{"id":1439,"date":"2013-11-27T20:27:19","date_gmt":"2013-11-28T03:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=1439"},"modified":"2013-12-31T11:29:18","modified_gmt":"2013-12-31T18:29:18","slug":"japan-day-2-akihabara-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=1439","title":{"rendered":"Japan Day 2 – Akihabara Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Right off the bat from the station, you enter into the madness and spectacle of Akihabara – which is even more impressive at night when all the lights are going and the streets filled with people after working hours.<\/p>\n

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One of the first shops you’ll run into outside the station is actually a unique Japanese phenomenon: showcase rental shops.\u00a0 These shops simply provide locked display cases full of private owner’s collections.\u00a0 This particular one is called AStop<\/a>.\u00a0 It had been an electronics store, but was slowly going out of business<\/a>.\u00a0 When the owner put some of his toys out for sale, they sold for far more than he imagined.\u00a0 Then he had a brainstorm.\u00a0 Why not have display cases people could rent and sell their own things?\u00a0 For about $20-60\/mo you can rent your own locked display box and sell, or even just boldly display, your own collections.\u00a0 The owners simply put price stickers on all the items in the cabinet and the staff are in charge of getting items out and handling the transactions for you.\u00a0 The box contents change all the time based on who is renting the boxes and what they are selling or displaying – so these are often very busy places with people checking them out quite often.\u00a0 You’ll see these boxes all over Japan and they are really neat ways to see people’s obsessions.<\/p>\n

Next up was one of the biggest things I wanted to try when coming to Japan.\u00a0 Their arcades!<\/p>\n

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Sega and Taito are will be some of the bigger arcade centers you find in Akihabara, but they all follow a similar pattern.\u00a0 They are multiple floors with usually the first 1-3 floors being crane style games.\u00a0 You can win everything from plastic fish to helmets to keychains to tiny stuffed animals.\u00a0 If it can fit in the box, then there’s probably one somewhere.\u00a0 I was honestly surprised how many there were as these things are notoriously hard to win.<\/p>\n

The next floors are full of what would be considered more standard arcade machines.\u00a0 But I was looking for one in particular.<\/p>\n

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And here it is!\u00a0 Cho Chabudai Gaeshi<\/strong> – or the infamous table flipping game.\u00a0 Chabudai are the small traditional tea tables you see in almost every Japanes home.\u00a0 Chabudai gaeshi is the term that describes the act of violently upending a chabudai as an expression of anger, frustration, and disapproval.\u00a0 It was an action that is attributed to very old-fashioned Japanese fathers but considered about the most rude and family unity destroying thing that one could do.\u00a0 This game is a spoof of that.\u00a0 There were a number of different scenarios but this was my favorite.\u00a0 A nagging wife, a daughter that does nothing but talk on her phone at the dinner table, and son who just ignores everyone.\u00a0 Well, he’s fed up!\u00a0 And in this video, I get first place on the machine!\u00a0 Success! (\u256f\u00b0\u25a1\u00b0\uff09\u256f\ufe35 \u253b\u2501\u253b<\/p>\n