Exploring Nihonbashi
After we’d had a bit of a rest and freshened up at the hotel, we decided it would be best to spend the day exploring the local area. We’re staying in Nihonbashi which is near Tokyo Station and quite close to Akibahara. Seeing as we’re all a bunch of gaming geeks and was exploring the area, we decided to see how long it would take us to walk from the hotel to Akibahara.
Naturally, Cas refused to let me direct us on our way, which was lucky because I pointed us in the total opposite direction. It was a long walk but thankfully in the shade. It was really hot out, even in the shade it was like walking through a blanket of heat, swinging your arm out of the shade into the sun was quite shocking. No, we’re not vampires, it’s just really hot here! If you read about my last trip to Japan, you might remember my obession with Garu Garu Kun Frozen Ice Snacks… It’s happening again!
These things are great, they’re basically a big flavored block of ice on a stick. The flavour is Japanese Lemonade (Ramune), it’s really refreshing in the heat and only 62 Yen. I got mine from on of the many Mini-Marts on the way. Penny copied me when we reached another one, Cas refused because he may actually be a vampire, the lame sparkly kind..
After about 15 minutes we reached Akibahara. We had to walk another 10 minutes to get near the main station which is near the giant Yodabashi Camera store, if you’ve been you will remember it. If you haven’t been, Akibahara is basically geek central of Tokyo, it’s full of Anime, Manga and Gaming related shops along with a handful of arcades, maid cafes and other strange places we’d rather not venture in or detail..
We had to walk around the block to get to the most popular part of Akiba, electric road, or something similiar. It’s the main stretch of road full of gaming and computing stores, perfect for us! While walking around, I saw a really odd shop, it looks like the owner has just gone and put himself on the billboard, madness!
It wasn’t long before Cas found a vending machine with Grape Fanta. This is good news for two reasons. First, there are hundreds of vending machines around Toyko, some even a few seconds walking from the previous but very few actually stock Grape Fanta. Second, Grape Fanta is AMAZING.
As we were all getting tired and hot from the sun, we decided to hide out in an arcade for a while. The arcades in Akiba are great, they’re fully air conditioned, spacious and well lit, also they’re not smokey so it’s actually a nice place to hang out. We went to the big Club Sega on the corner, I didn’t take many pictures at this point because I was so tired. Here’s a picture from the 5th floor, I think.
We had a look around the arcade. As usual for most, crane and prize games fill the bottom floor, then you work your way up through more crane games, strategic card games that are impossible for westerners to play and then the Gunamn games. I’m sure you know how popular Gundam is in Japan, the arcade games are very popular too. I will write about them later as we’re going to play in the giant pod versions. For now, we settled with the old cabnit versions, me and Cas died quite fast, Penny stayed on for about half an hour. Mostly because of the support of the first player, a Japanese guy.
After regaining some energy in the arcade, we walked down Electric Road and crossed over to go explore some more arcades. The crossing here is really busy, it’s quite iconic as I always see pictures of it.
We went into the Club Sega and Taito Arcades along the main road, I won’t post too much in detail about these now because we’ll be going back and taking more pictures and videos. But let me tell you this, Japanese arcades are the best in the world and they have two of my favourite games, Drum Mania and Ju Beat. Also, a warning, Cas is ANNOYINGLY good at Soul Calibur, please challenge and beat him at it because I lost 200 Yen trying. Here’s some pictures of us, i’m getting ready to play Drum Mania and Cas is playing Ju Beat Ripples.
The rest of the afternoon was spent going around arcades and a quick bit of shopping. Cas and Penny picked up Dragon Quest IX from the import store, it was quite expensive but gives us something to do tomorrow when we chill out in Ueno Park. We decided to head back when it started getting dark, thankfully it was getting a lot cooler around this time due to a nice strong breeze. We walked back the route we came, just so we could learn it and get used to walking it. As it was a Sunday, most places were closed on our route back. We found a nice Tempura place right by our hotel so decided to eat there.
We were a bit confused by the menus, they were all in Japanese and despite the big pictures, we still couldn’t understand how to order Soba Noodles with the Tempura. The waiter saw us all sitting there staring at the large table menu in confusion and brought us an even larger print menu, in English. The waiters and staff in shops and restaruants are really kind in Japan, even if it’s a rubbish job they will do their best and with a smile, shame the French don’t learn lessons from these guys… We ordered our food and Penny confused the waiter so much he had to send someone who understood English a little bit better, we ended up all getting the same thing, Prawn and a mix of Vegetable Tempura, Rice, Soba Noodles and Miso Soup. The food didn’t take too long to arrive, I was a little hestiant to eat as I don’t like seafood and I really don’t like Prawns, but what the hell, i’m in another country so why not try some new things?
To my surprise, the food was actually really good. The only thing I didn’t like was the Green Bean Tempura, it’s far to green and vegetabley for my likng, but not Penny’s, she ate mine. It was a nice meal to end the day, despite only being around 8pm, we were all so tired and just went back to the hotel to get an early night.
