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Got up moderately early as I continued to overcome my jet lag and went over to Shibuya station.  I got a better picture of famous Hachikō statue.  Then it was off to the Tsukiji fish market.

Tsukiji is arguably one of the most amazing fish markets in the world.  Every day, fishermen bring their nightly catches to the market.  Madness ensues during the unloading and nearly instant auctions for the fresh catch of the day.  They are usually well in swing at 4am sharp – so one has to arrive very, very early.  I had several friends who braved the early morning madness.  While they said it was a great experience, they didn’t know if it was really worth getting up that early for it.  So, taking their advice and hoping for a nice full day instead of getting up insanely early then needing a rest mid-day, I went a bit later at 9am.

 

Upon arrival, I decided to get some food.  And why not have what is arguably some of the best sushi in the world?  Here’s a picture of the lines outside Daiwa Sushi and Sushi Dai – two of the most famous and probably best restaurants in the market.  These two sushi shops are a father and son pair next door to each other.  Sushi Dai is the father’s shop on the right and often has a 2-3 hour wait from the time they open at ~6am till 1pm when the close.  I opted for the son’s shop Daiwa Sushi on the left and waited about 30-45 min before I got a seat.  I had a nice chat with two Korean journalism students who were working abroad in Japan.

You take a seat at the very small sushi bar.  It only seats about 12 people and the cooks are hard at work.  I decide to take their 10 piece ‘set-menu’ option with the chef’s choices of the day.  At about $35, it was also a pretty darn good deal too.  I place my order and sip on my tea.

The sushi arrives as you eat.  As you eat up your first round, without even asking, the super-friendly sushi chefs simply leans over and delivers the next few pieces.  I start working my way through the chef’s choices.

Does it live up to the hype?  Yes!  You can tell this sushi is of another level all together.  Since these fish were swimming in the ocean only 12 hours before, you simply cannot get much more fresh – and it shows.  The tuna is particularly extraordinary as it pretty much melts on your tongue and barely requires you chew.  Tuna (and other fresh fish) that has been stored or sits around tends to pick up more and more of a rubbery texture and looses it’s flavor as it sits/is stored.  This had none of that and was of a very different melt-in-your-mouth texture. Each of the pieces was absolutely fantastic.  In fact, I just kept ordering until I couldn’t have another bite.  It was the best $45-$50 of sushi I’ve ever eaten.

While I most certainly had the best sushi I’ve ever had, I will admit that claims of near-religious experiences eating it are a bit over-blown.  Would I go again if I went to Tokyo – absolutely and without hesitation!  Would I recommend everyone who likes sushi to go to Tsujiki and try one of these two place – absolutely!  Is it a near must-do for anyone going to Tokyo that likes sushi?  Yep.  But let’s just not get too carried away.  Go do it, and experience some of the best sushi in the world; but don’t let the hype over-blow it for you. 🙂

 

Upon finishing my food – you find that you enter in the front and exit out the back.  As you walk back past the washing station, you pay a hurried lady in the back and find yourself in the alley in the stacks of preparatory materials.  I make my way back around front, and find that the line for Sushi Dai has barely moved.  Seems to be I made at least partially the right choice if the difference between the two is marginal.

 

But this isn’t the only eatery in the Tsujiki area.  There are rows and rows of places serving sushi, yakitori and all other manner of food.  All of these places would blow your average eatery away in the states.  So if you’re pressed for time and can’t wait for Sushi Dai or Daiwa Sushi – definitely try one of these others out and you’ll probably get a 90% experience as well.

But don’t stop there!  Keep going through the rows and rows of shops just north of Tsujiki.  Shops sell things that just came from the fish hauls/sales a few hours earlier.  You’ll see just about every bounty from the sea there – fish, mussels, octopus, tuna, etc.  You’ll also see all manner of farm vegetables along with nuts, fruits, and all kinds of things I wasn’t sure about.  It’s absolutely worth a walk through and wish I’d actually spent more time there.

 

But the shops weren’t all fish and food.  There were also pottery salesmen as well.  I picked up a number of very cheap dishes and had them packed well.  We’ll see if they survived a ship back to the United States when they arrive here.

 

Here’s another amazing find.  Masamoto knives is hidden among the stalls.  Unfortunately, they were sold out of a great number of their knives when I went, but I picked up a beautiful 9.5″ specimin for ….well… a good bit of money.  But you are getting just as much of a piece of art as you are a working tool.  I am anxiously awaiting it’s arrival as I had it shipped back to myself.  10″ knives aren’t the most clever things to bring in your carry-on luggage.

But this was just the morning adventures!  On to part 2…

 

 

Next set of stops were all along the main street of Akihabara. Shops till you drop.  Seriously – I spent almost a whole day here and felt like I didn’t even scratch the surface properly.

Since I don’t read Japanese, I started culling the manga stores – thought I did drop into one or two just to see how amazing they were.  Yep – floor to ceiling, wall to wall.  I think it would take a lifetime just to read what was in one of these stores.

 

Onwards.  Store after store.  You would certainly find interesting things – like R/C Toilet seats and pretty bunny hockey masks.

    

There were plenty of new/used DVD/Blu-ray stores and found a few amazing gems.  OMG – almost bought these.  They had a few copies of the limited edition Blu-ray Cowboy Bebop series that had never been released in the US.  Yeah, and the price really is 18,900 yen – or about $190.  They also had Macross Plus and Gunbuster! on blu-ray – also never released in the US.  Ugh – it was so painful to see all these great anime series and not be able to justify the price.  I also had to remind myself these were mostly region coded for Japan and they were usually subtitled in Japanese and Chinese only.  Still, I did pick up a copy of Only Yesterday on blu-ray.  I had to mail it back to myself, so we’ll see how that works out when it gets here.

Other shops sold new and used console games.  Nothing too new there, except for the fact many had a whole floor was dedicated to PC dating simulators.  These are fairly popular with women.  These games usually depict scenarios of high school or other situations in which you interact with other characters getting points for getting on dates with the right characters and performing dating tasks.  It was actually amazing to see that there were literally HUNDREDS of these games.  The fact many stores had a whole floor to them was surprising.  Guess it’s a genre of PC gaming I never knew was so popular in Japan.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t put any pics of that up, because the other half of the most stores that had the dating simulators held Eroge games.  Often they were mixed on same floor.  (Eroge games are near, to fully, pornographic).

After wandering down the main street and killing hours of wide-eyed wonder, I started returning to my starting point via the next block over.  This was less flashy, but no less awesome.  There was a larger cross-section of stores.  But up first is one of the first must-hit of the stores.

 

This black obelisk is Mandarake and well known must-hit spot.  They have over 7 floors of geekery.  The shop is primarily known for collectable and rare toys, but also have anime, manga, collectable card series, and movies.

How about these?  Original boxed Star Wars and Transformers toys.  Original Akira promotional kits, etc.  If you have a fond childhood toy memory – they have one of them there somewhere.  It was amazing – but do have to admit some of the prices weren’t the best.  You can find slightly better prices on eBay or Yahoo Japan auctions for more common items, but they do have some one of a kind and extremely rare items that likely will never be found anywhere else.

Another thing you’ll notice right away is that the used items are in absolutely amazing condition.  The Japanese grade used items and an item needs to be exactly as good as new to get an A grade.  Amazingly enough, things that would qualify as A grade here probably wouldn’t even hit a B in Japan.  You rarely even see a C – people simply don’t want them. Collectors here take amazing care of their items.  If you want absolutely pristine collectables – Japan is the place to go.

I walked a bit further down the street and low-and-behold, a PC shop!  I had passed several small computer parts stores along the way, but this was different.   This was more of a glitzy retail store that had fancy, fully-built PC’s.  This is somewhat surprising considering the fact many consider PC gaming in Japan to be a nitch market.  G-Tune, however, is apparently a growing brand in Japan as I had seen ads for them several other places during my travels as well.

They had fully spec’ed out systems that were clearly well-thought out configurations.  They were clearly focusing on the gamer market with these rigs.  For about $1200, you got a fully loaded PC with a slick looking case/keyboard/mouse.  While a bit high, the prices were in the range of what one would expect for a higher-end ‘premium’ line like this.
Interestingly enough, despite the fact the Japanese are notorious about adopting the latest technology – almost none of the systems had Windows 8 on them.  They came with Windows 7 by default, with an option to buy Windows 8.  May people have panned Windows 8 a terrible desktop OS, and apparently the Japanese gamer’s market agrees.

 

Next down the road is the amazing Super Potato.  Down this innocent looking hallway is a gateway to amazing things.

Floor after floor of amazing retro gaming goods.  If one is careful, they can find some amazing items, deals, and take them back to the US.  I found an original copy of Rez for Dreamcast for $20.  You need to be a bit careful because Super Potato has become a little more known to the tourist crowd so the prices aren’t necessarily the best. Still, amazing stuff.

 

 
You also run across interesting things like this.  This guy’s bike was done up pink Anime style.

Next major hit down the road was an unexpected gem – Kotobukiya.

The first floor had some pretty standard Anime stuff – cutesy dolls, emoticon chocolates/candies, and man-shaped sleeping pillows….er…what?

  

 

The second floor was amazing models and kits.  Kotobukiya apparently has a whole line of it’s own model kits (order-able overseas by the way).  I have to admit these were pretty amazing.

They also had this life-sized Danbo from the Yatsuba series.

 

The third floor got a little weirder with dolls.  One sub-genre of Otaku culture is dolls.  This floor had clothes, mannequins, wigs, and everything you’d need to make hyper-realistic dolls.  While I recognized the craftsmanship, the dolls themselves kinda creeped me out.

 

By now, it was getting dark, and I reluctantly headed back towards the train station with sore feet from a day of beating the pavement.  But wait, what’s this?

On my way back, I found some of the very old roots of Akihabara’s past: actual electronics. Down a very narrow opening between two buildings, and directly under the train lines, I found this little maze of electronics dealers. Store after tiny store – most specializing in something very specific. Vacuum tubes, capacitors, resistors, switches, surveillance cameras, multi-band radios, led lights. You name it – it was there somewhere (well, I didn’t see any Nixie tubes, but they were probably there somewhere).

 

 

Finally, before hitting the train, I decide to stop by two famous eateries of Akihabara. AKB48 and the Gundam Cafe. AKB48 is a cafe dedicated to the girl-band by the same name. This throng of fans was waiting outside for their dinnertime opening. I however, was interested in the Gundam cafe.

When I, I was told drinks were on, but food service hadn’t started yet.  In about 10 minutes it would, however.  This was fine by me as I grabbed one of their signature Gundam drinks and found a table to rest my weary bones.

This one was themed after a particular gundam wing that I forgot. It was very good and refreshing after that day of walking.

 

 

As I’m sitting there, it suddenly hits the dinner hour and this happens. The lighting in the whole place turns blue, and I can now order some food. I got a bowl of classic Gundam aka White Mobile Suit.Notice the shaped noodles?  Crazy.

I also meet an interesting local guy who I had a great friendly conversation with. Turns out he works on his own video encoding system and was taking a break while his machines crunched on a batch of video processing. We talked of the differences between being ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ Otaku and the different kinds of Otaku. He was a little older, and was ‘hard Otaku’ on Ultraman, Thunderbirds, and geekery of that era. I said I was more of a soft anime Otaku fan and we talked about some series we both liked. Very enjoyable dinner and we traded making paper cranes for each other. Turns out, I seem to make them very differently than the way Japanese do. Interesting.

After that, I’m completely shot. I head back to my hotel and wonder over the hoards of things I saw – knowing that I’m likely going to have to come back some day…

 

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.

 

One of the first shops you’ll run into outside the station is actually a unique Japanese phenomenon: showcase rental shops.  These shops simply provide locked display cases full of private owner’s collections.  This particular one is called AStop.  It had been an electronics store, but was slowly going out of business.  When the owner put some of his toys out for sale, they sold for far more than he imagined.  Then he had a brainstorm.  Why not have display cases people could rent and sell their own things?  For about $20-60/mo you can rent your own locked display box and sell, or even just boldly display, your own collections.  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.  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.  You’ll see these boxes all over Japan and they are really neat ways to see people’s obsessions.

Next up was one of the biggest things I wanted to try when coming to Japan.  Their arcades!

 

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

The next floors are full of what would be considered more standard arcade machines.  But I was looking for one in particular.

And here it is!  Cho Chabudai Gaeshi – or the infamous table flipping game.  Chabudai are the small traditional tea tables you see in almost every Japanes home.  Chabudai gaeshi is the term that describes the act of violently upending a chabudai as an expression of anger, frustration, and disapproval.  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.  This game is a spoof of that.  There were a number of different scenarios but this was my favorite.  A nagging wife, a daughter that does nothing but talk on her phone at the dinner table, and son who just ignores everyone.  Well, he’s fed up!  And in this video, I get first place on the machine!  Success! (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Sangokushi Taisen arcade card game.  This was fascinating to watch.  The machine had a large play field that allowed you to play it with a combination of a real-time strategy, boss fighting, and card game elements.  The machine feeds out cards periodically from the center dispensary.  The player then takes the cards and places them on the board which has different regions on the playfield marked out for different actions.  Some are attack cards, other defense and other effects.  At the macro level, it looks like a realtime army vs army game.  As the armies collide, the heroes of each smaller phalanx duke it out in a boss-style battle.  The player then takes the cards and moves them to the appropriate attack/defense/inactive states on the board which appears to sense where they are and applies the effects the times the player puts them there.  As play progresses, more cards are dispensed.  Quite fascinating overall.

Border Break – An interesting and usually busy FPS mech-battle multiplayer game.  Each person controls a mech and several of the machines are usually linked together.  You would see lots of groups of young people taking turns playing each other.  It’s very fast-paced and appeared to have a number of different fighting modes such as everyone-on-everyone and team vs team modes.  The graphics were the best of any mech fighting game I’d ever seen, the action was fast-paced and looked quite fun.

MaiMai – touch-screen based rhythm game.  This was terribly popular with female players, and I personally found it quite addicting and entertaining.  The game consists of touch buttons on the outside ring that you hit as each moving shape reaches the outer ring on the correct beat.  The screen itself is also a touch screen and some of the more complex moves involve swiping from one button across the face of the game to another button.  It was quite fun and the music was actually quite good and catchy J-pop.  Anter perk is you get a lot of play out of a single coin.  You get up to 3 songs as long as you pass each one.  If you do well enough (A rating or better on each), you get a bonus 4th track.  There also appeared to be a score saving/continuing/profile system that allowed you to get strange perks and continue your ascension to higher levels (and more unlocked songs?).  I have no doubt this was one of the more popular games at the moment and was in just about every arcade I went and at least one was always being played.

Bishi Bashi – this game was just complete hilarious, random nonsense.  You battle your way head-to-head with up to 2 friends performing ridiculous tasks like this toilet sitting mini-game.  The levels go up narrated by a game-show like host and each level you pass has a different, and more ridiculous task to perform.  Great fun even to watch.

But onward – there’s a lot more Akihabara!

I wake up on my first full day in Japan a bit less groggy from the night before – but the jet-lag is certainly there.  What to see first?  Well, it wasn’t much of a choice for me – off to Akihabara!  Akihabara is the world-famous electronics, gaming, and anime district.  It got it’s start after WW 2 as a home electronics, radio, and post-war black market section of town.  It’s most recently turned into a cultural mecca for Otaku pursuits such as gaming, anime, manga, and toys.

Despite being still pretty beat up from the travel, I got started early.  A bit too early in fact.  When I figured out the city rail system (using my trusty new Japanese enabled phone) I found myself there and almost all the shops were closed.  Most of them didn’t open till 10am.  But I walked around as I killed the last 30 minutes before they opened and grabbed a bite of breakfast to eat.  At 10am, everything started to open.

    

First to open was famed Yodobashi Camera.  The name is a misnomer, because it’s a HUGE store with all things electronics: tv’s, computers, cameras, DVD/CD’s, video gaming, bikes, toys, PC’s, networking equipment, washing machines, etc.  In short, it had everything.  If you want a peak into what Japanese electronics and home goods look like – this is a great way to see them. I actually needed a few things I forgot: a LAN cable since the wireless in my hotel room was terrible and a mini tripod since my cheap $9 little one didn’t survive the trip very well (or, pretty much not at all).

   

I checked out a ton of different departments – computers, cameras, DVD’s and CD’s, home appliances, toys, TV’s, etc.  I finally got to computer components for my LAN cable.  I browsed the PC parts section for fun.  I was surprised to find prices for computer components were very similar to what you’d find on Newegg (within 5% or so). For a retail store in downtown Tokyo, I was pretty impressed.  Not only that – but they had a GREAT selection of everything they had as well.  They didn’t just have ethernet cables, they have every length from 1′ to 50′.  Flat-style, round-style, every color, different levels of connector quality, every color in the rainbow, CAT 3 through CAT not-even-out-in-the-US.  They had that kind of selection for everything: cameras, TV’s, electronics, etc.  In fact, I found a multifunction internal USB 3.0 + card reader that was WAY better than any I’d seen in the states.  So I bought it for only $20 when I knew similar to even lesser models were going for $50 in the US.

One of the more interesting points that I noticed is that Blu-ray movies were terribly expensive in Japan.  While a DVD version of a more recent movie might run you 2,000 Yen ($20), the Blu-ray version might run 6,500 Yen or more ($65).  Here in the states the blu-ray version might only be an extra $10 more.

I blew a good hour and a half in Yodobashi then head back out to the rest of Akihabara.

Next stop: gachapon!

   

Gachapon are fun little toys distributed in plastic balls from vending machines.  The word gachapon is Japanese onomatopoeia made up of two sounds: “gacha” for the sound of turning of a crank on a toy vending machine, and “pon” for the sound of the toy capsule dropping into the receptacle. It is used to describe both the machines themselves and the toys obtained from them.
Gachapon Kaikan is probably the largest and most well known of these in Akihabara.  It has well over 400 machines carrying toys of all types.  You bring (or change) in a ton of 100Yen (~$1 usd) coins and get to work.  You’ll find all kinds of toys here – from fake tiny plastic food, realistic looking animals, anime characters such as Evangelion, and some completely what-the-heck-is-this stuff.  You simply plunk in your coins and start cranking.  Prices range from 100Yen to 500Yen per machine with the majority in the 200-400Yen range ($2-$4USD).  So, it’s not for the cheap of heart.  I think I blew about $20-30 here but it was an absolute blast. Far, far better quality than the toys you get from the grocery store machines in the states when I was a kid.
For those with less adventuresome spirits but a collectors heart – there is also the option to go to the front counter and buy a bag that contains all the toys for a small premium above the per-unit price.  For those wishing to get a whole set without getting 5 of the same thing – this is cool.  There are also some rental display cases here from people selling their extras as well.

But onward – more Akihabara to explore!