Tokyo Vacation May 2018 Day 3

Justin & Scott woke rather early, but I chose to sleep in a bit. We finally left the hotel at 11am. At the hotel driveway turnabout, my friend Jon texted us to inquire about joining us. We decided to agree upon a time and place later on. So we took the free hotel shuttle bus to Shinjuku Station. There, we took the Chuo-Sobu line to Akihabara. Initially we walked past the “Electric Town” exit, and took the northernmost exit from the station. We then followed the street beneath the elevated railroad tracks in search for the “Akiba no FleaMa.” However, we couldn’t find the otaku street market. The official website describes the flea market as underneath the railroad tracks, but we found only an empty lot fenced off for construction. In the evening I looked up the website again and realized that the May flea market dates had been canceled, presumably due to the construction.

Frustrated, we walked back toward Chuo Dori, first stopping in at the X Akihabara Honten store. Justin then suggested that we get an early lunch at a restaurant he spied from across the street. When we crossed the street to the establishment, we discovered that it offered only seafood. So we decided to proceed on. We stopped into the M’s Pop Life store where I purchased an inexpensive gag gift that a friend back home had asked me to procure. Then we made our way to Chuo Dori but noticed that the street hadn’t yet been blocked off for exclusive Sunday pedestrian traffic. Rather than initially dive into shopping, although Justin did make a brief side detour, we decided to prioritize acquiring lunch. Rather than try to find a restaurant on Chuo Dori, we crossed the street to the lane behind the KFC. There we spotted a second floor restaurant that looked appealing. The small restaurant consisted primarily of a row of stools facing the wall. When we entered, we each utilized the computer terminal, after switching its menu to English, to choose our food selections. The machine printed out tickets, and we sat down. Only then did we realize that we were once again eating at another branch of the Yokohama Iekei Ramen Ichikakuya chain. Justin & I both ordered the “stamina” empowering karaage bowl – a bowl of white rice topped with fried boneless chunks of sautéed chicken – while Scott tried the Hawaiian curry – a slightly sweeter version of Japanese curry with a hamburger patty. Each meal included a bowl of miso soup and cost about 1,000 yen.

When we left the restaurant, we marched into the Kotobukiya store. I purchased two “blind box” Nyanboard office-style clips for 200 yen each. I then found Justin & Scott on the second floor. Both of them were holding items selected from the first floor, despite signs seemingly everywhere stating that products must be purchased on their respective floors.

I browsed the second floor while Justin & Scott took their purchases back downstairs to pay for them. When they returned, Justin purchased a faux vintage Japanese postcard depicting Godzilla facing off against Hokusai’s famous Great Wave off Kanagawa.

We then entered the Akiba Cultures Zone building. Taking the elevator, we rode up to the fourth floor and began browsing. After covering the floor, we made our way upstairs for a peek around. The limited Cowboy Bebop pop-up café wasn’t open yet but already had a line of interested patrons. At that point, Jon contacted us again, asking us to meet him in 20 minutes. So we traveled down to the third floor and explored the selections of another shop or two before we decided that little time remained for us to meet Jon. So we made our way to the front of the Radio Kaikan building and spotted Jon waiting for us.

Now that Akiba’s Chuo Street was closed for automobile traffic, the neighborhood was jam packed with pedestrians. So rather than fight our way back to the Akiba Cultures Zone building, we instead first browsed the stand of anime figures available for sale on the tables outside of the Radio Kaikan building. Then we entered and walked through The Akiba gift shop. Items including Pop Team Epic cookies and bottled water, Dragon Ball bottled water and candy senzu beans, and Kumamoto Ikinari Dango flavored Kit-Kat candy convinced us to definitely make purchases there at some future time. We then browsed the stores of the Radio Kaikan building up to the fifth floor. At that point, Justin & Scott demanded refreshments. So we descended to street level, and walked several blocks to the closest McDonalds restaurant. I ordered a medium (the largest size offered) limited-time-available Morinaga Milk Caramel milkshake. Jon ordered a soft-serve waffle cone and a Coke. Scott ordered a burger with fried egg value meal, while Justin just drank a Diet Coke. Due to the seating available in the basement, Justin & Scott sat together while Jon & I sat next to each other. During the break, Justin & Scott noticed a young Japanese person slumped at a nearby table, possibly either crying or sleeping. The person appeared to have been recently evicted, judging by the amount of bags and possessions that surrounded her. Scott, in particular, wanted to express some pity on her, but the language barrier prevented his kindness.

Following our respite, we exited the restaurant, and Justin purchased a bottle of water from a vending machine. While Jon, Scott, and Justin were occupied, I noticed and pointed out that a Japanese woman standing on the street corner had a live owl perched on her shoulder. The woman turned out to be advertising a recently launched owl café in Akihabara.

On the way back to the Radio Kaikan, we stopped at a crane game arcade. On the second floor, Jon found a machine he felt confident about besting, so after Scott & I donated about 1,500 yen, Jon made enough successful efforts to win a boxed Pop Team Epic towel from a crane game machine. For Scott, just seeing and video recording a successful effort was reward enough.

Back at the Radio Kaikan building, we continued to browse the sixth through ninth floors. Some of the highlights we encountered were a 23,300-yen Tomonosuke resin model kit of the Blade Runner 2049 PKD and an 88,800 yen full-metal replica of the same gun; and at Jungle, a 1:1 sized Memoru from the 1984 Tongari Boshi no Memoru anime television series, and inside the store six-foot tall statues of Mazinger Z and Grendizer. Throughout the exploration, Justin & Scott took extensive notes on items to potentially purchase in future days. I bought a number of bargain items including a 7” Koufuku Graffitti figure for 500 yen and an elaborate figure of a sword-wielding armor-clad maiden (not Saber, but similar in design), for 2,100 yen.

We finished circling the ninth floor just ten minutes before 8pm when the building was scheduled to close for the day. So Jon led us back to the Akihabara train station. I was surprised to see a large bank of gachapon machines set up in the middle of the station’s second floor. We took the train to Yotsuya where Jon directed us to the Hokkaido Yotsuya-ten izekaya restaurant. Collectively the four of us used our table’s digital tablet to order servings of skewered teriyaki chicken, fried chicken cutlet with tartar sauce, potato salad with egg, a serving of fried potato cubes, a large bowl of minced cabbage, peppers, and strips of thin-sliced beef cooked on an iron bowl over a butane heater brought to the table, a bowl of teriyaki pork over rice, and a cod roe rice ball. Along with three alcoholic drinks, the meal totaled just under 17,000 yen.

After dinner and conversation, Justin, Scott, and I walked back to Jon’s apartment where he, Justin, and Scott sampled a now rare bottle of Hakushu 12-year-old single malt whisky. We all talked and joked for a while, and Jon handed to me our advance tickets to the Ghibli Museum that he’d purchased on our behalf, a handful of anime books he’d ordered online for me, along with four doujinshi that he’d purchased at my request back in 2016 but forgotten to pass along to me. We departed Jon’s apartment just past 11pm.