One of the primary trips for our coming to Japan was to visit Akihabara, the mecca of all things otaku in this planet earth. If there is a "genre" of thing that could fit under the nerd label, Akiba will have a lot of something for you. Today (by date in the western hemisphere), we made our first pilgrimige to this magical land.

The day started at 5:45am, the sun blazing forth in bright fury. This is not natural nor is my waking up at this time. But, that's how it happened and we went with it. The first order of business was to silence the growl in our stomachs, and a trip to Denny's made quick work of that. Chris, being the more adventerous type, ordered a more Japanese course of fish, rice, miso soup, and natto. My meal was mostly the same, only swapping the fish for bacon and a fried egg (I'm not a big fish fan, you see). Jeff was the least adventerous, getting himself some French toast.

After a quick trip to suckle at the nipple of money and some confusion as to what train we were supposed to board, we were standing on the platform that would whisk us away. As the train arrived, I looked in horror to see that not only was it full, it was PACKED. I mean, like if the train were to have a head on collision with a boulder, anybody in the middle of the sea of people probably wouldn't even notice. So, when the doors opened, we just... crammed in. Personal space was a luxury not available anymore. Luckily, the ride was short and most everybody got off on the stop before ours, leaving plenty of breathing room. Our own stop was the last on the line, so we exited with the other folk in the most orderly fashion ever. Four lines of people made their way up the 97 escalators to ground level; when an escalator was encountered (and they came in pairs), the left side would stand as it ascended, and the right would walk. This order maintained itself all the way up and was a sight to behold.

We were dumped out onto the streets of Akihabara without much idea of what direction we should go. The GPS on my phone has been less than helpful, having much difficulty getting an exact fix on our position at any given time. This has made for some frustrating times trying to get bearings (I actually just declared "fuck it" and whipped out the compass a few times). But, as we wandered, I did catch a few pictures:

We eventually realized that we were in town way earlier than retail hours. So, we made our way back to a Starbucks we'd seen exiting the station to kill some time and get some better directions. After some difficulies ordering my tea (language barrier is a bitch and I couldn't remember "wakarimasen", resorting to blank and confused looks and much nervousness), we settled down and I set to finding some wifis I could mooch off of.

Fresh maps in hand, we went scoping out the one store we had actually planned on visiting (Super Potato), mainly just to kill time. The GPS was still being wonky, and we weren't entirely sure we were on the right track, but then this peeked around a corner:

Hurriedly heading in that direction, we were soon swamped in a sea of all things Japan.

We were still too early for opening, so we wandered some more before stumbling upon animate, a store that had decided to buck the 11am opening trend. And my god, what a store it was. 7 floors of every anime (or in the vein of) type thing imaginable.

We spent a solid hour (or more) in that store which was excellent as it brought us up to the time where everybody else opened. Our next stop was the Taito arcade next door.

This place is a building of pure evil. They didn't allow photos, which is sad because it was full of posters with Japanese image macros and grande arcade machines, but I will do my best to describe it in words. The first and second floors were mostly nothing but crane machines (more on that momentarily), the third was nothing but music games (Guitarfreaks, Drum Mania, and other things in similar vein), the fourth and fifth floors were all arcade games (fighting games mostly, though there was a Mario 1 cabinet), and nobody seems to remember the sixth. Must not have been too interesting. The arcade machines themselves were very insteresting machines, consisting of a sit down cabint with a large screen and the usual array of controls. Some machines were networked together for multiplayer games. I wish America would move to arcades like this; comfortable to play at and, since the hardware is generic, you can swap out games onto the same machines with relative ease. There was also a Taiko machine which is more or less the greatest thing ever. I need one for my apartment.

Now, the crane machines. Imagine that it's like an American crane machine, but with only two prings instead of three or four. Now imagine that the prizes are figures, posters, and other higher priced nerd fare. Imagine still that you can only actually go after one of the things in the machine and it's position precariously over the drop hole and you have only two moves to attept to get it; one move to the left, one move to the back. Finally, imagine that the grip of the cran arm is that of a 386 year old man but it nudges the box JUST ENOUGH that you're left thinking "hey, I can get that on the next try", and then $40+ of this shit you still have nothing to show for while your asshole brother got something in only $3 (after you had spent $5 on it). As it turns out, I have a gambling problem.

Entirely depressed and dejected, we made our way out of the devil arcade and over to a used game/DVD shop next door. Given that the usual going price for two episodes of anime goes from $90 and up, these prices were a steal generally around half the price. I myself didn't purchase anything here, but Jeff did acquire himself a Vocaloid game for PSP.

Having spent nearly three hours in as many stores (all within about a couple hundred feet of each other), the time to eat had come. We found on the corner a couple food shops, one selling hot dogs (of which myself and Jeff partook), and one selling takoyaki (breaded and fried octopus balls, not testicles) which Chris had and will serve as the basis of the first episode of Chris Will Eat It. It's good stuff I assure you, but must wait for a future post.

We then made our way in the general direction of the store we had scoped out earlier, but were interrupted by a fire sale of figures on the street in front of another building. It was here that I began to balloon my figure collection and all for under $10. We went inside the shop where the aisles were only slightly wide enough to go down traveling sideways. It was crammed full of more figured, DVDs, and some used games. We were heading upstairs, but as Jeff and I were climbing noticed an 18+ sticker on the last step. An employee rushed over and stopped me from entering as I needed to purchase my goods downstairs first, but it was than that I noticed Chris walking back over (he was the only one who had made it to the top) with a look on his face. I'll let you figure out exactly what kind of wares this store was selling.

Now fully laden down with swag, we mad eour way to the one store we'd been looking forward to hitting for months: Super Potato. It's like a retro gamestore on acid, stereoids, and awesomeness. Split between three floors, the atmosphere of this place was unreal. The first floor was full of 8- and 16-bit era consoles and games and our ears were assaulted with the blips and beeps of various 8-bit sounds and music (plus some Mario Kart music). It was both calming and yet elating; they were playing the nostalgia card quite well. The second floor had later generations of consoles up through the Gamecube (they had so many of these that they were actually using them as bookends). The last floor was a smokey arcade and we didn't check it out much.

By the time we finished with Super Potato, it was after 3 and we decided it might be best to get back to the hotel before everybody started rushing home. And the plan was effective; the train ride was quiet and mostly empty. Having arrived back at the hotel, we took a bit of a break before deciding that we'd head back to Asakusa shrine and the shopping arcade, this time early enough that we could actually hit it during business hours. Instead of forgetting my SD card this time, I just flat up forgot the camera entirely. However, here are some phone pics:

At the shopping arcade, we came across a sit down style restaurant and had ourselves some real fuckin' ramen. At the very least, more real than the instant stuff that I've consumed. And it was absolutely delicious. The pork was some of the most flavorful and tender meat I have ever eaten in my entire life. Sadly, our hunger was so vast that we forgot to take any photos.

After eating, we made our way to the Taito station for some Taiko and so I could squander away the rest of my money on crane machines (a whole $3 at this point). There was also a rather interesting game next to the Taiko machine that I just had to video, it was so ridiculous. I apologize for the vertical problem; I guess my phone isn't smart enough to know when I'm filming in the correct position.

So, that pretty much ended the day. And now that I've typed this twice, I'm done.