Akihabara!

It has been about ten years since I went to Akihabara with my friend Chris and we bought electronic dictionaries together. It was the start of a great relationship...with the Japanese language!

Today, I went again with Susan and this time we deliberately sought out signs of "otaku-ness" - Japanese geekiness, and boy did we find it!

First, we started by being geeky ourselves and celebrating what I thought was international donut day. I can't seem to find any links to it (it appears to actually be the 1st of June, in fact), so I must have been misinformed by the AFN radio station I listen to when I drive Rai to creche. Maybe the DJ was confused, because it seems that there are a lot of donuts being given away for people in the U.S. who vote...

Anyway, after enjoying our donuts and taking suitably geeky photos, we wandered around some figurine shops, electronics shops, and sex shops (well, okay, to be honest, one of each was enough for us).



At the sex shop, I was sorely tempted to buy a breast enlargement contraption but changed my mind at the last minute.


We also walked around for quite a while in search of a maid cafe. I could hardly suppress my excitement as we went in - I didn't know how welcome female, foreign, customers would be, but it seems that we were very welcome - and the only ones there! Ah-ah. The maid didn't even call us "master" or feed us - we needed to pay extra for that. Photos were also not permitted. At least they had a video playing that showed various comedians in the cafe - including members of SMAP, so I was somewhat mollified.



Overall, it was a great day - and now we can check another tourist site off our lists.