AKIHABARA - first Tokyo adventure!!

The destination of our first Tokyo excursion was Akihabara! Teresa, Robbert, Roberto and I all went and thought it was really awesome!! Just a 40-minute train ride from Tsukuba. It has a few names, Electric Town, Akiba, or the geek district. 

First view of Tokyo outside the train station!

That big building on the right is Yodobashi-Akiba, a massive electronics store that is like RadioShack times 1000. Anything and everything that requires electricity can be found on one of its 9 floors.

 And in every color, too!

They sell other things too, like books, manga, anime, music, toys, etc... But mostly electronics. LOTS of electronics!! Akihabara alone accounts for 10% of the world's electronics sales. O.o

We ate lunch at a tiny restaurant on the street outside. Tasty udon noodles :)

I'm still learning chopsticks.

We got a little lost on our way to the street part of Akihabara--it was behind the train station and we couldn't see it! But a nice lady kindly gave us directions and we found it. Geek Paradise!



Tall, tall arcades! Anime characters everywhere I looked! They used them instead of real people in ads. So many colors!!



Here I am          ^ in this excellent picture by Robbert. 

I was amazed by the buildings and signs and just the look of the streets, so I took a lot of pictures!

 

We stopped for ice cream between electronic stores and anime stores and taking pictures.  The pink sign says "ice cream made by angel." Wow!

 

Roberto, me, and Teresa in a costume store.

My absolute favorite thing about Akihabara was the maid cafes, restaurants where the servers are these adorable Japanese girls wearing not-skanky french maid costumes. 

 

They don't like being photographed, or maybe they aren't allowed to be, so you have to be sneaky. Teresa is sneaky and she got this picture. 

There were lots of maid cafes there and they were all a little different. The one we went to was very, very pink! The walls, the curtains, and most of the decorations were all pink! I was so excited! The adorable servers there wore these cute brown dresses and spoke in these high-pitched voices and when they served the food to us they'd have us sing a short little song with them. It was almost too cute! I loved it!
Sadly, taking pictures of anything besides the food in the place was not allowed. :( But you could buy a picture with one of the servers, which I did. :)

This tasty drink was called banana milk.
It was sweet and tasted pina-colada-ish.

Chocolate oreo sundae for dessert! Yummy!!

You can see how the walls and coasters are pink :) My favorite color!

My day in Akihabara was a blast! I'm sure I'll be back more than once, especially since it's right by the train station!

The Fridge

This is my refrigerator.

 

It was cheap! And it's all the space I really need anyway. 

Shopping and SUSHI!

    On Saturday, three new Japanese friends of ours took us shopping at this huge shopping center--we didn't even get through one of the five floors! 

They have the funnest thing in Japan called a purikura. It's a big, fancy photobooth! You stand inside and take the pictures on one side of the booth, and then you edit the pictures on the other side! It is really fun, especially with a lot of people. Here we are editing our pictures. We all took turns and add something to them. 

The finished product

They bought us to this uniquely Japanese treat called haiyaki. It's basically a fish-shaped waffle with your choice of filling. Yummy! 

Mine had this brown sugar mixture and mochi inside.




 

THEN... We went to the store...

Just OCTOPUS in the meat section. But we didn't buy it, we got the salmon eggs instead. 




... And bought ingredients for SUSHI! Our friends were very experienced sushi-makers. They made the sushi rice, and then we got to roll it!

This is how it is done: 

Step 1: The Rice

Special sushi rice with vinegar, sugar, and salt. 











Step 2: The Other Stuff

Cucumber, tuna, salmon, salmon eggs, scrambled eggs, and avocado. Extra avocado on mine. :)










Step 3: Roll it Up

When you roll it, you actually squeeze it into a square, not a circle. It just falls that way later. 

Step 4: Cut it into little slices!

Yummy!! 








The purikura also photoshops your picture. It airbrushes your skin and even makes your eyes bigger!