Electric city

Sun 16 Feb 2014

On our first night in Tokyo, we'd been given a tip-off from a businessman, who'd stayed for one too many whiskys after work, to go and explore Akihabara - which he slurrily repeated several times, "Aki Habara, Aki Habara," described as 'Japanese electronic city...and more.'

Since getting this inside tip, we did some research and realised that this was a huge deal in Tokyo. It's the home of everything Anime and electronic—basically, it's every 14-year-old snotty-nosed geeky boy's wet dream. The icing on this teenage nirvana cake are the tea girls who parade the streets in teeny French maid outfits, over-the-knee socks, and bunches in their hair.

A recurring theme in Japan seems to be the slutting up of young women. Knee-high socks are hugely endorsed, along with miniskirts and high heels.

We'd barely been off the tube for 5 minutes when we were approached by a couple of students who wanted to interview us about Anime.

My knowledge of Anime doesn't span further than knowing that the hugely annoying Pokémon cartoon fits into the genre, and Jamie was all woozy from the painkillers he'd dosed up on, resulting in us making terrible candidates.

When asked about the difference between Anime and Western traditional cartoons, the best I could throw together was a ramble about Anime being action-packed and more vibrant... what I was describing was something more animated, a piece of info I'm sure would add no value to our 5 minutes of fame.

Leaving a disappointed pair of students behind us, we walked up and down the streets lined with huge electronic advertisements—mostly for SEGA. The shops were full of the weirdest stuff, but they were heaving, and grown adults were purchasing Anime cuddly toys, card collections, and all kinds of niche goods.

It wasn't long before we found ourselves in an adult store. Schoolgirl fancy dress lined the walls of the ground floor, and the basement was full of all kinds of weird sex stuff... massive nipple suction pads that only looked suitable for extracting milk from a cow was one of the strangest items that's safe to publish on the blog.

Not wanting to skip on tradition, we popped into a tea house for a light lunch served up by a Japanese French maid. This odd Harvester-esque restaurant seemed far from anything traditional, so the hunt continued. Failing to find any quaint tea houses, we headed to Shinjuku to find 8bit Cafe—in this cool little hangout, you can play old MegaDrive games whilst enjoying a few drinks with friends.

When we eventually found it, hidden away on the top floor of a building in a maze of buildings, it was closed. I'd read a review about a cool restaurant here in Shinjuku that has a wicked view out over the city, so with the road name in hand, we got directions and headed to the Shinjuku Tower where, on floor 52, our restaurant was no more.

Having the internet as a city guide is all well and good until something closes down.

Luckily, down on floor 51, there was a viewing platform making it not such a wasted trip. Mt Fuji's snow-capped peak could be seen in the distance, and the city filled every gap in between. It was incomprehensibly huge and absolutely spectacular.

Not wanting to miss a bit of this fantastic city, we popped back home to change up and headed straight to Harajuku. Expecting to see a full parade of Harajuku girls, I was most disappointed by everyone's average attire. It was now pretty late and, being a fresh 2 degrees, it wasn't surprising that people weren't just hanging out with their mates. We wandered around anyway, falling in love with clothes that were out of budget and deciding that we would both happily live and work in Tokyo.

Crossing the road, we spotted a purple-headed genuine Harajuku girl heading back to the tube. Tick.

The next stop on our last night of super-crammed-in fun was batting in Shinjuku. Now absolute pros at the tube, we got there in no time, asked for directions, and found the Oslo Batting Centre. We gloved up, picked a cubicle, and selected our bats.

Having absolutely no hand-eye coordination and apparently piss-poor reflexes, it wasn't surprising that I only managed to tap the edge of one ball. Jamie was a pro—look out Babe Ruth!

There was still time for dinner, and what better place than a prison hospital for the mentally challenged?

Alcatraz ER in Shibuya is one of Tokyo's many weird and wonderful themed restaurants. From the very entrance, it was pretty gruesome, asking us to press a button for blood samples. The black and red decor was complete with mutilations and torture tools. Our waitresses were slutty zombie nurses (no surprise there, Japan), our food was served in kidney dishes, and we were locked in a cell.

The whole experience was completely nuts, and every bit of it fit our criteria for seeing the really unique yet bonkers Tokyo.

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