Tokyo Trip: Day 4 & 5

Tokyo tripSun 18.November - Thurs.29.November.2018

DAY 4 Thursday, 22. November

This was it! This was the day we were going to the Pokémon café! I made our reservation a month ahead, because supposedly you can't get in without reservation. Our reservation was at 01.15 PM so we were in no hurry to leave our hotel.  We took it easy, most stores in Japan don't open until 10 AM anyway, so there was no rush.  Once the clock turned ten, we headed towards  Tokyo station, the Pokémon café is a walking distance from it, so we were going to spend the  time exploring the station. On the basement level of the station they have this corridor called "character street" with lots and lots of different shops that sell merchandise of all kind centered around various popular characters, whether it be anime or manga. For example they have: Rilakkuma, Pokémon, Hello Kitty, Studio Ghibli stores. Furthermore, official shops of TV stations like TBS, TV Asahi, Fuji TV and also manga publisher  Shonen Jump store. There are also a few shops based on few western properties, such as Miffy, Moomin and Lego. They also have a thing called "Gachapon street" with a huge number of capsule machines!

Once we got to the station, we couldn't help but to notice the Christmas decorations that had appeared all over the place. A few days earlier when we arrived at the station for the first time, there were no decorations to be seen. I took a look around many of the shops, but didn't buy anything yet. We would have to come back through the station anyway, after going to the Pokemon cafe on our way back to the hotel. So I thought it was best to wait until later to buy anything from here.

One thing to take in consideration, though, are the pop-up shops that are there for a very short time. In my case, there was a Mario pop-up shop, which was gone the next time we came through the station a few days later.

As time went on and 01 PM was creeping closer, we left the station and started walking towards Pokémon Center Tokyo DX store which is in the same building as the café. We arrived a little early, so if we wanted we had the time to go to the store first, but I decided it was better to go after the cafe, since then we'd be in no hurry to leave the store for the cafe.

While we waited for the clock to turn 01.15, we took a lot of pictures in the entrance hallway. There was this huge Snorlax statue with Pikachu and Mew on its shoulders and the whole wall was covered in Pokemon silhouettes. As far as I know, you can't get into the café without reservation, but I saw a person approach one of the café workers and ask them something, it didn't appear that they had a reservation, so the waitress directed them anyway to wait outside.  I guess if somebody who has made a reservation doesn't show up they can let somebody else take their place? And there's no guarantee they'll get in at all, even if they wait for hours. Once you do get inside the cafe, you are only allowed to stay for one and a half hour, then you need to leave.

It was finally time for us to get in line, where we'd wait for a waiter to show us to a table. While in line, a staff member came with a pile of stickers and let everyone draw out a random one. I got Nidorino and mom got Abra. We were seated at the end of the long table in the room. In front of us on the table was a Pikachu statue. And to the right of us along the table were the Gen 1 starters and on the far side of the table was an Eevee statue. For every seat, they place a paper table mat upside down that you get to turn over and reveal a random Pokemon. Ours were kind of dull ones, mom got Electrode and I got a plain ol´Pidgey. My mom doesn't know anything about Pokémon, beyond that, she recognizes Pikachu, so I was kinda disappointed for her that Lady Luck decided to hand her such a dull looking Pokemon.

While we used the iPad to place our order, the waiter brought us drinks of water free of charge. Ordering from the menu on the iPad was very easy since there was an English language option. We weren't actually hungry, the first and foremost reason we came to the cafe was the atmosphere and for the experience. We both ordered the cheapest food they had on the menu which was some sort of seasonal special (Halloween). We then picked out our drinks and desserts and placed the order.  While then waiting for our order the waitress would come over with an iPad in her hand and let us play a game where you win a coaster. It isn't really a game, there are X number of tiles on the display, all with a picture of Pikachu in different expressions on them, you pick your favorite and the tile turns revealing a Pokemon's name and you get a coaster of that Pokémon. You get one play per drink you order. The names were in Japanese so we didn't know, which Pokemonn we got until the waitress gave them to us. I got Venusaur and mom got a Ditto, I don't think she appreciated the Ditto that much, in her opinion, Venusaur was prettier and Ditto was just dull.

The cafe was by no means full the time we were there, so we got our order fairly quickly. So, we ordered the cheapest item they had on their food menu, which was this wooden platter with waffle cut fries and salad (and flowers, and no meat). On top of it all was a ball of sour cream or something, along with Eevee and Pikachu shaped cookies. On the sides were small bowls of cheese and chocolate dip.  About the meal, I can't say it was awful, but it was pretty bad overall. Or the very least the most confusing meal I ever had. I had no idea what I was supposed to do with the chocolate dip, there was no way I was putting that on my fries, so I dipped those bland and tasteless "cookies" in there instead.  After the cookies were gone I still had half a bowl of chocolate left. The  cheese dip was OK and made more sense, but what I didn't understand was that big ice cream looking ball in the middle. I'm not sure if it was sour cream, but that's what I thought it was. The ball didn't melt at all, so I was just awkwardly poking my fries on it to get some taste from it. If I would rate this meal I'd give it 5- out of 10. This is what you get for going cheap.

For drinks we ordered the Flareon & Jolteon floats. If I try to describe it, it was more like a soda than a juice drink with a ball of ice cream floating at the top and some strange gel like orbs at the bottom. I believe Flareon was cranberry flavored and Jolteon was pineapple. Normally I'd avoid anything with pineapple, but since Jolteon has become my favorite Eeveelution I couldn't resist picking that one. I took a sip of the Flareon float and yes, I thought it tasted better than my Jolteon float, but even though I don't even like pineapple, I still thought my drink was pretty good. From what I could see from our table, the Flareon float seemed to be the most popular choice of drink while we were there. I was left wondering what the Vaporeon drink would taste like.

For dessert we both picked parfaits. Mom picked the coffee and berries Eevee and I picked the Lapras fruit parfait. They were huge! And delicious! Unfortunately for me, my parfait did have a small quantity of pineapple in it, but aside from that it was all good! While eating our deserts the "show" started, i.e. the mascot comes out to greet people and poses for photos. I was expecting Pikachu to show up, because in every Youtube video I watched about the café it was always Pikachu, but to my surprise it was Eevee this time! Eevee would walk by every table to give everyone equal chance to take photos. After making the round he was gone. By the time we finished our deserts, plenty of people had already left the cafe and it was really quiet. I took the opportunity to take photos around the cafe. On one wall, they had a small selection of Pokemon art and smack in the middle of the room were these giant glass cases with plushies inside on display. Before heading out of the café, we took a look at their shop section where they sell items that are exclusive for the cafe. There was nothing I was dying to get, so I save my money for the DX store where we were heading next. The total cost for our stay at the cafe was 6436 yen, which is about 50 euros, which is by far the most I have ever paid for food. Crazy!

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Just a bunch of pictures

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Outside the store, they had this "timeline wall" of the Pokemon games, which was really nice to look at, but unfortunately didn't photograph well, because it was behind a glass wall. There was also a shorter wall with nothing but Pokemon Gachapon machines! I skipped the Gachas this time and headed right to the store.  I wish I had more photos from inside the store to show you. This store was one of the nicest places I visited (store-wise). All the stuff for sale was nicely displayed and most importantly it wasn't too cramped. Even thought there were a lot people in the store there was still room to move around without knocking something over or bumping into someone. There were quite a few staff members spread across the store putting new items one the shelves. They were constantly with a raised voice saying sentences about something, the only word I understood was "yôkoso" (or at least I think it means "welcome"). It still bothers me that I don't know what they were saying. The Pokemon stores were the only ones to do this, so it really stuck out to me,  because other stores would play their announcements/commercials on speakers. One of the staff members stopped me (in a friendly way) and asked me in English which Pokemon was my favorite. Of course I blanked out before the sudden question and I think I answered "I can't decide, I have too many favorites" or something like that. Which is true, I can't decide one favorite above all else, but I thought she looked a little disappointed, so now I wish I had said Jolteon or Raichu just to be safe.

I was surprised how small their figure selection was, but their selection of plushies really made up for it. There was a plushie for every single one of the Gen 1 Pokemons! Eeveelutions were an exception, they had all the later generations available as well. I had made up my mind beforehand that I was going to buy three plushies from the Pokemon store. It was not an easy choice, but in the end, I bought the special snow Pikachu, Umbreon and Lapras plush. Now, afterwards I really wish I had also bought Ditto, Clefairy and Zubat (among many others) because they were so cute! But I didn't give in and only bought the three. Additionally I also bought six small figures and a "Christmas 2018" pin. My mom also found a few small things she wanted, one of the things she picked out was a cute Pikachu spoon. I offered to pay for them, so that we both wouldn't have to wait in line. At the cash register, they again offered me to pick out a random sticker, this time I got Charmeleon. This was also the second store to ask me if I wanted everything tax-free. Another thing I found strange was, that after the clerk meticulously, carefully and really slowly placed one by one all the items I bought into the plastic bag he asked me how many bags would I like. I was confused, do people collect those plastic bags from the Pokemon Center or what?  All of my stuff was already in the bag, so there was no reason for me ask for more. So I told him one was fine and finished my purchase.

Now that we were done with the Pokemon Center we went back to Tokyo Station's character street, because there were a few things I had laid my eyes on earlier. From the pop-up Mario shop I bought 3 boxes of cute Yoshi cookies for my friends as souvenirs, they surprised me at the register by giving me a free pixel Mario keychain! From there I went to the Jocx-TV store (I hope I remembered the name right) and  bought  a couple Dragon Ball Super items, a box of Senzu beans and SSJ Goku shaped water bottles. Lastly, I went to the Jump shop where I bought a DBZ charm and a roll of decorative tape. I also tried my luck with the DBZ lotto, where you buy a ticket, rip off a piece to reveal a letter that corresponds with a prize class. If you got a the letter "A" you would win the grand prize, a large figure of Vegito in this case. Unfortunately I drew the letter "D" which was a low tier prize. It was an art print, I assumed you would have been allowed to choose one of the 12 available, but the clerk said it was random and he handed me one. I'm pretty happy with the one I got, picture of Goku & Gohan, but if I had been allowed to choose, I would probably have picked out a different one.

After that, we went back to our hotel to drop off our shopping bags and just to take a break. Later we ventured to Akihabara for the first time. We went there on foot, which only took around 10 minutes. It was already getting dark while we walked there and by the time we went back to the hotel it was completely dark. What I didn't like about walking in Akihabara in the evening was those persistent guys who try to convince people to come to their bar/club. There were girls dressed up as maids everywhere, but they ignored us, because they were only targeting men. One time this guy who spoke English tried to invite us to a bar/club and even after we said no he would still follow us. Only when I started to speak to him in Finnish did he turn back and leave us alone. Maybe it would have been better to explore Akihabara during daytime, but we always got there in the evening, because daytime was spent somewhere else around in Tokyo.

I was only planning to go to the Akiba Mandarake store for now, but on our way there I also took a tiny detour to see the Dragon Quest themed Lawson convenience  store. It was funny how the entrance to the store made the same sound effect like in the video games when you enter a dungeon. They had a small selection of Slime themed goods, mostly edibles like different sort of cookies and such. I didn't find anything to buy here, but it was nice to see what kind of selection they had.

At Mandarake on the first floor, they had this "bargain bin", where I found 18 small Pokemon figures and 2 Star Wars Pepsi cap figures. The next floor I checked out was the video game floor, where I found the one thing I was specifically looking for Yakuza 3 for Ps3 for only 430 yen and I also bought a Yakuza spinoff game that has never been released to the western market.

Next, I went to the figure floor where I picked up a few things (all DBZ). A full set of six lights up keychains, a chibi Coola figure, and the best find I made was an unopened box of 3rd form Freeza figure I've been wanting forever, the box was damaged and faded, but the figure was as good as new.

While drooling over the many figures I saw there in the store, I couldn't help but to notice how variable the prices were in contrast to the figures actual size. I saw this tiny Darth Maul figure which was about 5 cm high and it cost 15,000 yen, which would be something around 120 euros. Madness! Then there was also this huge figure of Vegeta, like 60 cm in height and it cost "only" 9000 yen (around 70 euro). I understand a big price tag on a big figure, but it baffles me how that DM could have cost so much, must have been a very rare figure or something.

Last stop before getting out of here was the doujinshi floor. Again, I found the DBZ section on my own, but got totally lost looking for Star Wars. I approached the girl at the register and asked her and made a fool of myself in the process. I asked her for Star Wars, but I tried to pronounce it as the Japanese spelling goes (Suta uozu?), well she didn't understand what I meant so I switched to the English pronunciation (with my natural Finnish accent) instead. She still didn't understand what I meant, so I showed her the Star Wars logo and finally we understood each other.  She showed me where to find them and I started browsing the covers. The selection was smaller than in Shibuya, but I still picked up something. I found four comics I wanted to buy, 3/4 were DBZ and only one Star Wars.

Now is agood time to point out that I noticed that the Akiba Mandarake (maybe) was generally slightly more expensive than the one in Shibuya. For example,  some doujins I bought at Shibuya cost as little as 200 yen while the cheapest I could find in Akiba were at lowest 400 yen. Or maybe it was just my luck.

We were ready to head back to the hotel, but first we wanted to get some food from a grocery store. It proved to be very hard to find a proper grocery store anywhere in Akihabara, but with Google's help we found a store next to the Akihabara station. It was a really disappointing store, but we got the bare necessities we needed. Then we walked back to our hotel and retired for the evening.


DAY 5 Friday, 23. November

clever vitamin ad on the train

The objective for today was to go to Shinjuku to see the big Godzilla head on the rooftop of Hotel Gracery. The train ride there took something around 30 minutes because it was pretty much the farthest station from our starting point in Kanda. While on the train, I think I saw a Church of Scientology pass by, which is one of those things I didn't expect to see in Japan.

random storefront in an alley

We found our way out of the station without trouble for once. While heading for the Godzilla, we stopped at a Sega game station, where I tried the kiddy version claw machine trying to win a cute plush Shiba Inu keyring. I gave it two tries and then gave up and moved on to our destination.

 

The Godzilla looming over a rooftop is such a brilliant idea, and the fact that it's on top of a cinema makes it even more perfect. I read somewhere that every few hours the Godzilla will make some noise and its eyes would glow. I completely forgot about that detail, so I didn't even check the time for when it would have done its "show". We wanted to see the head up close, so we went inside the hotel. Technically, this isn't allowed unless you are a customer of the hotel or the cafe inside the hotel. I wouldn't have minded going to the cafe, but unfortunately they didn't have a menu outside with prices. So not knowing if the place was in our price range or not, we skipped going there. It looked far too fancy for our country asses anyway. Before we were out of there I had to stop and take a few pictures of the awesome Godzilla diorama in the lobby. There was also one wall with posters from every Godzilla movie, very cool mini exhibition.

Kabukicho gate, Shinjuku

From Shinjuku we travelled to Nakano (and got somewhat lost again looking for the right entrance to Shinjuku station) to get to Nakano Broadway shopping mall. I don't know the exact number of how many stores this complex includes, but I'm guessing over 300 by far. The mall is divided into 4 stories and a basement level. I went directly to the fourth floor and started making my way down from there.

In one of the stores, they were selling anime cells. I saw a few cells from DBZ  and was really tempted to buy one. The one I was looking at was an animation cell of Captain Ginyu and it cost 30,000 yen (about 230€). I didn't want to spend so much money on a single item and I had no idea how I would even safely transport such thing without damaging it back to Finland.

Most of the shops were very tiny and cramped full of stuff. One of the shops was so small there was no possible way to pass someone, you had to wait until the other person moved. In the same shop the seller was not very interested in selling his items. The old guy was too  busy chatting with his friend the entire time. I found a few items I would have liked to buy,  but it would have been such a task to even get to the cash register and get the guys attention, so I left without buying anything.

After roaming through the fourth floor and checking out half of the stores in the third floor, I was exhausted. There has been so much stuff to look at that my brain just overloaded. Mom and I had gone different paths, but we met up on the first floor and decided that maybe we should come back here some other day. My total haul from Nakano Broadway was 17 items bought from 3 different stores.

Getting out of the mall was in itself refreshing enough, so I got some energy back. Since we were still in the area, I knew that not too far away was another Hobby Off store. I asked if we could briefly check that one out too. My mom had enough of figure store by this point and didn't want to join me, so she stayed outside trying to look for a vending machine or cafe to get a cup of coffee while I went to the store. I found a bunch of stuff in here, even things I didn't expect  to find. I met with mom outside and we decided to head back to the hotel. The clock was just a little after 5 pm at this point,  but we were both so tired. The train ride took probably 40 minutes to get back to Kanda, we quickly grabbed something to eat from the convenience store. and retired to our hotel room for the rest of the evening.

Later in the evening they showed Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt.2 on TV,  and it was of course dubbed in Japanese. It was quite weird to see the movie in that way. I kept expecting to hear the real voices of the actors every time they spoke, but of course that wouldn't happen. This was the first and only time I saw any western media on the TV during our stay.


to be continued....