I met many people at this little party, our group had pretty much one person from every country, including a lovely Spanish girl called Victoria Lopez who was living in Tokyo and learning English (which I could help her brush up on). We hit it off and were instantly friends, she was great company for the day and I hope to see her again one day! On my next trip I may be returning to Tokyo so I will see her again soon! After this relaxing day it was time to see "The Electric City"
This whole city buzzes, I don't mean with electricity (which is suprising) but literally with life. Akihabara, the "Electric City". This district wouldn't be the one for the faint hearted, from the lively and unusual people to the huge neon buildings, which by night illuminate the streets like a UV painting. Marcus and I were now walking through the flashing streets mesmerized by the strange things and shops, we walked past around four six story comic shops and decided to stop for a look around. The first two floors were relatively normal with standard anime comics, but the same cannot be said for the rest... we continued up the building expecting it to change from pretty vivid "Hentai", but we were mistaken (for anyone who does not know what Hentai is, and to save you from google searching it, its pretty weird anime porn). Now for us Westerners it felt pretty uncomfortable to be around all this stuff, like the feeling of walking out of a cinema into broad daylight, just not quite right. But the Japanese people didn't seem to care that all the people around them could see blatantly what they were into, because most of the people around were into the same thing. After the eyeful adventure we quickly made our decent back to the street to continue along the electric streets. Some more unusual stuff we saw were for example a Cat Cafe, where you literally payed to sit with a ton of cats, a multi story toy store containing pretty much every toy there could be in the world which included I might add what looked like real hand grenades, more cat toys than is healthy and many eight story arcades filled with people who look like the finish work, go straight there until they have to work again. Also I'd like to mention, they had a fullsize Darth Vader!
Now by night this part of the city is even more lively than in the day, the shops do not close, and even more bars open. Now I'd like to clear up that the bars here cater to all the comic book fans and with that in mind have "themes". For a start I didn't know this, but Marcus took me to a bar after talking to a girl on the street dressed as a maid... yeah I know right. So we walked into a small bar which seemed again like someones flat turned into a bar, and to be honest actually had a very good time and I don't mean just the "Maid Waitresses" causing that! We decided to play some darts joined by two of the girls and eventually two local young guys dressed in suits, we had a laugh with them as they spoke a little English and Marcus speaks a little Japanese.
"Would you like to go more places, like this?" One of them asked looking very happy about being able to show us around, with that we accepted. Why the hell not! When we came to pay one of the waitresses she told us that the two guys had paid for us, this mean they had paid our entry which was about £30 and our drinks! We went to the next bar which was called The Mermaid Cafe, this place I actually quite liked, you paid to enter and to drink all you can in an hour for £30, which once again the guys refused us to pay for and took it on themselves to pay for us. The girls "theme" here was like sailor school girl outfits with coloured contact lenses, tails and animal ears. I know exactly what you're thinking. We got seated right at the bar and the drinks started flowing, and it was strong. Some kind of plum brandy was served and something over 40% should NOT be that easy to drink...
After our hour was up we decided to move to our next place, we said goodbye to everyone and made our way to a pool hall which again we were not aloud to pay for! And once again you pay for an amount of time on the table and get drinks included which if I'm being completely honest I rather like this method, who knows why.
It's getting late. Time to go. As the time past by tonight Marcus and I really got an insight into not just the city but the people who inhabit it, what we saw is amazing. We met two strangers who insisted on taking us around the city to show us a good time and when I tried to give them some money at the end of the night, I was met with a kind "No, welcome to Japan"
The city
Cat Cafe
The Arcade Inhabitants
So much cats...
Me and Darth
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