Akihabara and Fishing - June 25
We started off the day late due to Kirt's inability to get ready in a timely manner. Once he had readied himself, we all went downstairs and had a surprisingly expensive breakfast at one of the hotel restaurants. We then headed off to Akihabara (sometimes shortened to "Akiba") for the day to roam the shops in the area. The weather cool and overcast, a welcome respite from the hot, muggy weather we had encountered up until that point (and thereafter, for the most part).
After stopping at an ATM in the area, we headed off to the "Tokyo Animation Center". While I wasn't sure what to expect, I was still surprised to find just a small room with posters for all the currently airing anime and a gift shop. We shortly moved on and began to look through the stores in the area. We were looking for souvenirs, gifts, and possibly cosplay for Anime Expo, all of which could be found in the area.
The first thing that struck me about the shops in Tokyo was the extreme lack of space. most shops had thin, long bases with multiple floors, and were almost invariably packed with people. Moving around the shop and through the stairs always involved squeezing by people, but it was worth it. There was tons of cool stuff to see, even though we didn't end up buying much that day. We stopped for food at a few places during the day, getting fried octopus balls (not what you're thinking) and even donuts.
Our other big destination in Akiba was to visit one of the maid cafes that littered the area. The maid cafe is a distinctly Japanese innovation in which you can have the honor of being served overpriced food by cute girls in maid outfits. We picked one that catered to foreigners and got some drinks and cake. Our maid seemed fairly nervous and didn't seem very confident in her English, which made it even more awkward when Kirt asked to voice and anime with her (in English). This particular cafe sold itself as "maid cafe and animation studio" and you could pay extra to voice the characters in a short, cheesy animated film. There were three characters in the film, and as no one else wanted to participate, I voiced the third character. It was a bit awkward as Kirt, our maid Tsuru, and I stood in the middle of the cafe and did the voices for these characters, but I got a kick out of it. We all got pictures with Tsuru before heading off with DVDs of our magnificent anime.
We had some time to kill after leaving the cafe, so we turned to our default time-killing activity of Karaoke. We sung for a while before heading back to the hotel for our dinner reservations at ざうお. The restaurant sells itself as a "fishing restaurant", and was certainly an interesting experience. In the middle of the restaurant is a huge pool with live fish, and if you so choose you can rent a pole and bait and try to catch some. You are given a discount if you catch a fish yourself rather than ordering it off the menu, and you can have them cook up the fish you catch however you want. We gave the fishing a go and Tim managed to reel one in (under my tutelage). We had it grilled and then tried fruitlessly to grab another one. After Tim's fish arrived, we gave up the fishing and ordered a variety of sushi and tempura to fill out the meal.
After dinner we headed back to the room and turned in for the night.