This is the final post of the Tokyo trip saga. The last day in Tokyo was a free day where we didn't have anything scheduled, so my wife and I walked around and looked at things that were interesting to us. She wanted to see the Imperial Palace, which was a different post (these are not in chronological order), and I wanted to see Akihabara. Akihabara is known for a couple of different things. After the war, it was a black market area where people would go to buy and sell things in a giant open air market. That is still there, though it has gone legit, and as far as I can tell, the shops are all selling legal goods. You can get shoes, or hats, or jewelry, or food, or flowers, all sorts of different things. That's the Akihabara that you get if you go to the one on Google Maps. We walked around there for a while, and while I found the shopping more enticing than the giant temples to consumerism that are the shopping malls here, I didn't buy anything because I didn't need anything.
Akihabara Station is a different story. This is the one that I wanted to see, and the one that is well known. In the 80's it was known as the place where you could get any piece of electronic equipment in the world, with store clerks who were experts in the field and could answer any question, or point you to the answer. While that's almost certainly an exaggeration of reality, it's probably based on a foundation of authenticity that was somewhat diminished, but still impressive. Now, it's known for two things: stores that retail Japanese media, both print and digital...
...and Maid Cafes. A Maid Cafe is a cafe where you can go and buy food, like any other cafe, but the staff there are all dressed in maid outfits, and put on a specific... production, shall we say, in the performance of their service. There is nothing unique about Maid Cafes by any metric. Measured by absurdity, sexiness, quality of service, commitment to a theme, whatever the metric, you can find something else that stands out more. Neither aspect of the establishment is unique either. There are cafes that are not staffed by maids, but rather by butlers, ninjas, robots, cats, or owls. To clarify, the last two are not entirely staffed by animals, there are also humans working there. And not all maids work in cafes, there are also maid bars. Somehow, the Maid Cafes got the nod for the most famous absurdity of Akihabara.
And now for something completely different, closer to home and not in Tokyo. We went to Miyajima on the train a while back. This was a float in the train station. I have no idea what it's about or for, but it looked cool.
There is a mountain on the island of Miyajima, as there is in most of Japan, and there is a cable car that goes to the top of the mountain. We took that up and walked back down. This is a patched together image of three different pictures.
That's it for the Tokyo Saga. Next up is the Kyoto trip, which was slightly more recent than the Tokyo trip, so hopefully I will have more accurate memories.
SarisonZero lives and works in Japan. He completed 3 of the 7 videos for his project and is getting better at the editing process.