at a Panini place and planned out our day. We decided to go to Akibara which is basically the geek capital of the world. Once we were off the train we were bombarded with anime, manga, pachinko, arcades, and tons of pimply teenagers. We went to a couple of arcades and finally found a DDR machine which we had to try and show off the moves.
There is a whole culture of geekdom in this place that we read about. Apparently, one of the staples of this culture is maid cafes. A maid cafe is basically a small cafe filled with girls dressed as anime maids who serve you soda and sweets, play games, and sing. They are everywhere in Akibara. Joe and I decided to try one of the more popular ones and it was actually pretty cool yet a little creepy. We got to @ home cafe on the 7th floor of some building and after being briefed on the rules (ex. no asking the maids personal information) we were seated. Everything is designed to look as cute as possible, from the pink interior to the J-pop music playing. It was filled with mostly young guys playing their PSPs but a couple of girls were there too. Joe got a little bunny shaped cake and I got a coke float. For a 500Y fee you can play games with the maid of your choice for 3 whole minutes. I ended facing one in some weird rock em sock em robot type game. After a hard fought battle I came out the winner and won a little prize which was a coaster with drawings on it by the maid. Joe got his picture taken with one for a fee too. The guy sitting next to us must have been to these cafes 1000 times because he had a book of all his photos with the maids. Unfortunately, he was a little shy to show us them but we saw the magnitude of his collection. It was a lot of fun and it was nice being a Tokyo nerd for the day.
Joe and I then went to Ginzu which is like Tokyo's fifth ave. There wasn't a lot to do there because we really don't have money to shop. We went to the Sony Building and looked at the new products. Then we stopped in a pretty big Apple store. We then went back to our hotel and headed back out for dinner. We found a conveyor belt sushi place that was amazing! The sushi chefs stand in the middle of the conveyor belt and just keep putting little plates on the belt while the customers just pick up which plate they want to eat. It was really inexpensive and the sushi was still excellent. Joe and I were stuffed by the end and decided to pregame in out hotel before hitting Rapongi.
Ropongi is the night life area of Tokyo. It's really sleazy and feels like Cancun. The bars don't get really going till midnight so we arrived around 11. It was a crazy night. Around 1am Joe and I arrived at the front door of a pretty well known club that had a 3,000Y fee to get in for guys. Just as we were debating on going in a out of shape white guy, who must have been in the club earlier, was denied entry by the bouncer because they have no re-ntry. After about 15 seconds the guy just leaped at the large muscle bound bouncer and a full brawl ensued. Joe and I watched for a little bit and just slipped right in for free. Yay! So that made us very happy. We met a ton of people and had a great but long night. The subways stop running at 1am so everyone stays out until they open up again at 5:30. This is what we did and emerging from the club to full sunlight wasn't a great experience. The trains were full of sleepy people and we finally made it back to out hotel around 6.
We tried to get up but couldn't till about 2pm today. With no motivation to really move we stayed local and saw "Knowing". Which actually turned out pretty good. Now we are planing out our 2nd to last night before going back home.
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