Day 5: Wandering Roppongi

We woke up bright and early at noon to go visit a friend of one of my party members for lunch at Roppongi.

Map of Roppongi

This friend took us to a place that serves grilled fish and tonkatsu. In fact, at least for lunch, it seems to only serve 3 dishes:

1. Grilled Saba (mackerel)

2. Grilled Sanma (Pacific saury)

3. Tonkatsu

They also apparently serve horse meat.

I got the sanma, it was delicious. Kinda bony, but I find fish meat better when it’s near the bone.

Grilled Sanma

The guy also pointed us towards a nearby ice cream shop that was supposedly amazing. So, we headed there to try it out. I got a marron ice cream cone with chestnut frosting (?) and a chestnut on top.

Marron ice cream

It was delicious as hell, despite it being winter and really cold outside. Totally worth the shivers afterward. There was something about their ice cream that just tasted… better.

We decided to walk to Roppongi Hills to look around. On the way there, we passed by Tokyo Tower.

Tokyo Tower

We didn’t actually end up going up Tokyo Tower (which was just fine with me, since I’ve gone up it before). We did however wander around the base, where a bunch of guys were tearing down Christmas decorations:

Destroyers of Christmas

Moving on, we passed by 八幡神社 (Hachiman Shrine) and went up to take a look.

Hachiman Shrine

I took the opportunity to donate some money and wish for nothing in particular (again).

Hachiman Shrine

We kept wandering around, looking for the Roppongi Hills. One of my party members saw this really interesting-looking structure and thought it was a concert hall he recognized, so we walked around and looked for the entrance:

SPOILER: Not a concert hall

It turns out it was the Shakaden Reiyukai Buddhist Temple. It’s hard to tell from the picture, but the hall is ridiculously huge! There’s even a hotel inside!

We finally made it to the Hills, where we got a nice view of Tokyo Tower and Shakaden Reiyukai (both of which we had just visited, lol)

Tokyo Tower + Shakaden Reiyukai

From where we were, we could also see the TV Tokyo building:

TV Tokyo

The whole area was ridiculously clean and expensive-looking, with apartments that were probably way out of my PhD student price range.

We walked a bit longer and made our way into Roppongi proper:

Heart of Roppongi

We took the chance to visit another place that the friend of a friend had recommended earlier, a ramen place called 一風堂 (Ippudo).

Ippudo

The place was apparently pretty famous or something (at least it seemed like it from their own menus, lol). If nothing else, the “Akamaru” Ramen I got was seriously delicious.

Akamaru Ramen

The broth itself was extremely thick and flavorful, probably moreso than any other ramen place I’ve even been to. (Even after writing this a few days after eating it, I look at the picture above and drool a little bit)

We then walked around Roppongi a bit, like through a park with illuminated trees:

Roppongi park at night

Since Denkigai was tomorrow, we stopped by Akihabara to buy the catalog to get ready for it.

At Akihabara though, we decided to stop by UDX and ran into some random event that was happening:

Event at UDX

The white cloud mascot (or whatever it was) was seriously adorable. Whoever was inside had the cutest mannerisms. The sentai in the red was messing with the white guys in the picture too, doing fake attacks and the like while he was trying to take a picture.

We walked around Akihabara for a bit to find a shop that sold the Denkigai catalog. Apparently Girls Und Panzer is popular, along with some anime called 天使のどろっぷ (Tenshi no Droppu) that’s getting promoted (and I’ll totally watch).

Girls Und Panzer and Tenshi no Droppu hype

We ended up stopping by Comic Zin, which had these awesome posters of Tsubomi covers outside:

Tsubomi cover posters at Comic Zin

We all bought the Denkigai catalog there and got the store-specific poster from there (each store selling the catalog had a different poster to give out). Comic Zin’s had this design (might be slightly NSFW, scroll fast!):

Comic Zin Denkigai poster

We headed to K-Books afterwards and I went straight in and bought a bunch of manga.

K-Books

Apparently I fucked up because K-Books was doing specials tomorrow and later days where if you spend a certain amount, you get bonus goods. Oops. That’s what I get for going in without listening to my party members.

Afterwards we stopped by Club Sega and I got the chance to try out Under Night In Birth, the new game from the Melty Blood makers.

Under Night In Birth

The game is kinda… different than a lot of anime games I’ve played. Most characters have normals that reach half-screen or better. Movement is also much more limited since airdashing costs 10 meter. I had looked up combos with Linne earlier and tried them out. It was enough to beat my friend who also had never played the game before (lol). I also managed to beat the game on 1 credit:

End game with Linne

I also played some Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code. The machine at Club Sega was pretty awesome: 2 credits for 100yen, even in versus mode!

MBAACC @ Club Sega

They didn’t seem to have the new Blazblue Chrono Phantasma, so we also headed to Hey! to try it out:

Hey! Arcade

I went in and bought a NESiCA card. Apparently I fucked up again because when I looked around, they had limited Blazblue NESiCA cards at Hey! that were going to be restocked tomorrow. Oh well, 300yen down the drain.

Restocking Blazblue NESiCA Cards…

On the way back, we got onto a JR line back to our hostel and the train was PACKED:

Packed train is packed

We must’ve hit rush hour or something because people were more or less compressed into the train. Luckily, we only needed to ride 1 stop, so this didn’t last too long for us.

Tomorrow we’ll go check out Denkigai and all of it’s ero-goodness!