For those of you that didn't know my birthday was last Tuesday, and to celebrate I decided to spend a weekend in Tokyo. What I couldn't have anticipated was how this supposedly innocent seeming trip would turn into an exploration of the seedy, the sordid and the downright Japanese. Having taken the Shinkansen from Nagoya to Shinagawa station, I met up with one of my acquaintances from University. I didn't know him particularly well，and he has quite a quiet demeanor, but all my other friends were working, socialising, watching paint dry; anything to avoid being in close proximity to me, so I just got on with it.
Our first stop was Akihabara, the district of Tokyo famous for its electronics and its Otaku (anime and manga) culture. Having missed out on going here during the Tokyo orientation, I was keen to see what one of Tokyo's most unique districts looked like. What was immediately apparent was that whist many cities have touts on the streets advertising various businesses, very few dress up as Victorian maids. This is a big thing in Akihabara - maid cafes, cutesy cafes where the waitresses dress up as maids. As the saying goes; when in Rome, go to a backstreet cafe and get pampered by women, so off we went. What first notice about the maids is that they all talk in a high pitched cutesy voice; its all "can I get you anything to drink master" this and "would you like to buy any additional services master" that. Everything is cute, the girls are cute, the food is cute, the customers are...lechers, but apart from them, it's all cute, all the time. Which is why it's most amusing to try and get the girls to talk in their normal voice; when I was ordering I muttered to myself "this 'rabbit super sparkle-sparkle parfait' doesn't really look much like a rabbit", to which she replied "yeah I know" before realising the horror of what she had done by letting her mask slip off and going as bright pink as my 'rabbit' parfait.
That said, the cafe was fun; the food was a little overpriced, and you have to pay a seating charge, and during the maid`s concert, the music cut out causing one of the maids to swear under her breath (again in her normal voice), but that kind of added to the charm in a weird way. What was a little bit weirder were the customers, whenever the maids did anything clumsy, most of the customers would peer over. If I was an intellectual I'd say something about the clumsy maid being an archetype in the otaku community, and how it reflected traditional Japanese conceptions of the role of the woman as the submissive partner and the man as her benefactor. However, I'm not an intellectual so I'm just going to say they wanted to look at her bum when she fell over.
After leaving the cafe, my friend and I looked for something else to do whilst still in Akihabara, and luckily my guide book suggested a manga shop called 'Tora no Ana' just down the road. What I didn't realise was that this was Akihabara, home of the ronery otaku virgin and as such 'manga shop' actually means porn shop. The shop was a seven story building, the 1st two floors were manga and manga related magazines, and the remaining five floors? All porn. In fairness a shop whose name was 'the tiger's hole' and featured an anime girl in a tiger costume as a mascot probably should have alerted me to it's real nature. For those that are interested, the third floor was professionally produced hentai, both published manga volumes and anime DVDs. The fourth floor was generally a continuation of this, with a heavier focus on poseable figurines. For those that are familiar with the mega-popular band AKB48, one of the members recently quit to pursue a career as an AV idol (read porn star) and her debut video was being promoted on this floor. The fifth and sixth floor sold doujinshi (amateur hentai manga, largely focusing on characters from legitimate anime having sex) and the seventh was second-hand doujinshi. So yes, I was in a used porn store. Some of you may receive souvenirs in the post.
Our first stop was Akihabara, the district of Tokyo famous for its electronics and its Otaku (anime and manga) culture. Having missed out on going here during the Tokyo orientation, I was keen to see what one of Tokyo's most unique districts looked like. What was immediately apparent was that whist many cities have touts on the streets advertising various businesses, very few dress up as Victorian maids. This is a big thing in Akihabara - maid cafes, cutesy cafes where the waitresses dress up as maids. As the saying goes; when in Rome, go to a backstreet cafe and get pampered by women, so off we went. What first notice about the maids is that they all talk in a high pitched cutesy voice; its all "can I get you anything to drink master" this and "would you like to buy any additional services master" that. Everything is cute, the girls are cute, the food is cute, the customers are...lechers, but apart from them, it's all cute, all the time. Which is why it's most amusing to try and get the girls to talk in their normal voice; when I was ordering I muttered to myself "this 'rabbit super sparkle-sparkle parfait' doesn't really look much like a rabbit", to which she replied "yeah I know" before realising the horror of what she had done by letting her mask slip off and going as bright pink as my 'rabbit' parfait.
That said, the cafe was fun; the food was a little overpriced, and you have to pay a seating charge, and during the maid`s concert, the music cut out causing one of the maids to swear under her breath (again in her normal voice), but that kind of added to the charm in a weird way. What was a little bit weirder were the customers, whenever the maids did anything clumsy, most of the customers would peer over. If I was an intellectual I'd say something about the clumsy maid being an archetype in the otaku community, and how it reflected traditional Japanese conceptions of the role of the woman as the submissive partner and the man as her benefactor. However, I'm not an intellectual so I'm just going to say they wanted to look at her bum when she fell over.
After leaving the cafe, my friend and I looked for something else to do whilst still in Akihabara, and luckily my guide book suggested a manga shop called 'Tora no Ana' just down the road. What I didn't realise was that this was Akihabara, home of the ronery otaku virgin and as such 'manga shop' actually means porn shop. The shop was a seven story building, the 1st two floors were manga and manga related magazines, and the remaining five floors? All porn. In fairness a shop whose name was 'the tiger's hole' and featured an anime girl in a tiger costume as a mascot probably should have alerted me to it's real nature. For those that are interested, the third floor was professionally produced hentai, both published manga volumes and anime DVDs. The fourth floor was generally a continuation of this, with a heavier focus on poseable figurines. For those that are familiar with the mega-popular band AKB48, one of the members recently quit to pursue a career as an AV idol (read porn star) and her debut video was being promoted on this floor. The fifth and sixth floor sold doujinshi (amateur hentai manga, largely focusing on characters from legitimate anime having sex) and the seventh was second-hand doujinshi. So yes, I was in a used porn store. Some of you may receive souvenirs in the post.
