In search of…Akihabara (part 2)
We were really dragging after leaving Yodobashi Camera, so headed over to the Electric Town side of the station where we grabbed some White Castle-like burgers at Beckers. We took seats at a counter that faced a lane and a seven-story costume shop with signs in Japanese and English listing a sampling of embarrassing objects contained on each floor that go well beyond my standard definition of “costume.”
After woofing down our burgers we pulled out our geek cards and laptops to compare specs. I would elaborate, but I would have to see your geek card first.
Scott arrived in Japan as the proud owner of 42 of the original 43 Dragon Ball Z manga series. Manga are the Japanese comic books, sometimes referred to as anime. Stateside, comic books are frequently referred to as graphic novels.
Many of these are inspired by, translations of, or attempts to copy the Japanese Anime style. In the past five years we have had requests from friends that we pick up the latest manga in a series for them. Frequently, the person requesting it has been shocked and disappointed to find that manga, written and drawn by Japanese artists in Japan, would have the audacity to do so in Japanese!
If you wanna see Scott smile, as him about his computer. If you want to see Scott smile broadly, take him to the seven-story Book Off! in Akihabara. Book Off! is a used book store chain in Japan. The one in Akihabara sports two floors of lightly used manga. Scott is now the proud owner of all 43 issues of the original Dragon Ball Z manga series.
“Where to now?” I asked.
“UFOs!” he replied. And off we went twisting our way through a small section of the yellow hued, but lightly trafficked labyrinth under the Sega block closest to the station exit. While there are more than a few freaks in Akihabara that could in fact be aliens, we were searching for Scott’s favorite arcade game: the Sega brand UFO.
If you are not a master UFO guidance officer, as Scott is, you may only know this contraption as a claw like thing that takes your money while you try to grasp stuffed animals. We ended up going through three arcades; Scott mocking the amateurs at each site. We finally found a narrow Sega arcade with six floors that had UFOs on the first two floors wherein Scott promptly grabbed his wife a majong set. (Nothing says “I love you” quite like winning your wife a majong set with a UFO!) The most exciting thing for me was watching two Sega twins dash over to congratulate him. The one who had mic’d headset on announced over the cacophony of music and explosions that they had a winner. I am pretty sure the exact translation was “Winner! Winner! Chicken Dinner!” The Sega twins made sure he was happy with the color and contents of his winnings, put it in a bag before seeing us off.
In case you think Japanese arcades are like the one with sticky carpet at your local mall, THINK AGAIN! To begin with, there are signs on the door that list the curfew hours for children below a certain age. The noisiest, gaudiest, and smokiest building on any street in Tokyo is going to be a pachinko parlor. Running a close second in the noise and smoke category is the local arcade. While the first floor may have some kid friendly whack the mole or play the taiko (Japanese drums) and popular annimation themed photo booths, the upper floors are for the big kids. There are multi-player layouts with ten or more folks sitting at elaborate tables in front of a large screen TV. The cards they have collected by playing smaller individual video games allow them to use their higher ranked cards in this game against other players…thus the cards giving them an advantage. There are large self contained pods the size of a VW bug where in a person can sit and be overstimulated while playing games. And there are places where multiple machines are connected together, one of which was a transformer type deal where teams of two lined up to do battle with other sets of twos.
With our ears ringing from the noise, and having caught up on our second hand smoke we were glad to get back out into the evening air. Dusk had set in and though it was a Sunday evening, the energy level on the street seemed to be picking up as the neon flickered and gave the street a surreal Oz-like feel.
As I mentioned, Akihabara has everything. It has book stores that sell manga. It has DVD stores that sell the games and anime films. It has the electronic stores that sell the equipment to watch and hear the DVD’s and play the games. It has costume stores where you can by outfits and accoutrement that allow you to dress up like the characters you see in those manga, film and games. Those same shops also have things that you can’t imagine, never thought of and are better off having never thought of. The idea of costume play is hugely popular in Japan and is not at all isolated to just Halloween. There are certain parks and areas in Tokyo that are known as meeting places for these costume wearing twenty-somethings who believe they are beating the pervasive group mentality that is force fed to every Japanese national by breaking into smaller groups and dressing alike.
While some folks dress up to escape the mass mind set and immediately latch on to a smaller group that looks, acts, and dresses the same, others
do this because its their job. Akihabara is considered to be the center for Maid Cafes. Allow me to briefly explain. Some years ago there was a manga series that featured the typical demure, doe-eyed female anime characters, that would give naked Barbie a run for her money, dressed in Victorian era maid outfits. Some enterprising person came up with the idea that if you opened a cafe, you could have the waitresses and cooks where victorian style maid outfits, use absurd amounts of politeness and bow deeply to your every whim, that people would flock to use establishments. And they were right. On any given corner of Akihabara it is not uncommon to find three to six ladies, dressed in maid outfits handing out flyers to their cafe.
It had been awhile since our hamburgers. And we had quite a collection of flyers. So we followed the little map through the back streets to the Maid Cure cafe. This small cafe is located on the sixth floor. As you walk out of the elevator, you can expect to be greeted by one or two maids donning black and white Victorian style maid outfits, who will bow deeply, before escorting you to your table. They have a lovely, albeit small selection of teas. We were too late for their afternoon tea service, but still a bit early for their dinner menu. So Scott ordered ice cream and ice coffee while I had the cake of the day, a wonderfully light mulitlayered offering of crepes and slightly sweetened cream with a cafe latte. The deep bows while flattering are a bit embarrassing after awhile. Additionally, they use the very formal Japanese, as an added sign of respect. Again, while this is very nice, I never hear this and so it makes it a bit harder for me to work my way through things. I did ponder aloud at one point if their backs hurt by the end of the day…what with all the deep bowing. Scott added that he preferred to think of them as so limber as for that not to be an issue. Maybe I need to start reading manga to think that way as well.
We left rejuvenated. But now we were hungry. And we felt we owed it to ourselves to do a little comparing and contrasting and that it would only be fair if we visited at least one more themed cafe. It is my understanding that the maid cafes were the first such cafes. And they gave way to costume play cafes. And now, the trendy thing is cat cafes. In this later group, the wait staff wear cat ears and there are usually real cats present. I hate cats! And Scott is allergic to cats. So we tracked our way through more back streets and found Cos Cha, which literally translates into Costume Play. (BTW, the link I provided it to their menu page.) Cos-Cha was VERY different from the Maid Cure Cafe.
We were greeted with a curtsy by a young lady in a burnt orange short, short dress with ruffles galore billowing out the bottom, white knee high socks, a pink garter, and red bows in her hair. I let Scott go first. We had two seating options: the classroom, with small school-like desks and chairs and the menu on a chalk board; and the regular dinning area. We went for the later, although if Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” had been playing as we walked in, I so would have voted for the desks.
The menu was highly confusing. So confusing in fact that we asked if they had the menu in English. A different doe-eyed waitress, this one with a stern demeanor, orange garter belt and fewer ruffles on her pantaloons, brought it over and was momentarily confused when I insisted she hand the English menu to Scott (who, by the way is nisei – a second generation American of Japanese descent) while I continued to pour over the Japanese menu. Sadly, neither really made sense. What was clear, was that there was a low end menu, a high end menu that warranted extra attention from the wait staff, and section that basically contained dares. The dare section, mainly consisted of large or excessively hot dishes that needed to be eaten within a certain time frame to gain a prize or a punishment.
We opted for the low in section since neither one of us wanted to explain to the other’s wife what happened if we got arrested or ended up in a hospital. As it turns out, this was a wise choice. Many costumers who could actualy make sense of the menu and were willing to over look certain basic health precautions opted for the high end menu where the costumed waitress would bring you your food, get down on her knees and cut your food up for you, then blow on it to cool it down and feed you your first bite. I do have to point out that Scott did order the fountain version of Calpis (pronounced “Cow piss”). He oohhed and aahhed for some time about how much better the fountain version of Calpis was than the bottle or canned version. Whatever!
So we were having a nice meal when two otaku walked in. Otaku is the Japanese word for freaks or obsessive fans of manga that hang out in Akihabara. I am going to call them Jughead and Moose. Jughead had a really bad haircut with bangs that came down to his upper lip. The black facade broken by a very thin, long nose. I am not certain, but I think I saw 馬鹿, tattooed on his forehead behind the hair. Baka, can mean “stupid” in Japanese. His chain smoking buddy had dyed his hair to a dark, heinously off-yellow with hints of red that made him look like he was wearing a mop soaked in bloody urine. Moose had “I am with BAKA!” tattooed on his forehead. Moose was big, the kind of guy that in the States would have been on the football team, because he was fat and could mascaraed as an athlete in a football uniform (costume?).
Jughead and Moose did not disappoint. They quickly ordered two beers for courage and then one of the items in the dare section that neither Scott nor I had been able to figure out in the menus. I have to say, I am glad Jughead came along because, I think you will see, there is no way we would have otherwise been able to decipher or appreciate this dare or just how stupid a human being can be.
The dare item he selected gave him the opportunity to play rock, paper, scissors (jankenpon in Japanese) with his waitress. His waitress was the second one who had visited our table; the one with a stern, nearly dominatrix demeanor. The waitress brought a silver tray, set it on his table, and gathered everyone’s attention. She explained that Jughead had accepted the rock, paper, scissors challenge. She explained that the tray contained a variety of items: a glass of milk, a glass of tea, a container of nato (In my opinion the nastiest of all Japanese foods. Nato are small soy beans that have been fermented and are covered with a clear stringy snot-like substance that reeks of rotten cabbage and fish entrails that have been left to rot in the summer sun for three days; truly nasty) hot mustard, hot peppers, sliced garlic, and mozuku, a dark, slimy, highly viscous substance – at least in the restaurants version – that is made from a kind of seaweed found in Okinawa, is generally served with vinegar, but may be more vile than nato. The waitress explained further that they would play rock, paper, scissors four times. Whoever won each round would pick the next item to be placed in a shaker. Jughead would then get to drink the concoction. If he was able to drink the entire ten ounces without stopping, he would earn a prize. If he failed…well, I didn’t catch that part and was too enthralled to bother to ask Scott to translate.
Round 1: Jughead won with a paper over rock and selected the milk.
Round 2: Scary waitress, with a new look of determination, won with a scissors over paper and immediately grabbed the the package of nato, as Jughead turned green and everyone in the restaurant openly moaned.
Round 3: There was a draw; but confident scary waitress, regained her composure more quickly and beat him with a paper over rock. She scooped up a healthy tablespoon of Chinese mustard and dropped it in the glass.
Round 4: She beat him straight out with a rock over scissors. She grabbed the last nasty viscous forest-green goo, the mozuku, and let it dramatically ooze out and plop into the glass. The crowd moaned and many turned away. Those with seats near by scooched away.
The waitress put the lid on and shook vigorously. Maybe a little too vigorously because she was unable to get the top off, explaining to the crowd that the nato was particularly gooey and had sealed it shut. She needed to go the kitchen to get help.
She returned, apologized to the patrons, then shot a stern look at Jughead while she poured. She mockingly wished him well, and then asked the patrons to clap as he drank. Jughead picked a spot on the wall, seemed to have gathered his concentration, finally recovering from the shellacking he took in rock paper scissors, which Moose loudly mocked him for while the waitress had run to the kitchen. At the start, we didn’t think he would make it, but by the time he reached the one third mark there appeared to be hope. At some point past the one third mark and before the halfway mark the nato/mozuku sludge finally made its way down to the open end and it was all over.
He put the glass down, the waitress graciously giving him a chance to catch his breath. Moose took this opportunity to take a sip and announced to the restaurant that it was not fit for human consumption. Thanks for that insightful update Moose! Having failed to complete the dare, Jughead now had to suffer the consequences: two slaps to the face. Doesn’t this seem like the perfect ending to such a stupid feat. Let’s think about this, Jughead paid to embarrass himself in front of a bunch of strangers and is now being slapped for his stupidity. Man I love Japan! The waitress took it easy on with the open left handed slap. Still it made a very satisfying SMACK! She then announced that she was right handed and the second slap would be stronger. Jughead was not only stupid but a sissy. As the opened right hand was coming around, she had twisted at the hip to but some more “umpff” into it, Jughead flinched and pulled back slightly, which led to him receiving a right upper cut straight to his nose, “POW! Right in the ol’ kisser.”
I am not sure what was more surprising, that he didn’t throw up or that he didn’t walk away with a bloody nose. At least he had his dignity…oh, wait, no actually, not so much!
Scott and I hung around a bit longer, hoping for more otuka with a desire to prove their stupidity, but alas we departed to one last curtsy and thus ended our day in search of Akihabara.
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