This Shibuya adventure is a bit more wild than the last one was. I went to Club WOMB, which is one of Tokyo's best known clubs, from about midnight until they closed at 6am. 

Today I went on a guided tour of Akihabara. The tour guide has been living in Japan for 6 years, and does research about this particular area of Tokyo, and is an "otaku," which is basically an anime/manga fan.

We learned a lot about the history of Aki on the tour, and how it developed the unique culture. Basically, back in WWII it acted as the black market for radio parts. Small shops would be set up and sell radio parts that were taken from anywhere really. However, the entire area was destroyed, and had to be rebuilt. Right next to the main station gate there is still a huge shopping area that sells very niche electronic parts - if you gave MacGyver 10 minutes in there he could probably build a space ship, powered by anti-matter. There was also a lot of home security stuff and things like spy cams.

We then went across the street to 世界のラジオ会社 (I think the last 2 kanji are wrong, oh well) which translates to the "World Radio Company." It is so named because back in the day the top floor was used a a show room for NEC's latest technology. The building now houses tons of anime/manga/collectors shops. There was one particular floor dedicated to these resin-joint dolls. The doll itself cost $750 minimum, then the clothes/hair/eyes were all very expensive as well. Apparently this is hugely popular in Aki, and people will carry their dolls around with them; some cafes even offer doll sized tea sets so you can have lunch with it. The tour guide explained that it has become very popular with men recently as well. Who knew?

We then proceeded to walk around a bit outside, and headed over towards "Man's Mainstreet." It is so called because it is filled with maid cafes (which I will get to in one second), and stores that sells all sorts of unmentionables. There were also quite a few arcades here as well - some of them were really interesting actually. There was one in particular that stood out because it was 100% dedicated to retro games such as atari and super nintendo.

The next two stops were maid themed. The first was a maid barber shop where, for the low, low price of $100, you can get "the shittiest haircut of your life" according to the tour guide. Basically it works under the idea of anti-talent, which means it is not about their ability, but rather that they are giving it 150% effort. I don't really understand it, but apparently it's very popular in Aki.

And now the maid cafe. Admittedly, I had wanted to visit one at least once while I was here (my host family's younger son even said that I have to go at least once). First, you walk up 2 flights of narrow stairs (would fail U.S. fire codes - no questions asked). I was the first one to go inside, and had this "what the ..." moment, because about 5 feet in front of me was a 18(?) year old Japanese girl wearing something that looked like a mix between underwear and a swim suit. This girl then said "okaeri, goshyujin-sama" which is something along the lines of "welcome back, master." I'm not sure if "master" is the best translation, but the whole point they are trying to convey is they are your "maid." Regarding the swimsuit, according to the sign today was "at the beach" day. The interior looked pretty much like a regular cafe.

 The sitting down and ordering was fairly normal. Then came the "service." I ordered a cream soda (melon soda, which is freakin' delicious, with ice cream). So the girl brings it to me, but instead of just putting it down on the table for me, she gets down on her knees, and holds the drink up to me, and has me drink the first part of it while she holds the straw. The tour guide got something a bit more extravagant though -- the girl brought out a tray filled with various ingredients. They were: Natto (this will get its own post) wasabi, caramel, milk, soda, ketchup, soy sauce, and a few others that I forget. The maid then had him stand up, and play 3 rounds of Japanese rock-paper-scissors with her. If he won, he got to pick 1 ingredient. However, if he lost she picked something. He won the first round, and picked the soda. The poor guy lost the next two rounds though and ended up with a natto, caramel, and soy sauce soda. On top of this, since he lost two in a row, the maid got to smack him! I have to give the guy credit though, he drank the entire thing. As his reward, he got to take a picture with the maid. (side note: you can't take pictures in maid cafes generally w/out spending a decent amount of cash). This was a really hilarious experience, and if you are ever in Japan, I highly recommend it. Here is the link to the maid cafe I went to: http://cos-cha.com/event.html (its all in Japanese - obviously).

If you want to sit and actually eat at a maid cafe, it will be fairly expensive. The food is pretty average, but what you are paying for is the "service." The more you order, the more the maids will talk to you, and play with you. You can even get point cards, which keep track of how much you spend, and at certain point levels you can get rewards from the maids.

They also have a huge variety of maid cafes as well. They do not all have girls in maid uniforms. There are butler cafes, cross-dresser cafes, and just about what ever you can think of. Some of the more popular maid cafes can have hour long lines!!!! Some of them also offer what is called "soul comfort" which means you pay like $100, and you get to sit down with a maid for 1 hour, and just talk about what ever you want. Apparently this is supposed to make you feel better - I guess if you are an otaku who games and watches anime 24/7, getting to sit down and talk to a cute girl in a maid outfit for an hour is worth $100?

After the maid cafe, we went to a few other buildings. One in particular was named Don Quixote. It was home to a very famous maid cafe, as well as AKB48 Stage, which is where pop idols come and sing. It was really crowded since there was a performance going while we were there. We also went to an anime art gallery, and besides the fact that all the art was of scantily clad anime girls, I was really impressed at the skill level. I am by no means an expert on art though; paintings ranged from between 2.5-4.5 thousand $.

That pretty much concludes the tour. It was a very interesting experience, and I highly recommend going to these places at least once - even if you aren't into anime/manga/maids(lol) I can almost guarantee you'll laugh at least once.

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There is a chance I'll be going on a camping trip in two weeks, which should be fun.

 This week is going to be very busy though, due to a lot of projects coming due, and tests, so I probably wont post too much. Hopefully I'll have something really entertaining to post after this weekend.

I had something very interesting happen this morning while waiting for the train, which was my inspiration for writing this post. I bought a drink at one of the vending machines, and finished it while waiting in line for the train to show up. There were about 6 people waiting at the same spot as me, in a neat line, which looked something like this ::: - I was one of the middle dots. I went and threw my empty can away, and when I came back, I went to the back of the line, but noticed the person behind me hadn't moved up. He then turned around and said, that I could have my spot back. This may not be a big deal, but I have never seen anyone do anything like that in Philly, NYC, or Cleveland... Which leads me to my post, about how to not look like a stupid foreigner when traveling around Japan.

If you ever are in Japan, there is one thing you will be doing a lot, which is walking. When walking in Japan, there are some things that you need to be aware of, or else you will be wondering why you are getting dirty/weird looks from the other people on the sidewalk. There are exceptions to all these, but their purpose is to be a basic outline.

First, make sure you are always walking on (your) left side of the sidewalk. You'll notice that while you're walking, everyone that is going the same direction as you will be on the left hand side. You won't get arrested or anything if you walk on the right, but you will bump into someone every 5 seconds, and have a bunch of frustrated Japanese looking at you.

Second, do not jaywalk. If you are waiting at an intersection to cross the street, and the crosswalk signal is not the little green guy, do not cross. For one, this will get you stopped by one of Tokyo's finest, and you'll have to produce either your passport or alien registration card. If, however, you see a bunch of Japanese crossing when they aren't supposed to, feel free to walk with them. There is one particular corner on the way to school where everyone seems to get stuck at, so people ignore this rule all the time and cross. I always wait for a Japanese to go first though -- maybe I'm just paranoid.

Third, don't eat and walk. I have yet to see anyone walking down the street munching on a cheeseburger or taiyaki. I really have no idea why this is, but I just know Japanese don't eat and walk at the same time, so you shouldn't either!


Now on to train etiquette. Inevitably you will also ride a train at least once while in Japan. I love the public transportation here. It is on time... all the time. And you can get anywhere in Tokyo for a fair price, and quickly. However, there are some "rules" to abide by on and around the trains.

First and foremost, you are not supposed to talk on the trains. I'm pretty sure every foreigner, and Japanese has broken this one at least once (I'm up to about 4 times now >.<). From what I've noticed, the younger generation of Japanese talk with their friends much more frequently than the older generations. This talking rule only applies if the person you're talking to is also on the train though; absolutely no talking on the cell phone though. There is a sign every 10 feet probably saying something along the lines of," please put your cell phone on silent mode, and refrain from talking while on the train."

When you are waiting for the train, do not stand directly in front of the door when it arrives. There will be between 1-50 people getting off at your stop, and when they are getting off they do not expect there to be someone standing in front of the door - if there is someone, the people leaving the train will be like, "what the hell?" Just stand off to the side, and once everyone has exited the car, then you can enter. It's kind of silly, but a) it makes things work really smoothly (especially at super busy stations) and b) you will really impress the Japanese!

This should go without saying, but if you see an elderly/handicaped/pregnant woman, let them sit down...

All of this stuff is what I believe the Japanese would bundle in with "meiwaku," which is a term that can broadly be defined as not causing the people around you trouble. I will update this more if/when I think of or see more interesting things.

P.S. I also *finally* posted the pictures from my karaoke/pool adventure. They're listed under ”友達” (tomodachi - or friend(s) in Japanese). 

I'd like to start off by saying that I must have jinxed myself regarding the weather --- there is now about 3" of snow on the ground! When I got home tonight the first thing I said to my host family was ”オハイよ州みたいよ" which translates into something along the lines of "this is just like Ohio." They got a kick out of that and laughed.

I spent most of the day in Shibuya with my friends Cliff, Chinami, and Yuka. Cliff is a study abroad student here at TUJ, and also has aspirations to be an investment banker after he graduates. Chinami and Yuka both attend Musashi University in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. Cliff and I met them through Temple's culture exchange program; and we figured going and hanging out in Shibuya would be a good way to get to know each other.

First, a bit about Shibuya. This is the place to be if you are into fashion, nightlife, or Japan's youth culture. Shibuya station is just as huge as Tokyo Station, and sees something like 3 million people per day. The streets are lined with fashionable places to shop, karaoke buildings, and places to eat. It's super lively, and a ton of fun. It can also get expensive if you aren't careful. Now, on to my adventure...

We started out by going to this 6 story "game" building. One floor was similar to an arcade, the next floor was a bowling alley, then a billiards floor, etc.. We played 2 games of pool first: The teams were Chinami and myself vs. Cliff and Yuka. Neither Chinami or Yuka had played pool before, so Cliff and I had to use our awesome (read: poor) Japanese to explain the rules. I have a feeling that something around 80% of communication is from body language may have played a part in this, but we managed to finally get all the rules explained and taught them how to use the pool que. By some stroke of luck, Chinami and I managed to win both games (she played better than me the second game, actually haha) - but if you know me, you know I'm terrible at any kind of pool other than speed pool (Kev and Conor - I'm not sure they would enjoy speed pool here. It is way too rowdy).

We then headed downstairs to bowl. The bowling alley was pretty cool; it was light by black lights, and had glow in the dark wallpaper, and lights all over the place. It reminded me of a birthday party I had way back in the past. We switched up the teams for bowling, so it was Yuka and myself vs. Cliff and Chinami. I am glad that I decided to go into finance instead of professional bowling, because I would be one poor bowler! My score was the highest at 96, then Chinami, Cliff, and Yuka. All the scores were actually in the 90s, which to me is pretty damn good - until you compare those scores with the 150+s grandma puts up... shyoganai ne (It can't be helped). Bowling was a ton of fun though - and cheap!

After bowling we decided to go get something eat. Cliff knew about a certain style of Japanese resturaunt, and after about 5 minutes we figured out that it is an ikezaya. So we went to the nearest one to eat. Basically at an ikezaya (it might be ikizaya, I forget) you get your own little room, and have a little lcd screen where you can order food from, and they bring it out for you. The particular one we went to was 290yen for everything (around $3). The best way to describe how the food comes out is family style. They just bring a plate of what ever your ordered, and everyone shares. We bought kimchi (Korean dish - don't ask what it's made out of), Sushi, Salad, Tamago (egg), chicken, and some other stuff.

The topic of conversation was pretty random. It is a very unique experience talking with people your own age in a foreign language, and have them speak to you in your native language. Basically Cliff and I would say stuff in Japanese, and they would respond in English. You definitely start to appreciate being able to express the same idea in multiple ways though. We ended up talking about movies, and in order to figure out movie we were talking about we had to describe what happened in the movie. One of the funnier examples was probably the explanation & acting out of various horror movies. I also mentioned that I had seen the move "Black Rain" by Kurosawa, which is "kuroi ame" in Japanese - which is what I said. For some reason that I still don't know this was hilarious to Chinami and Yuka. They said it was a funny combination of words - but it makes me wonder!

Following dinner, we went to karaoke... I was half-way skeptical about it since I can't sing to save my life, but it ended up being really fun. It was really funny because we kept trying to pick songs everyone else would know, however the other people ended up not knowing the songs. We managed to find some common ground with Michael Jackson and the Beatles. I think one of the funniest songs we sang was Thriller, since it was accompanied by a few of the dance moves. The most difficult was definitely ABC by the Jackson 5 -- we all kind of gave up on it about half way through.

The karaoke room was probably 12'x15, and the outer wall was lined with booth-style seating, and then there was a table in the middle for drinks and the mics. In the front of the room is the tv where the lyrics are displayed (it was like a 40" LCD - legit). There was also a phone so you could order stuff, and two tablet-pc esq things where you chose the songs from. Along with my bowling career, I will forgo singing - however karaoke is a lot of fun.

The entire day which started at around 2 and ended at 10ish cost only $30, which is not bad considering the variety and amount of things we did.

I will post pictures tomorrow, but for now I'm going to go get some much needed sleep!