Day 11: Illness, Mochi Donuts, Maids, and even more Anime!

So after loading up on vitamin C and fluids and then passing out for over 16 or so hours, I woke up at 10-ish feeling a whole lot better. Throat still a little sore, still have a bit of a cough, and head kind of hurt a little bit, but, all in all, I still felt a lot better. Definitely well enough to go out, luckily.

It also was one of my party member’s birthday today, so we decided that we’d definitely go do some fun things for him later.

Back to Akihabara!

For lunch, we decided to head back to the ramen place in Akihabara that we went to on New Year’s Eve. On the way there though, we got sidetracked by these near the Akihabara JR Station:

Mochido – Mochi Donuts

They looked seriously delicious, so we stopped by and bought a few. Apparently, when you buy them, they give them to you still frozen, so the lady at the counter told us to wait 10minutes. No problem, I guess this will be post-ramen dessert.

So we went back to the ramen place. This time, we already knew everything on the “build your own” ramen form, so ordering was really smooth. There were even 3 empty seats for our current party of 3. Perfect!

I finally made use of these things this time around:

Kaedama-kun!

These are Kaedama-kun, or little machines that you put 100yen coins into and then they give you extra noodles for your ramen. Spiffy! They even ask you how hard or soft you want your noodles!

We got sidetracked at Volks too, looking for hobby stuff for a friend, but eventually, we made our way to UDX for Toranoana’s Tony Taka and Katory exhibition. Turns out though, that it was also Toranoana’s C83 doujinshi sale there too!

Tony Taka & Katory & C83

Ouch, my wallet. I went around and got to see a whole bunch of doujinshi that I missed while going around Comiket. Well, I also went around and noticed that a lot of the doujinshi I would’ve bought, I did buy, so that was good too. Still ended up buying enough to get a special IC card holder as a bonus:

Toranoana post-C83 loot

I had promised one of my friends that I’d buy him the new wadamemo doujinshi, but I couldn’t find their booth at C83. Oh well, found it here! Also found a Kuttsukiboshi work and a hilarious-looking Space Adventure Cobra Homura doujinshi. Also got a huge NanoFate wedding anthology (not like I had a choice, lol).

Afterwards, we wandered around Akihabara for a while, killing time until 4pm when we’d meet up with guys from /jp/ again.

Right outside UDX, there were a bunch of street vendors selling everything from military-style clothing to anime goods.

We also stopped by Taito Game Station and played a few games. Played against some random guy in BBCP and showed him the business end of my magical girl stick. Felt good.

Also stopped by a sex shop so a friend could get a onahole. Good times. Man, the sample onaholes are really creepy, slit open so you can feel the inside and discolored after all the touching it’s been through.

At around 4pm, we met with guys from /jp/ and planned our next move. Decided to go to a maid cafe. Which one? No clue. Let’s go wander around Akihabara and then get randomly solicited by a maid! We’ll then go to that one!

But first, food. We headed to a kebab stand that was apparently run by Turkish dudes. Therefore, totally legit.

Legit Doner Kebabs

We actually had already been solicited by a nearby maid at this point, but we decided that it would be better to go to the maid cafe after eating rather than before eating because the food prices would be ridiculous at the maid cafe. We ended up going to ぽぽぷれ (Popopure) Animation Maid Cafe.

Popopure Animation Maid Cafe

(For the sign and a lot of the art in the actual cafe, it’s done by the same dude who did Kuttsukiboshi. I’m guessing that he must’ve gotten his start doing original animation for this particular cafe.)

Why “Animation” Maid Cafe? Well, this particular maid cafe actually lets you pay about 2500yen and then you get to dub over a short, original anime with a maid. They even give you a DVD with the dubbing as a souvenir. When they dub over the anime, they actually set up the recording gear right in the cafe, right in front of a projector screen.

Naturally, a few people in our party decided to dub a clip:

Censored to protect the anonymous

Unfortunately, it proved to be pretty difficult for 2/3 of the party members, but they made it up with wit and impromptu acting. There also was a 4th member of the cast who was the played by a maid. She was really good at it, too! (I can’t even imagine how many times she must have done each of the various anime clips they offer). She was also super professional about, especially when the guys started just making up lines (my favorite probably being “ちくそ！難しいです！”　(“Shit! This is hard!”). There are 2 practice runs then the real thing. During the actual recording, the guys started to just make up various lines for fun, like singing the Nico Nico Douga jingle. Even the maid started making up lines to play along.

Before all the dubbing fun, we all ordered (naturally expensive) food and drink. I ordered the dessert set (1400yen) with cheesecake and lemon tea.

Moe moe miku cheesecake and lemon tea

HOLY CRAP CHOCOLATE SAUCE MIKU IS @#!(* ADORABLE.

Yep, all of the dessert set plates came with different anime characters drawn on them with chocolate sauce. Other party members got Azusa from K-On!, Detective Conan, and the Cat Bus from Totoro.

If you have a drink that can have sugar/milk added, they do this “maze maze” (mix) song where they have you repeat what they say. For example, mine went something like: “maze maze (maze maze) moe moe (moe moe) wan wan (wan wan) nyaa nyaa (nyaa nyaa) pikachu! (pikachu!)” For fun, I did mine in the manliest voice possible.

One of my party members got the omelette rice and asked for the “ketchup dance” (extra 500yen). Two maids come out and do this ridiculously adorable quick song and dance, and at the end, you choose one of them to decorate your omurice.

The maid that was chosen came by and asked my party member which anime character he wanted on the omelette rice. He told them Fear from C3. She apparently wasn’t familiar with the show, so she asked for a picture. No problem. Then she proceeds to draw the character right there using a reference picture:

Moe moe omurice

Holy crap, she’s so pro at ketchup art! I seriously wonder how much that maid does this kind of thing to get that proficient at it. Either that, or maybe it’s a necessary qualification to work there? (lol)

One problem with the sauce art is that I’m so afraid of screwing it up. I ended up eating my cheesecake really carefully as to not mess with Sauce Miku:

SAVE SAUCE MIKU!

But… the top of her head is still missing… RIP (笑).

We headed back to K-Books to check on stuff and to attempt to sell one of my party member’s C83 corporate booth Sword Art Online goods. Apparently, you need a residence ID to actually do it. Luckily, one of the /jp/ party members actually had one, so he was able to sell it… at about 50% of what he paid for it. The lesson here:

1. Buy what you want.

2. Sword Art Online sucks.

On the way out, we also saw this great Miku Azunyan itasha:

Mikunyan Itasha

I didn’t notice until after I took the pic, but there’s actually a dude just sleeping in there… oops!

The rest of my party members decided to go to karaoke but with me still feeling sick and my throat still being sore, I opted out and returned to the hostel early.

On the way back though, I decided to check Toranoana for the Vita parka that was sold out. K-Books had it for 10500, a bit more than I was willing to pay for it. Toranoana also had it… kinda. It was part of the “full set” from the Nanoha corporate booth. Not sure if I could have bought it separately since I didn’t feel like asking. Oh well, I’ll try again later.

I then stopped by Club Sega to play some Project Diva. That game seems a lot harder than the PSP version, the timing is much tighter and even after 5 games or so I still get the Triangle and Square buttons confused.

After that, I stopped by Hey! to play some P4U. Played against some Mitsuru, and man, it was tough. DP’d the shit out of my pressure and threw me out of my rolls when I tried to get out of his pressure. Didn’t play too much though, because I really did want to get back at a decent time.

I also found a Magical Drop 3 and a Twinkle Star Sprites machine and played 1 credit of each:

Twinkle Star Sprites

Magical Drop 3

Didn’t get to play against anybody though… I really wonder how I’d fare against Japanese players in either game…

Walked back to Asakusabashi from Akihabara. On the way back, I was this interesting place called “Chikara Meshi” and stopped by for a quick meal:

Negi Garlic Gyudon

I’ve eaten a whole bunch of gyudon and similar fare during this trip, but this one was particularly good. Maybe because it was different then what I’ve been eating (Matsuya, Sukiya, Yoshinoya)?

Tomorrow I think we’re going to go to various trendy places (maybe Shibuya and the like?) to go New Year’s shopping for clothes. I’m pretty poor at this point (and I don’t think Japanese clothes will fit my fat ass), so I might abstain from buying stuff. Kind of a shame, since I kinda want to buy a fukubukuro and just wear whatever I get from it.