The Electric City, Sailor Girls and Darth Vader

Sat by the river, at our hostels "Sakura Party" me and the other groups of travellers enjoy the sun and company of new people, our group especially who where also enjoying the freshest Sashimi I've ever tasted and witnessed being built. A fish flavoured masterpiece.

I met many people at this little party, our group had pretty much one person from every country, including a lovely Spanish girl called Victoria Lopez who was living in Tokyo and learning English (which I could help her brush up on). We hit it off and were instantly friends, she was great company for the day and I hope to see her again one day! On my next trip I may be returning to Tokyo so I will see her again soon! After this relaxing day it was time to see "The Electric City"

This whole city buzzes, I don't mean with electricity (which is suprising) but literally with life. Akihabara, the "Electric City". This district wouldn't be the one for the faint hearted, from the lively and unusual people to the huge neon buildings, which by night illuminate the streets like a UV painting. Marcus and I were now walking through the flashing streets mesmerized by the strange things and shops, we walked past around four six story comic shops and decided to stop for a look around. The first two floors were relatively normal with standard anime comics, but the same cannot be said for the rest... we continued up the building expecting it to change from pretty vivid "Hentai", but we were mistaken (for anyone who does not know what Hentai is, and to save you from google searching it, its pretty weird anime porn). Now for us Westerners it felt pretty uncomfortable to be around all this stuff, like the feeling of walking out of a cinema into broad daylight, just not quite right. But the Japanese people didn't seem to care that all the people around them could see blatantly what they were into, because most of the people around were into the same thing. After the eyeful adventure we quickly made our decent back to the street to continue along the electric streets. Some more unusual stuff we saw were for example a Cat Cafe, where you literally payed to sit with a ton of cats, a multi story toy store containing pretty much every toy there could be in the world which included I might add what looked like real hand grenades, more cat toys than is healthy and many eight story arcades filled with people who look like the finish work, go straight there until they have to work again. Also I'd like to mention, they had a fullsize Darth Vader!

Now by night this part of the city is even more lively than in the day, the shops do not close, and even more bars open. Now I'd like to clear up that the bars here cater to all the comic book fans and with that in mind have "themes". For a start I didn't know this, but Marcus took me to a bar after talking to a girl on the street dressed as a maid... yeah I know right. So we walked into a small bar which seemed again like someones flat turned into a bar, and to be honest actually had a very good time and I don't mean just the "Maid Waitresses" causing that! We decided to play some darts joined by two of the girls and eventually two local young guys dressed in suits, we had a laugh with them as they spoke a little English and Marcus speaks a little Japanese.
"Would you like to go more places, like this?" One of them asked looking very happy about being able to show us around, with that we accepted. Why the hell not! When we came to pay one of the waitresses she told us that the two guys had paid for us, this mean they had paid our entry which was about £30 and our drinks! We went to the next bar which was called The Mermaid Cafe, this place I actually quite liked, you paid to enter and to drink all you can in an hour for £30, which once again the guys refused us to pay for and took it on themselves to pay for us. The girls "theme" here was like sailor school girl outfits with coloured contact lenses, tails and animal ears. I know exactly what you're thinking. We got seated right at the bar and the drinks started flowing, and it was strong. Some kind of plum brandy was served and something over 40% should NOT be that easy to drink...

After our hour was up we decided to move to our next place, we said goodbye to everyone and made our way to a pool hall which again we were not aloud to pay for! And once again you pay for an amount of time on the table and get drinks included which if I'm being completely honest I rather like this method, who knows why.

It's getting late. Time to go. As the time past by tonight Marcus and I really got an insight into not just the city but the people who inhabit it, what we saw is amazing. We met two strangers who insisted on taking us around the city to show us a good time and when I tried to give them some money at the end of the night, I was met with a kind "No, welcome to Japan"

The city

 

 Cat Cafe

The Arcade Inhabitants

 

So much cats...

 

Me and Darth

 

 



Mayday Trials and Japan

If any of you do not know what Mayday is (English readers should), for anyone who doesn't allow me to explain. Mayday is supposed to mark the time of year when the weather here in England gets warmer, trees and flowers blossom and has been celebrated in England for around 2000 years! Parades walk down the little streets of my town, a fun fair fills the air with the smell of hot dogs, burgers and... petrol. Which is followed by a crowning of a "May Queen" and then a Maypole dance (not as sexy as it sounds). Being a barman I must say I did not enjoy the day as much as the other 9,000 people in our town, not including the other unlucky few working bars and restaurants too! It's common knowledge that us English like to drink, well I'll now confirm that as we sold our entire stock of vodka, lager and white wine. So as you can imagine me and my fellow Barmen rue that 17 hour shift. At least that one day put some serious cash in the bank and next week's paycheck should be good!
Here's a little snap of our little street as the parade begins.

The celebrations here in our little town are not too distant from the Sakura festival I was lucky enough to experience. This festival itself takes place when the blossom trees reach full flowering and is probably the most beautiful sights I have seen, take a look:

Where I left off previously (the taxi ride if you remember) was not the end to that night obviously the nocturnal adventure ended when I finally arrived at my hostel... which had closed. Luckily however I found after paying the taxi what would be £50, the lady was inside and hadn't left yet! She let me in, gave me my key and told me where my room was. I followed her instructions and came to quite a grimy looking corridor which seemed like an old block of flats.

My room however was not as bad, although when I walked in I was greated my four French guys who didnt speak a word of English who stared until I got into bed. And just to make it better the guy who had the bed next to mine had the worst smelling feet I. Have. Ever. Smelt. Mezanine was the album on the menu tonight, morning would be here soon.

Morning came very rapidly actually, when I woke the French guys were gone so I headed down to the Rec room for breakfast. I collected my food and sat down, but something caught my attention. A voice. The accent was what struck me most first, I turned around to find a man called Reuban Grant. Who I happened to have met back in England at a music festival called Download, who lives in Manchester. What are the chances here? I mean literally on the other side of the world, in some random hostel in one of the biggest cities in the world.

After breakfast I decided to take some air in around the city and walked out into the busy streets. Over some of the buildings I noticed a tall structure that stuck out as unusual. It turned out that my hostel was right next to the Sensoji Temple, and with the Cherry Blossoms being in bloom it was quite a sight.

Wandering around a place like this was amazing, I have never seen a temple before outside of the fake ones built in the Trafford Centre...

 Now I've got to say not all of Tokyo is so lovely, Reuban, Dan and I decided on going out for a few drinks in the Roppongi district. Now Roppongi is known for being the "drinking place for Gaijin", we stopped in one bar which had the biggest assortment of bras hung around the ceiling which I've ever seen fronted by a barman from New Zealand. After drinking for a while we decided to head back, but on the walk the heavens opened up and we got soaked. I mean really soaked. Although we did get an amazing picture thanks to Reubans camera.

Now what happened next was something that made me a little uncomfortable, on the walk back we were stopped by a huge Nigerian guy who asked if we wanted some drinks and somewhere dry to sit while we dried off. Me, Reuban and Dan followed the man into a building, took a lift to the top floor and were shown into a small club contained in one room. It was empty. We were sat down at a table and left for a few moments until three Russian women came over, it dawned on me. This was a Hostess Bar. Now a Hostess Bar is nothing sleazy luckily, but it did have an air off creepy and wrong! We were brought one free drink each which I must say I was slightly hesitant to drink as I didn't order one. The Russian girls I must say were actually very nice, well two of them anyway. The problem here was that they kept requestion that we buy Champagne which was close to £300 a bottle, so as you can imagine the answer everytime was no! Now after a good twenty minutes of asking they began to get a little aggitated and one of the Nigerian bouncers came over asking why we have not bought the women any drinks yet in a very aggressive way. Dan decided to leave, we thought he had just gone to the bathroom so we didn't follow, and we remained sat there like lemons waiting for him. With him not returning we reached a logical idea, THEY KILLED SPONGE!!! (I should clarify we called him sponge because of his Spongebob socks) But then the bouncer told us that he'd left so the panic was over. Time to leave. I stood up and told Reuban it was time to go so we made our way for the door, not before I might add the Russian woman asked me to meet her "after work". But as I was still soaked, now pretty drunk and it was pushing 2am already I gave the offer a miss.

Bra Bar

The nearby temple, what really struck me was the size!

The temple's golden room

Cherry Blossom