Greetings, Andrew-Fans! Do you guys feel guilty about making me slog away at a keyboard like some cave-dwelling nerd-beast on this gorgeous spring day? It truly is a testament to my overwhelming devotion to all of you that I’m slaving away at this blog right now. (Okay, so the weather isn’t actually that nice, and in reality it’s about 11:30PM, but I thought blaming you guys would make me feel a little less guilty myself about not updating sooner. Play along.)

The goal for today is to make it through as much of my Tokyo trip as possible, because that was a couple weeks ago now and I’m getting way too far behind again.  I blame… Ava. Is that still the cool thing to do? I imagine that, at least, can’t have changed in my absence.

Sooo… yeah. Shibuya.  I had really been looking forward to making it to Shibuya, because that was, to me, the heart of Tokyo. It’s what I had always pictured when I thought of Tokyo, and I was anxious to visit the famous Scramble Crossing.  

Y’know that feeling you get when you’re staring down a stubbornness of rhinoceroses about to stampede ? Yeah, this kinda felt like that. Except the rhinos are all texting and paying next to no attention to where they’re going.

That gives you a ROUGH idea what it’s like to be in the middle of things, but doesn’t really do it justice.  I did my best to stand still, but I was still kind of buffeted along like a raft at sea. But the sea is full of texting rhinos, remember. I never claimed my analogies made sense.

Next, it was my mission to find the statue of Hachiko; the famous dog who waited at the Shibuya station every day for 9 years for his dead master to return before finally dying himself.  I’ve always loved this story, and no trip to Shibuya would be complete without finding the statue and, as a faithful tourist, photographing the every-loving slobber out of it.  I had been talking about the statue incessantly all morning, and my companions were probably about ready to leave ME behind at the train station, but we finally found it.  It’s not that it was placed in an obscure location or anything (in fact it was directly in front of the train station exit), but it was so obscured by so many people that we probably walked right by it 7 or 8 times before discovering it.  After constantly hounding (*Swish*) them all morning, I think I raised my friends’ expectations about the statue, as they seemed a tad disappointed by it, but I was just as impressed as I expected I’d be. (Picture Weird Al at the beginning of UHF when he and Terry go to U62 for the first time.  If you HAVEN’T seen UHF, then I don’t know why you think you have spare time to read my blog when tasks as important as seeing UHF remain unfulfilled.)

Searching doggedly paid off! (I’m so sorry guys, I really am.)

The rest of the day was spent shopping around Shibuya.  I didn’t buy anything, as it was mostly clothing stores and things like that, but I have to say that, if it exists, it can almost certainly be found available for purchase in Shibuya. 

The next day was definitely one of my personal highlights, as we went to Akihabara, the place I had been looking forward to the most the entire trip.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with Akihabara’s reputation… I don’t know exactly how to communicate it effectively to you. It’s a place where this is an unremarkable and almost typical manner of dress:

It’s basically nerd paradise. DenDenTown, or Electric Town, is a huge conglomeration of electronics, manga, card game, collectibles, toy stores and arcades all bunched together.  Which kind of explains why I’d been looking forward to it so much. 

That woman’s not sleepy; her eyes have actually just fallen out from playing video games at the arcade for hours on end. True story.

Upon arrival, we spent some time at one of the arcades, until we decided it was time to find some food.  Akihabara is infamous for its “Maid Cafes,” where all the girls are garbed in maid outfits, refer to each and every male customer as “shujin-sama” (honorable master husband) and dote on customers’ every need.  I thought it sounded a little weird at first, but ended up going along with everyone.  Despite the steep price, (1000 yen to get in, minimum of 2 orders, minimum order price 500 yen) I actually had more fun than I expected.  The maids’ exuberance is infectious, and it’s difficult not to smile every time they spontaneously break into the “Delicious Charm” chant that they sing about each new dish that they serve in order to make it more delicious. Anywhere I can eat something that looks like this, I’m gonna be a fairly happy camper:

Except that I felt I was taking the life of an innocent by consuming it.

I think it’s best if I head to bed for now, but I honestly do intend to try to get the next post up sooner than I have been of late.  If I don’t, feel free to send all complaints about my tardiness to my secretary, who can be reached at avabroscoff@gmail.com. Until next time!