Further investigation was warranted on this whole crazy maid thing, and not just because I went to Akihabara again on my way back from that side of the Yamanote the other day.
I still don’t think I want to go into a maid cafe, but right outside of JR Akihabara station, there were plenty of maids handing out flyers and stuff. One such flyer was actually for some service where you can “Go on a date with a maid,” and she’ll follow you around and go to restaurants, arcades, and the other places in Akihabara that the nerds love so much. Not prostitution, I guess, since at least according to the flyer, those kinds of services aren’t included. But it is Japan, so I’ll bet there’s something even more shady about it. The cost was like 6000 yen for an hour, so for a buck a minute, only the rich and super-pathetic nerds can afford it.
Back to my observations outside the station. I was there around 7:30PM, and hanged around the outside of the station for about 15 minutes. During that timespan, I saw the following:
- 6 maids “working” handing out flyers.
- 4 maid cosplayers, i.e. dressed up just for fun.
- 1 person dressed as a cat. I couldn’t tell if it was a male or female.
- 1 wannabe idol singer, trying to peddle her CD by shaking her ass.
- 1 old man sweeping the street (more on him later)
The old guy I was talking about was the resident floor-sweeper I guess, maybe a groundskeeper. There is also a possibility that he was a homeless guy who just likes to sweep. Either way, he was wearing a sweat towel and a Moe~ (萌え) shirt that also said “Akiba in Japan.” After sweeping once, he took a break and went over to the little kiosk near the station and bought a flask of whiskey. While drinking his whiskey, he went over to talk to some chicks, who surprisingly didn’t run away and instead talked to him for a few minutes.
That was pretty much the end of my short investigation into Akihabara again. I don’t understand it really, and will likely never try.
Please also note that it seemed like the average age of the maids was like 15.
For lunch the other day, I ordered some combo meal that had some zaru-soba and chirashi (see left), but it also came with some fresh wasabi (生わさび). The store seemed to specialize in that or something, because they even had little bags at the table where you could take home your leftover fresh wasabi. Fresh wasabi is a type of root, and kind of looks like ginger. They give it to you on a little dish with a grater on it, and you grind the root into a green paste that is a lot less neon-looking and not as chemical-tasting as the normal wasabi-in-a-tube stuff that everyone, even Japanese people, are used to. It tasted a little less spicy and more vegetable-like, which was good. I would recommend trying it if you get a chance. The picture below here is of course the fresh wasabi, half grated down so you can see the paste.
I got back from Ooimachi on the Rinkai Line, which isn’t a JR line per say, but is connected to the Saikyo Line. Confused? There was even a sign in Japanese that said “Rinkai Line is not a JR Line,” meaning that even Japanese people must get confused. If the natives don’t get the difference, I certainly shouldn’t be expected to. One sweet thing about the Rinkai Ooimachi Station, however, was that there were 3 computers set up with internet. 100 yen (about a buck) for 10 minutes of usage, right there in the station. Talk about handy, especially for people like me who have no keitai because of stupid stricter laws requiring foreigners to have their alien cards to get a cell phone. Grr. But I really liked having the internet computers there, not because I really had anything important to look up, but just because it’s so convenient. I checked e-mail, Facebook, and that was pretty much it. Again, a great idea.
This is going to sound so majorly dorky, but I was trying to figure out what I should do my first full day in Japan, and ended up wasting a lot of time at the hotel and then finally going to Akihabara. There wasn’t really anything I was going there for inparticular, but it’s close and seemed like something to do. So cut me some slack! The big plaza area outside of the station, which is what the picture to the right here is of, was under construction when I was here in the Fall of 04. I saw it mostly done last summer, but now it’s in full force. Seems like a pretty sweet place, with stores and some other stuff. A big open plaza/concrete park kind of area, which seems a lot less crowded than a lot of places here in Tokyo. But anyway, I had lunch at the Edo Sushi place in the department store connected to the station, that I go to every once in a while. It’s cheap and good, which is probably why I go there. I had so much sushi for less than 10 bucks; it would have cost at least three times that much back in Bloomington, and the quality isn’t even comparable. I had some salmon for lunch here that pretty much melts in your mouth.
We met up with Yuji at the Shinjuku East exit, after we waited at the East-South Exit for about 15 minutes. We’ve both been out of kanji-reading practice, so I say that mistake wasn’t really our fault. Anyway, we goofed around Shinjuku and Kabukicho a bit, which of course is the red-light district in Japan. That’s what it’s famous for. I totally forgot all about what is what in Shinjuku, so it wasn’t until we were already on our way that I realized Yuji had made us meet there, haha. We grabbed food, my first meal after coming back to Japan, at Yoshinoya, and oh man was it delicious. I think US beef is legal in Japan again, but they still don’t have just regular gyuudon. They had gyuuyakinikudon, which is pretty much the same though, so I had it and it was delicious. We went back to the station to meet up with Sunny and Joel. No one else really made it. Yuji ended up having to go back to his work, since he apparently kept the key to the entire building of where he worked. His boss was pissed. But either way, the 4 IES alumni walked around and we just decided to go into some bar to hang out since Joel had to catch a 2 hour train back to the other side of Chiba. We ended up going into some place downstairs in a building called the Hibiya Bar, which ended up being way swankier than what we were looking for. I guess it was just kind of fake nice, because there wasn’t much in it, and not a lot of customers either. The waitress seemed to be waaaaay to excited about this “invisible ink pen” that the used to write on a coaster. The pen had a light on it that let you see the message, and she was seriously about to pee her pants she was giggling so much. I guess she thought invisible ink pens were something gaijin never have. Well she’s wrong, since after paying 1500 yen to just sit and have 1 drink in addition to the mandatory appetizer Japanese bars love making you pay for, I stole her invisible ink pen. Oops.
