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Our goal for Monday was to go to Ueno, Okachimachi, and just sort of hang out and buy toys and stuff. We ate a yummy breakfast at Jonathan's - an American chain family-style restaurant (with a wide variety of delicious Japanese foods.) Lots of kids hang out at these places and it is really relaxed.

Ueno is about a 15-20 minute walk from Akiba. There's a huge park, a zoo, tons of museums, a shrine... it's pretty rad. There is a big lake in the center of the park, and last time the water was hardly visible due to the forest of 'fuki', or butterbur plants growing up out of the water. A lot of the plants were dried out and dead this time - I think they are more of a late-summer/autumn thing. Like some other parks we've seen, Ueno park is home to many of Tokyo's homeless.

We climbed up some steep stairs to the shrine that sits at the top of the hill, next to the park. There were kitties everywhere, just hanging out, walking around. There were lots of people there too, enjoying the weather, eating their bentos, or just walking around. We aimlessly wandered around, and there was this huge mural advertising a manga convention, so we got a picture of it.

We eventually made our way to a sort of "commons" area, and there was a massive bonsai show going on!. There were several rows of stalls full of bonsai of all types - mostly flowering. We took a bunch of pictures, but I'm going to only put a few up here... We actually skipped seeing one of the rows... we just missed it... and we were sooo tiny-tree'd out by that time. But here's a bunch of pics! If you hate tiny trees, you'll hate the next 17 images...

Apparently, bonsai aren't cool enough for people under 60 here, as we were half the age of everyone else there... ev's. So what, I like little trees! Anyway, we headed across this pedestrian walkway that was actually the roof of the train station, and made our way across the street to one of my favorite toy stores in the world; Yamashiroya. Seven floors of awesome. Dragonquest, Ultraman, Godzilla, Ghibli - FTW. Purchases were made. Hunger struck. Luckily, there are a ton of conveyor belt sushi (kaiten-zushi) places all around here. Luckily, we were armed with this data ahead of time - so, kaiten-zushi it is! (A lot of Westerners think Japanese food is all about sushi... this was the only sushi place we ate at. I like to show more of what the average urban Japanese eats.)

It was okay. The fatty tuna and the kohada were excellent. Afterwards, it was time to walk through the Okachimach marketplace in search of katsuobushi and katsuobushi kezuriki. I found a little shop selling vacuum-sealed katsuobushi, which I thought had a better chance of getting through customs. I immediately found the katsuobushi shop that I remembered from last time, and so I purchased a shaver from them. They were very friendly, and the guy tested it for me on some katsuo to show me it was a sharp blade. Then an Annoying Foreigner Thing happened. Remind me to write about it later - it's too much for this post.

Newly won katsuobushi and shaver in hand, I was good to go. I had my knives, my pots, and my katsuobushi and katsuobushi kezuriki. Time to head back to Akiba and drop this stuff off!

Toy store time. Manga store time. We saw so many little shops - I don't see how they all stay in business. We went into a store that sold maid uniforms, "clothing", "toys"... it's right next to Akihabara station, across from that Curry House restaurant place. It's weird to walk through a store, looking at all the awesome anime stuff, turn a corner and slowly realize "Oh...umm, I guess this is the dildo section of the toy store... hmm...". We did manage to find this place that sells tons of old school transformers and other toys, crammed to the ceiling with awesome stuff. Money was spent, but I really forget what was bought where. You could spend a week just going to toy stores in Akiba and not see the same one twice. Of course, after all that walking and shopping it was maid cafe time. The cafe on the menu tonight is called "MaiDreamin". Here are some pics I found online of the interior.. Sandy took the cute coasters they made for us.

Then it was arcade time! I played two crane games and won cute stuff! Sandy won stuff too. I typically do not feed money into crane machines, but for some reason I was inspired, and I wons a prize on the first try on each of them. We mad our way back to the hotel, swinging by Family Mart to pick up snacks, and watched Back to the Future in English with Japanese subs. We also saw a crazy food show where they put jam, eggs, milk and rice in a rice cooker and made a yummy, custardy dessert! I totally want to do this!

Breakfast at Denny's.

Last time we were in Japan, we found this little town called Adachi... well, we thought it was called Kita-Senju, but it turns out that is just the name of the train station in Adachi. There's really nothing too special about it... just markets lining the roads, cute winding neighborhoods, nothing touristy. Okay, so it's population is larger then Seattle's, but it seems like a little town. Anyway, a common practice in Japan is to paint murals on the doors of shops that are closed, and Adachi had a lot of cool ones. They had cool decorated tiles embedded in the sidewalk too.

We walked up and down the market streets, through winding alleys (which are actually neighborhoods) and to a small shrine.

We were kind of thirsty and a tiny bit hungry, so we stopped in as little smoky cafe and ate yummy cake and iced coffee. Afterwards, we saw two shops worth a mention. I wish I would have gotten pics of the first one, which was a kids clothing store, but I never know if it's okay to take pictures in a store, and there were too many watchful eyes at the time... but OMGOOSES - Best Shirts Ever. The only one I recall said "Beans Club" on it, but seriously... if they made these in grownup sizes, I would have bought tons. We also found a little shop where Sandy bought a handmade ceramic Totoro from three adorable obaasans. When we walked in, they began nervously panicking over how little English they knew - I got that much - and they were giggling the whole time over it.

Making our way back to the station, we found out that the nearby mall had a Tokyu Hands store in it - one of my favorite Japanese stores. I was pretty much stocked up on bento boxes by this time, but Sandy wanted to buy some crafty stuff there. The top floor of the mall had a ton of restaurants in it - mostly of the European variety. You have to remember, though, this is Japanese "European". We decided on a place named "Rakeru" which had yummy, yeasty breads and omelets. Sandy loved the bread so much that we bought an extra loaf for later!

We shop a bit more, and Sandy finds a place that sells really nice sets of hiragana stamps... so she bought a set. Loaded up with stuff we get on the train and head back to Akiba to drop it all off at the hotel and roam the arcades. More prizes were won from crane machines, which can work up an appetite... so ramen it was. I've had ramen quite a few times around Tokyo, but we keep coming back to this place in Akiba. It's just so good.

posted by tangentbot @ 10:11 PM

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So, we checked out of our hotel early and opted to take a taxi to the Shin-Osaka station. Given that we had accumulated an extra bag of stuff, and the price and hassle of the subway while laden with said stuff was something we did not want to deal with, we were glad with the decision. It was about 25 bucks and took us 15 minutes or so. The subway would have been 10 bucks and taken 30 minutes, including a transfer, plus walking up and down stairs with luggage, plus dragging our crap onto already overcrowded trains... totally worth it.

We got bentos at the Shin-Osaka station, and ate them on the 3 hour trip to Tokyo aboard the Shinkansen. I got a picture of the inside, with the train official stamping tickets in the background.

We arrived in Tokyo, took a quick train to Akihabara, and checked into our room. Somehow, something got mixed up and they put us in a 'smoking' room - and the A/C blew cigarette smoke air. We requested a non-smoking room, which they told us we could move into the next morning, as the hotel was currently booked.

It was only 3pm, so we headed out into Akihabara, or Akiba, as the locals call it. Akiba is a ward of Tokyo, and the mecca of otaku worldwide. Girls in maid outfits hand out tissue-packets to passers-by, loudspeakers blast videogame soundtrack music, multi-story video arcades are on every corner, and shops catering to every hobby imaginable proliferate. Salarymen crowd the manga stores in their suits next to kids in their school uniforms. If you want cake and coffee served to you by girls in maid outfits (or get a foot massage, or play video games with them...), maid cafes are everywhere. If you want to buy a particular school uniform costume that appeared in some manga or anime episode, they have a store for that. If you build model trains, collect replica firearms, mod out action figures or eat, sleep and breathe video games, this is the place for you. It is simply one of the most awesome places I've ever been.

We walked around a bit, paid a visit to Don Quixote, and bought some little toys and stuff. I bought a gundam shirt and a tachikoma shirt, and we fed our 100 yen coins into tons of gashapon machines. We came to the conclusion that shipping stuff would cost a lot, so we are just going to buy one big piece of luggage and check it in on the plane. After awhile we got hungry, and there was no argument over where to eat; our most favorite ramen place was right around the corner, and it was as awesome as ever.

There were two tables of Chinese people in there and they were LOUD! They were right next to each other YELLING IN MANDARIN. Every other time we've been here in the past the place has been nearly void of conversation, even when packed with people; just the sound of slurping noodles and low murmuring. I have a problem with people disregarding local custom, and I do believe in the whole "you are an ambassador for your country" when traveling abroad. (Based on my experiences, I NEVER want to visit Europe... okay, maybe the U.K. and Scandanavia, but that's about it. The Americans and British we've encountered here are sort of oblivious and culture-shocked, but still nice; the Europeans have been outright arrogant, disrespectful and embarrassingly rude) /rant

We headed back to our smoky hotel room to retire after this slightly exhausting awesome day.

posted by tangentbot @ 2:42 AM

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Our original plans were to visit the Pacific coast at some point, as it is supposed to be amazing. We looked at some maps and researched a bit, only to discover that a trip to the Pacific coast would mean we would have to ride the same tiny train across the same area we saw on the way up here, for 3+ hours, ride it back to Aomori, then take the same route the very next day to get back to Tokyo. So we decided instead to travel down to Akita, on the Japan Sea side, on Thursday. This means today, Wednesday, we are doing a bit of shopping, relaxing, and hanging out.

For breakfast, I wanted ramen. We found a little place on the main strip called Osanai, which featured the local favorite, hotate (scallop) prominently in a multitude of dishes. I have heard that hotate-don (scallop rice bowl) is amazing, but as soon as I saw hotate ramen my mind was made up. You know how you get scallops, and they are these white hockey puck things? Well, these scallops were all dangly and complex, like they left all the good stuff on them! Which they did! Sandy had a noodle dish with a thick sauce, also with scallops. They were both awesome and delicious.

We walked around afterwards, buying up Aomori-themed souvenirs and checking out some of the places we had passed earlier. If you are planning a visit to Aomori, keep in mind that everything opens at 11am and closes at 7:30pm, unless you want to hang out at Family Mart or Lawson's every night. It was a nice, cool, rainy day; my favorite kind, and so we went back to that little bakery I mentioned in an earlier post and got some yummy momo pan and iced coffee. We sat in the smoky upstairs and listened to Japanese women gossip and it was all delicious. Except for the smoky part. We also got these cheese, katsu, egg bread abominations that were greasy and awesome.

Let's see, we hung out in a bookstore and read Japanese children's books, we walked in the rain through downtown, we drank some really good sake (Hanakizakura, in a pink bottle, if you can find it...), had curry for dinner, watched an hour long show on the scientific principles behind making perfect yakisoba, watched some kids shows... All in all, we pretty much beat this town already. Except for some museums and the Jomon-period ruins, the only other things I would want to see here happen in August, so a return trip is a big possibility. Tomorrow is a day trip to Akita, through the mountains, and Friday we ride the rails to Osaka.

Before I go, here's another video from the little local train ride here, just showing how empty it is and stuff... I forgot to post it before.

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