harajuku – Anime QandA

If you haven’t read Day 1 & 2 of my Japan Trip 2017 blog series, please do so before reading this post for context and continuity’s sake. Day 3, Day 4, Day 5 & 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9 and Day 10 are also available to read.

Two days in one post, huh? That doesn’t bode well… Wow, way to get readers wanting to continue reading! Some days when you’re on holiday you don’t feel so inclined to take photos of everything or you second guess how interesting something is or you’re not allowed to take photos because you’re spending all your time in stores. Or in the case of Day 11, all of the above!

Fair enough, well do your best then. What did you do on Day 11? We went to Nakano Broadway! Which for those who don’t know it’s like an older-style shopping mall connected to a slightly newer shopping mall and the newer one’s upper floors are pretty much entirely anime and otaku related stores. It’s also more of a mix of old and new, vintage and modern then anywhere in Akiba is so if that’s your style then you definitely need to pay a visit. I’m not so into retro toys and figures so that stuff was kind of boring to me as I didn’t have a connection with any of the old shows they were attached to but it was still cool to look at. Plus there was more than enough modern anime-related goodies to keep me entertained.

This is the older part of the mall. Sadly I have no photos of the inside of the new part 😦 I promise to get some next trip though!

This round the back of the mall. These are *literally* the only two photos I have from Nakano except for a food one.

So is that all you did in Nakano, look at anime and otaku stores? Pretty much, as far as I could tell there’s not much else to do there, its a pretty suburban area. Anyway, we had lunch there at a place that specialised in curry puff things so have a photo of that!

This was very fancy plating for what was essentially a giant curry puff (and side salad and egg in dressing). The puff was ~ridiculously~ fluffy. Miss Beezlebub would have been in heaven.

And what about the rest of Day 11? Honestly I’m not quite sure, I know that sounds pretty bad for a travel blog but the only thing of note that we did was dinner. And that I do have a lot of photos of because it was at a famous chain that specialises in “bullet train” delivery sushi! What does that mean? Well take a look at this video I took to find out!

I’m not even sure what I’m looking at… So basically you order the sushi you want from a video screen and in a few minutes it gets delivered to you by a high speed sushi train! It’s very cool and never got old! Incoming flood of related photos!

I think that’s the whole menu in that picture. Truly impressive!

Some sort of massive fish sushi, it was delicious though!

It’s a bit hastily put together but with the speed at which the food comes out you can hardly blame them.

And you said there wouldn’t be enough material for a full post! I stand by that! I mean who’s going to want to be satisfied with a post that’s 90% food! Oh wait, this is the internet that’s practically what social media is used for… Oh well, on to Day 12!

Okay. So Day 12, I presume it was a more interesting day photo-wise? Yes and no. See, Sharon wanted to go back to Harajuku since we kind of rushed through their on Day 10 whereas I wanted to go back to Nakano because likewise we rushed through. So we did both… only separately! And I took precisely ~zero~ photos as I was just buying heaps of anime merch and being a general weeb. But before we went our separate ways we visited the Meiji Shrine which is located just outside of Harajuku station. It’s a beautiful shrine in a massive park and a must-see location if you’re nearby!

Sake bottles. All empty sadly. What? Don’t look at me, I didn’t drink them, I swear!

My simple prayer/wish was “pls no war” because I had a bit of anxiety as the President who must not be named was visiting the region while we were in Japan.

*squints* It was a very sunny day for these two pale nerds.

Well isn’t that touristy and wholesome and normal you should do that more often… Yeah yeah yeah, you’ll get that with the next trip (probably).

So no other photos from the day? Well… I mean, is it a day in Japan without pictures of food?! For dinner we didn’t stray too far from the hotel surrounds and ate at a smoky little bar, we just ordered random bar food that looked different or tasty and drank copious amounts of alcohol. It was good!

And that’s Day 11 and 12 complete? That it is. I hope you enjoyed that, look forward to Day 13 where we find ourselves in a new city and staying in one of the tallest hotels in the world!

If you liked my post and want to support my content, please consider supporting my Patreon page, or donating by buying me a coffee on Ko-fi!

If you haven’t read Day 1 & 2 of my Japan Trip 2017 blog series, please do so before reading this post for context and continuity’s sake. Day 3, Day 4, Day 5 & 6, Day 7, Day 8 and Day 9 are also available to read.

So what’s in store for Day 10 of the trip? Well first of all a quick detour from our hotel in Shibuya off to Shinjuku, for what reason? Shopping and food of course! What else are you supposed to do on a holiday? But if you’re getting bored of all that keep reading ’til the end where you’ll get to see us visit a burlesque show in Harajuku!

So what’s in Shinjuku? Lots! Though we mostly just walked around for a couple of hours, went to the Animate (which was mostly geared towards female anime fans) and then had some lunch.

I don’t think Sharon even knew who these boys were but she was happy to see them nonetheless!

That’s one table you don’t want to rest your arms on!

So what was for lunch? We found a third floor Okonomiyaki restaurant (that’s Japanese pancakes for all you filthy normies) where there’s a hot plate built into the table in front of you where you’re supposed to make your own! It was honestly a little intimidating, mostly because there was the language gap and the fact I’d never made Okonomiyaki before. Luckily we managed to convey our overall ineptitude and the waitress helped us out a bit, though we still added the toppings ourselves.

It may look like a mess but it was delicious!

After lunch we took a train to Harajuku, a “trendy” spot filled with people far more fashionable than us (also, expectantly lots of tourists). I’m still undecided about how I feel about Harajuku, it was an ~experience~ but there was very little that interested me. In fact, I think it was the longest period of time while in Japan that I didn’t see anything anime related!

While there we decided to do some ~cliche~ (but fun!) Harajuku things like get a giant cotton candy and take “kawaii” photos in the ‘Purikura’ photo booths!

Purikura photo booths + man with a beard = nightmare fuel.

And after that? Some more shopping then dinner at a chain Tempura restaurant, honestly not that good, the batter was too thick, but for the price it was okay.

And then?! You’re just waiting for the reveal of that burlesque tease I made at the start of this post aren’t you?

N-no, not really! I wouldn’t be interested in anything so lewd! Sure sure, so after that we headed to the ‘Kawaii Monster Cafe’ which most days of the week is just a bright and colourful cafe filled with noise and people in costumes! But on Thursday nights, they hold a sexy burlesque show, and well, guess what day it was when we decided to visit Harajuku?

Thank god it’s Thursday! Ahem, I mean… The interior of the place was really cool, like someone had put Alice in Wonderland in a blender and upped the contrast of the mess that resulted.

Something vaguely fetishistic about a bunch of baby bottles hanging from the ceiling.

Uh-huh, very interesting… But you’re not here to see pictures of the decor, right? You’re here to see what anyone going to a burlesque show wants to see, RIGHT?!

Show me it! Right, here it is! Some food and drinks!

That’s not what I’ve been waiting to see! Haha, yeah I know, just thought I’d mess with you. Fine, here’s a bunch of videos I took! Unlike a lot of places in Japan they are totally cool with you taking photos and videos in here! Sadly the lighting was, well ~club lighting~ so I only really had one video worthy of sharing!

Oh, well I guess that was okay… Trust me when I say, the full experience was a lot more hectic and fun than that video can convey! There was loud techno music and bunny girls and members of the ‘audience’ being allowed to dance on stage with the girls. It was just a lot of fun! In fact here’s another video, just try and ignore all the drunk patrons dancing around the entertainers on the stage.

Seems like you had fun! I did, I really did. And here’s a bunch of random photos from the day that I didn’t quite know where to place in the chronology of this post. Blame it on the booze.

Not sure if this was in Shibuya, Shinjuku or Harajuku!

The bathroom sinks in the Kawaii Monster Cafe had a lot of balls!

Probably the clearest photo I could get of one of the main dancers, look at those abs!

Well that was certainly an eventful day. What can we expect from Day 11? Not much, don’t get your hopes up, it’s all down hill from here!

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Tag: harajuku

Japan Trip 2017 – Day 11 & 12

Japan Trip 2017 – Day 10