Pedestrian Para-Para Paradise!

Schoolwork has been keeping me a bit busy, but someday I plan on writing up a few posts in queue so none of my travelings get missed!

On our second day in Tokyo, Sunday, I made certain we went to the ultimate pilgramage for fans of Japanese Popular Culture: Akihabara. The reasoning for this is pretty simple: I like Japanese Popular Culture, and Pedestrian's Paradise finally reopened after three years. It was closed for so long as a result of the Akihabara Massacre, where I man ran down the road in a truck during a time in which the road is closed and thus everyone uses it. This aside, its a really interesting phenomenon. When the street isn't closed, cars advertising everything from computers to new video games drive up and down the street. When it is, though, the entire road becomes a giant sidewalk. Giving Akiba's (the shortened form) popularity, this is a pretty nice hing as otherwise the sidewalks become entirely too congested.

It's congested even with Pedestrian's Paradise

The group I was with had a ball going into the different anime goods stores and seeing just how different it is from Nipponbashi (DenDen Town) in Osaka. It's a lot bigger for one, and there is certainly a larger variety of goods. For instance, there are entire shops dedicated to selling the prizes you can receive from gacha machines (machines with capsules inside, much like the quarter machines at supermarkets in America). That in itself was not surprising, what was was the fact that it was two stories tall. In our wanderings we even found a store dedicated to selling tabletop games and accessories. There were even groups playing on the side room, and peeking in revealed something interesting. In America the demographics for these games are entirely male, and its rare to see a girl playing (I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I know several girls beside myself that do), but in Japan there was a fair mixture of male and females playing.

Fact: this store's mascot gained it's own anime. [DigiCharat]

One of the other events we were lucky enough to see was a self-built PC Expo, where people were showing off their new machines and even, for those who entered, having a competition. The one person we watched was showing off a low-spec computer that he had installed Windows 8 on, hoping it would work. It did, but immediately hit a fatal error, causing the audience to laugh along with him.

While we were there, we were also interviewed by a cable program. They asked us some questions such as "who do you think has been the most influential Japanese celebrity in your country this year." You weren't allowed to name celebrities, and it seemed like a lot of people had named AKB48 as there weren't really interested in hearing about the group. Even though I agreed the idol group is slowly making its way abroad, I answered Kyary Pamyu Pamyu who gained internet fame quickly in the US for her music video to PonPonPon! I also answered Hatsune Miku, despite her being a virtual idol, as she recently had several concerts in the US as well. They were really interested in that for some reason.

My friends were also interviewed.

After Akihabara we continued our nerd tour and headed to Harajuku, not for fashion but for the Evangelion Store. This is a store dedicated entirely to the show Neon Genesis Evangelion, and its popularity was astounding. The fact that there were wedding bands and motorcycles designed around the show is really amazing, and goes to show that even those outside of otaku interests can appreciate it.

The Eva Store was extra Christmasy for December.

Before we headed to dinner, we decided to try and find the female version of Akihabara in Ikebukuro, known as Maiden Road (Otome Michi). We got to the area, finding the forerunner Animate store in the area, but never made it to what is really considered the district. It was still a pretty fun walk, but we were all really hungry and headed back to the district our hotel was in, and had dinner at a little "TexMex" bar. And boy, does Japan do TexMex in an interesting way. For instance, despite being an "American" bar, we still managed to order takoyaki. These weren't ordinary takoyaki either, but Russian Takoyaki: one contained pure wasabi. We had just finished telling someone it wasn't spicy when my friend hit upon it and instantly changed her mind. We also had a version of the everything but the kitchen sink burger: it was stacked to reach our heads from the table and a little ridiculous (okay, a lot ridiculous).

Until next time!

SERIOUSLY HUGE

~Zenko~