AKB48 Cafe and Shop

[2012.01.24] Sorry everybody! It’s as if I had forgotten this, huh? Adjusting back to life in the States was tough… :’(

There’s only a few more things left to upload. Stay tuned!

On our second to last day, we had to check out of our apartment since the Sakura House people were closed on the 30th due to the New Year holiday. Thus we had to book a room at a hotel the night before we were about to leave back home (Alex and I felt numb at the thought that our excellent adventure in Japan would soon be coming to an end). An interesting thing I noticed is that the New Year is a big deal in Japan ;however, Christmas isn’t. It’s a bit of an opposite to the U.S…. somewhat. Anyway, we spent a small portion of the morning cleaning up and tidying everything. It was a depressing sight seeing the apartment emptying out. We also confirmed our last minute reservation at Hotel New Ueno, which turned out to be very comfortable for us (though lugging around our 8 pieces of luggage was a royal pain in the arse). We taxi’d our bags over there because walking 15 minutes with all our luggage didn’t seem worth saving the 710 yen. After dropping off our mountain of personal affairs, we headed back to the apartment to wait for the inspector. The inspector came early (11am instead of our original 1pm appointment), so our place was checked out quickly and we had time to kill. You don’t even have to guess where we went first…Akihabara!

Alex and I saw LINES (yes, multiple) forming outside of the AKB48 Cafe and Shop (at first, we were perplexed about why there was such a large gathering of people in the plaza outside Akiba station). We soon realized that they were all lines to get into the different parts of the shop/cafe/theater. As we saw people getting escorted into the theater door, we went up to the ticket booth and actually purchased 2 tickets for the AKB48 theater. At 2700 yen per person, it was no cheap show, but it at least had a buffet.

The theater was small and cozy. Rows of plush, red, bench-like chairs and white tables all face toward the front, where 9 HD-television screens flash a barrage of AKB48 news, music videos, and so on (the criss cross pattern of the screen edges were distracting, but it makes for a large and clear picture). There are also booth-like setups on the side. The theater seats only about 136 people. The buffet included things like fried chicken, potato salad, and noodles. It was all you can drink as well, so I had my fair share of Calpis and ginger ale.

The crowd surprised me because it consisted of pairs of girls, teenage boys, adults (male and female), and families. Idols usually get ragged on for having a predominantly middle-aged male audience, but the diversity in this group was much more varied than I expected. However, there were two hardcore dudes (wotas) who broke out an endless supply of glowsticks and chanted along with the songs (no joke, they each had a pile of 20+ glowsticks by the end of the show). This was annoying because it seemed like more of a setting for people to quietly and calmly watch a show, especially since there weren’t any live girls in front of us. I’m sure they were annoying the people around them quite a bit as well. Alex was able to sneak some footage of one of them.

I do have to admit that I somewhat admire his passion and energy; this fandom really can bring about the best… and the worst in people. Hey, he could just be extremely happy to be supporting the girls with all his energy, or he could be trying too hard to show off. Alex pointed out it was almost like watching someone in a state of religious fervor. Had you replaced the names of the AKB48 girls with some spiritual deity, you would have the very makings of a hardcore worshipper.

After the show, we headed back to meet with our friend, Satoshi. We went to a sentou (a public bath), together called, “Kotobuki Yuu.” It had an indoor and outdoor hot spring setting. I had been warned about the whole, “you have to get totally naked” thing, and I was assuming many people would find it weird and uncomfortable if they’re not used to it. I had almost no trouble adjusting to it since, well, everyone else was naked too, so whatever, right?

First, we sat down to bathe in the provided shower area. I kind of liked this since the shower head was adjustable (like at our apartment and hotel) and we got to sit on what looked like a kid’s plastic stool. We also got a bucket to pour water on ourselves, large bottles of shampoo and conditioner, and a scrubbing towel. After completely washing down, we headed to the heated pools, which looked like indoor jacuzzis. Some of them had water jets that would massage you on all parts of your body. It was an extremely relaxing experience, but of course to be careful, I made sure to drink water periodically (dehyradation is your worst enemy). There were times where I would feel lightheaded due to the heat of the baths and atmosphere. There was also a hot herbal water pool that was tinted green. The herbs are suppose to be good for easing body aches and pain. That pool was extremely hot and I could only take sitting in there for 30 seconds to 1 minute (Alex got slightly scalded in that pool because he unknowingly sat near the jet stream). Outside, there was an onsen (hot spings bath) look-alike pool. There were rocks and shrubbery, so we got a small taste of what it would be like at a real onsen, only we were in the middle of the city. There was also a cold water bath, which was killer during winter. Though Satoshi and Alex wouldn’t try it, I jumped into it like a boss. In the rest area of the men’s bath, we sat around and dried off, using the fans and/or hair dryers and whatnot. After spending a good hour or two at the bath house, we dried up, dressed back up and rested in the lobby. We watched a bit of TV as we let the relaxing aura of the sentou sink into our muscles.

We said our farewells to Satoshi and headed to Akihabara for further last-minute shopping.

Hallway in the back of the Cafe and Shop

Oogoe Diamond poster

Shimazaki Haruka

History of AKB48 written by the girls

Cute things they drew

Miyazaki Miho and Watanabe Mayu

Kashiwagi Yuki and Kitahara Rie

Oshima Yuko and Fujie Reina

Minegishi Minami

The queen, Maeda Atsuko

Kotobukiyuu public bath

Hotel room bathroom

Tsubaki, you’re beautiful

Small room

Volks rental locker order slip

AKB48 Akihabara store bag

Volks bag

AKB48 Cafe theater ticket

AKB48 Cafe napkin

AKB48 goods

Christmas edition collectable playing cards

Photo cards

Postcards

The one photo I had to get

More photo cards

The bag we had to buy to bring more things home

Japanese currency

Day 22: Shopping Spree Continued

The above video is mostly a treat for Dave’s AKB48-fan buddies out there.

[Edit by Alex on 1/11/12 - Just felt like I couldn't leave it in bullet points.]

We woke up early in the morning, for once lol. As time was winding down closer to our return to America, we began to feel the depressing weight of realizing our vacation was almost over T.T. Heavy hearted, we began to Tetris our giant piles of figures, clothing, and so on into our luggage cases. It became immediately apparent that we would need to purchase an additional check-in, rolling bag to carry our superflous amount of souvenirs. Dave and I remembered seeing a big enough bag at Yodobashi for about 7200 yen. After packing up our luggage, we spent a couple of hour tidying up the apartment: vacuuming the tatami mats, doing laundry on our futon covers and used clothing, sorting burnable and non-burnable trash outside, and so on. As we cleaned, signs of our living there began to slowly fade away. At the end, I looked sadly at our almost empty apartment room. It had served us well these past 22 days.

After clean up duty, we headed out mid afternoon towards Harajuku. The night before, Dave made online reservations to allow us to enter the AKB48 official store. I am a bit flabbergasted at the idea that I would have to actually make reservations just to be able to check out their merchandise haha. I suppose this speaks volumes of the popularity of idol culture in Japan. Naturally, Dave was beyond ecstatic browsing through the stores’ vast array of AKB48 goods, which ranged from key chain portraits all the way to clothing apparel. The walls contained signatures and doodlings froms the AKB48 members themselves, which I thought was interesting. There were displays of some of AKB48′s costumes from different music videos. Afterward, Dave and I headed to Kiddy Land to try to find Mameshiba goods, but this ended up in failure. Despite this, I did manage to find the Haruhi Composite Version Mecha figure, which I have been desperately searching for awhile.

Being nerds, we returned to Akihabara once again. Dave and I headed to Sofmap first because I wanted to buy some of the Weiss Krutz/Precious Memories anime trading card game goods, and Dave wanted to buy even more monstrous piles of AKB48 music CD and photobooks. After browsing a bit more at Sofmap, Dave and I finally headed over to Yodobashi to buy that expanding rolling backpack (a good thing since we had a lot of stuff we were carrying around). When we got home, we began packing it up and we, NO JOKE, filled the bag up to the top with all of our trinkets . I felt a bit afraid that customs might seize our bags under the suspicion that we are going to sell these back in the States for a profit lol.

Insert by David:

Day 21: Late Shopping Spree

This morning was tough, Dave and I woke up pretty late because we had lingering exhaustion from our all-day trip to Tokyo Disney. Despite this, with what little sunlight we had left in the day, we decided to get up and hit up some of the shops near Sensoji Temple and Akihabara to do some gift shopping for people back at home (some personal shopping as well of course ).

Being that it is a vacation, we had to record some more videos of the food that we enjoyed in Japan. Below is a video of some fo the food that we ate.

One of the highlights of the morning was that we got to try our personalized Cup of Noodles from the Cup Noodles museum. We anxiously peeled away the plastic wrapping and popped open the top of the cup with pure glee. As the water worked its magic in the styrofoam cup, we breathed deep the scents of personalized noodle goodness.

While at Sensoji Temple in Asakusa, we wandered aimlessly from shop to shop. Though there are a lot of “traditional” style trinkets – sake cups, silk kimonos and yutakas, wooden toys and instruments, etc – (and some typical Japanese iconic items: mini ninja and samurai swords, mini kunais, geisha dolls, etc.), we noticed that many of the shops had items that repeated from other nearby shops. So it kind of came down to finding the few trinkets one wanted and then doing some price hunting between each shop. Near the temple, we were able to locate an old-fashioned looking bakery place, where we had some of the most derricious, freshly-made meron pan. It was a one-minute quick trip to sugary heaven though the freezing cold took some of the ecstatic edge away :3. Dave and I checked out some of the statues near the entrances of the shopping district/temple. An elderly Japanese shop lady explained to us that the statues were like “god’s bodyguards.” They were spirits that were in charge of protecting the shrine/spirits of the city. I guess I was wrong that they were statues of the gods of thunder, wind, etc. Oh well…

AND the moment of golden truth, Dave and I were finally able to try out the much anticipated GRAND CANYON BIG AMERICA BURGER at McDonald’s. I definitely have to say that it was well worth the wait for this buger. The onion/BBQ sauce with fresh egg and onion crisps were a blend of perfection on this Big Mac style burger. I have to say that I am extremely envious why other McDonalds in other countries have such innovative and delicious menu items, and America’s McDonalds haven’t tried once to be remotely creative. C’mon America! Let’s do something crazy too with our menu items!

As always, nerds as we are, we nerdily headed over to nerdy Akihabara to do some nerdy shopping with our nerd-like shopping list. Dave bought (seriously) a mound of 20+ photobooks of AKB48. It was so heavy that Dave needed to take frequent breaks to let his arm rest as we walked around. I have to say, when Dave splurges on shopping, he really goes all out xD. At Yodobashi, I bought a giant Ghostbuster car model (very detailed like the AE86 one I bought from Auto Art), which made me happy on one hand and on the other made me go, “Crap…now I have to carry this huge thing around with me for the rest of the day).

At the end of the long night, Dave and I stopped by to try Jonathan’s (similar to Japanese Dennys’ menu items). We had seen several of their establishments scattered around Japan, so we figured it would be a good time to see what they were like (plus I vaguely remembered seeing some anime that had their characters chilling at Jonathan’s). The food was alright (I personally felt the Japanese Dennys tasted way better). After eating and chatting for a bit, we finally hopped the JR train back to Asakusa.

While getting lost, we found a temple

Temple gate

Name of the shopping area outside of Sensoji

Tsubaki, you’re beautiful

Example of a subway station sign

Japan-exclusive McDonald’s food is so good

Behold, the Grand Canyon Burger

Jonathan’s, another diner-type restaurant

David is cold and tired

David is eating a french fry

Chocolate banana parfait

Mixed fruit parfait

Cute cat on a billboard

Suica penguin looks in shock as that while flies over the mountains

Tons of AKB48 photobooks

Day 20: Tokyo Disney

100+ photos in the gallery. Took tons of video, but a lot of it was just parades + slow rides, so if you want to see what that looks like, click on the links provided.

The night prior, we tried to plan a full day in Hakone, consisting of visiting the sites there such as the local shrine, a historical gate, and the nearby lake. We were up until 4am and our target wake-up time was set for 8am. We awoke at 11am realizing that we were going to be royally screwed and would probably have to stay the night in Hakone. When we got to the shinkansen entrance though, we found out that thick snow in Nagoya (along our path towards Hakone) had delayed all the shinkansen on the rail. There was no idea as to when the trains would return. Feeling defeated, we took the most logical course of action. We went to Tokyo Disneyland.

Day 19: Merry Christmas from Japan!~

2012.1.1 Update: Sorry about missing out on so many days. As you could see, we lagged on posts because as it got closer to when we had to leave, we got busier and busier. Now that we’re back home and somewhat settled back in, we can get the rest of our trip up!

Merry Christmas everyone! Dave and I would like to wish all of our readers a happy holidays ^_^.

In the video below, Alex shows off a bunch of stuff that he bought. It’s like he’s receiving Christmas presents!

Day 18: Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve in Japan with Dave was…uh…mmmm…well see for yourself below:

Day 17: Bro Hang Out w/ Satoshi and Yusuke

Today is the day that Yusuke and Satoshi are free from their work at Shibaura Daikoku (college); therefore, Dave and I arranged our plans to spend the day nerding out with them ^_^. We would start by meeting up with them at 10AM in the Akihabara Electric Town exit of the JR line.

The weather was intensely chilly. Unyielding winds combined with the low temperature created weather conditions that were far frostier than Kyoto. All four of us could feel the icy touch of winter penetrating through all our thick layers of clothing (even Yusuke with four to five layers of clothing was still shivering). It felt a lot like this.

To start the day off, we asked Yusuke and Satoshi to show us a good place for some 朝食 “asagohan“ (breakfast) in Akihabara. For awhile, Yusuke and Satoshi had trouble trying to decide what we could eat. As Satoshi pointed out, “Otakus do not wake up early. We usually do not eat breakfast.” We ended up settling on eating breakfast at a little soba shop. Yusuke treated us out to some food since he was our 先輩 “senpai“ (our senior). I ordered a カツ丼 katsudon (beef cutlet rice bowl) since I hadn’t eaten one on this trip yet. It was 非常においしい (very delicious)!

Katsudon

Satoshi and Dave wanted to stop at the AKB48 Theater in the Don Quijote building first. As we approached the building, we saw that a lengthy line had formed in front of the building. Intrigued, we joined the line as well. When the attendant came by, Yusuke inquired about the purpose of the line. The attendant explained that the line was for purchasing current AKB48 image cards from the 8th floor store. Dave and Satoshi being AKB48 オタク”otaku”, this was the perfect opportunity for them. For not-so-interested members like Yusuke and I, it was a grueling sacrifice of friendship to freeze in line with them. About 7 minutes later, the four of us began our ascent to the top of the Don Quijote. Yusuke bought Dave a pack of Team K AKB48 image cards as a present. I bought a pack of Team B AKB48 cards for Dave, and Dave paid me back afterwards (I figured I would help out Dave since I didn’t have a 興味 “kiyomi” (interest) in this kind of stuff). Dave himself also bought a pack of Team K. The total cost of all 3 packs of image cards was 3000 yen (so roughly about 11$ each pack). Satoshi picked up a pack of AKB48 Team B image cards for himself. What struck me as interesting is that Dave and Satoshi spoke of some of the cards in terms of rarity, popularity, uniqueness, etc. This reminded me a lot of the same kind of lingo I would use when I used to describe the value of Yu Gi Oh, Magic the Gathering, or Pokemon cards. Oh the world of collectibles :-P. Afterward, we went into the theater to watch some of AKB’s live performance on a giant screen in the lobby. As expected, there was a massive crowd of other AKB48 fans already gathered.