Akihabara Japan - A Gamers Story Part 6

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It took a day to recover from Comiket and the busy week of shopping and running around Akihabara. I spent some time indoors playing a couple of the PS3 games I picked up. White Knight Chronicles is pretty and has an offline/online RPG feeling to it. Imabikisou was the winner so far however. It's a visual novel style horror game told in stylized photographs. At first it feels slightly cheap but the direction and atmosphere are really good. I can't wait to write more about this unique horror title for the Japanese PS3. In the evening Steve and I had a very nice dinner with two of his friends.

The next day Steve and I decided to hit the streets of Akiba again for lunch. We'd both been considering checking out some more maid cafes since the pleasant experience at St. Grace Court so we brought our copy of "Akihabara Muteki" along and searched for what we hoped would be another decent place for lunch. We settled on Cafe Mai-lish which had also been recommended to us by Patrick. The decor was slightly inconsistent but not unpleasant, featuring a fair amount of pink and images of the maids themselves on posters, drawings, and merchandise around the shop. The maids wore long skirts which they wasted no time in pointing out to us and generally seemed to get into the serving thing a bit, curtsying as they left the table. The food was slightly pricier than equivalent food at a non-maid restaurant, but it was hardly expensive and highly edible. Steve was even impressed with the maid's tea serving skills. It was a very pleasant lunch and we decided to use the opportunity to try out another maid cafe for dessert.

In order to mix things up a little we decided to try the @home Hana version which is the hostess style Japanese clothing version of the regular maid thing. However, we'd forgotten Patrick's warning about some of the @home cafes loud, boisterous, and even somewhat obnoxious atmosphere. It cost about $7 just to get in the door and there are restrictions on how long you can stay and by what point you need to order your food. You must purchase one food item. While food was available including a number of desserts, the main attraction seems to be having your photo taken with one of the girls. Photos can be purchased for around $5 and are included with some of the food sets at a small discount. Steve got a sweet bean sort of soup with mocchi and I got a a Japanese style fruit and mocchi dessert with ice cream and decided to get a photograph.

The waitress brought over a plaque with pictures of the girls there that day on it and asked me to choose which girl I'd like a photo with. I went with our server and pointed to her picture and confirmed that it was her. We were seated right next to the photo area so we could watch all of the other guys have their photos taken. Apparently everyone in the place was doing this. The girls would announce the next person on the list over a microphone and they would come up and pose with props for a photo. There were a lot of baseball props including a plastic bat, a megaphone, and jerseys from various teams. There were also a number of ears available like cat ears and such which I saw one patron don for his mug shot.

When our order arrived our server required me to make a cat paw with my hand and meow twice when she'd poured enough syrup on my dessert. Only slightly less embarrassing was the request for us to make a heart with our hands and say "Moe, moe, chuu" before we began eating. Long after finishing our dessert I was called to the photo area where I had to take my shoes off and get onto the tatami floor. I was offered ears which I was not sure if my partner or myself were expected to wear after the last guy so I politely refused. I glanced at the props and the girl decided that I might like a sword which she produced for me and herself. We posed with swords and had our picture taken. I then returned to my seat to await the results. A little while later I was given the small photo of her and I with the date and our names written on it in marker with lots of hearts and scribbles. Having had thoroughly enough of this Steve and I made our way out of the establishment at some point slightly under our allotted 1 hour.

In the evening we went to a press event for the Good Design Expo in collaboration with YuruYuru Gadget Night. There were a bunch of random tech people there. Danny Choo was promoting his Good Smile stuff next to Rob Van Nylen and Peter Van der Weeën the developers of Poken, the electronic social networking business card. Steve had given me a poken when I first arrived in Japan so I was able to "hi-five" my poken with many others that evening. I mostly watched and listened but I chatted with a few people there who could speak English. Dean Fujii a Mac consultant was familiar with Small Dog, a Mac shop located about an hour from my home in Vermont. Pietro Zuco a Linux consultant took the time to answer my questions and chat a bit about life in Tokyo. Timothy Koh and his friends were the coolest otaku there (aside from myself of course). They came just to see Danny Choo and were on a month(s) long otaku vacation that included Wonderfest and Comiket as well as visits to real life locations used in Lucky Star. They had lined up over night at Comiket and snagged some of the limited edition industry merchandise sometimes waiting as long a 2hrs in a single line for a booth.

Return to, Akihabara Japan - A Gamers Story Part 1