My trip to Japan - Part 2

Created: 12/15/2024

Where are we going next? If you read part one, you should have a pretty good idea.

Before that, though, I grabbed some green tea with famichiki (god I love famichiki)

Its Akihabara time!

The plan was simple. Rock up to Mai:Lish at around 12, and with the power of anime food on my side, I would go on to explore Akiba. I think I got there at around 12:30 or something, and to my surprise it was closed. And then right when I was about to go down from the second floor, a maid appears out of nowhere and also tells me that they are closed right now. Duh. I go down, check google maps again, but there was no mistake, it should have been open already.

The maid then brings out the chalkboard sign, where it also says that they open at 12. WTF?! I mustered up some courage, and I tried asking her in Japanese, something among the lines of:

Is this time wrong?

Mind you, that my Japanese speaking ability is as close to 0 as it gets, so what I think happened, is that the question sounded rude somehow? I am not entirely sure. I think she was a bit annoyed(?) and pointed me at some A4 paper on the wall nearby that actually had a different schedule. It said that they would open from 2pm that day.

Welp, guess I have like two more hours to kill, but I`ll be back.

Its was so cool to see so much hololive stuff everywhere.

Okay, now for some simple, yet genius ideas. Every figurine is better, if it has some sort of background and a base, but not all of them do. Well, apparently, you could just do it yourself!

Anime special effects sold separately from the figures

You could take any normal figurine and make it billion times cooler with these things! I didnt even know these existed.

At the time, Metaphor hasnt come out yet. I was SUPER hyped about it. Right now I am only ~30hrs in and its very good.

Metaphor Re:Fantazio protagonist and his cute little companion

Yostar merch shop. It was very spacious and looked really neat

Top to bottom: Frieren, Bocchi the rock and Oshi no Ko figurines! God I wish I could just buy everything here

I am not a huge Monster Hunter fan, but it would be cool to visit one day.

Aside from the anime stuff, one place that you should definitely check out in Akihabara, is Kanda Myoujin Shrine!

They also have a cool gift shop there, make sure to check it out as well!

These wooden tablets are called ema (絵馬). You can write your wish there and the kami of the shrine will grant it to you!

Ema. It wouldnt be Akihabara, if these didnt have a bunch of cute anime drawings on them lol

After briefly looking at the two girls on one of the Ema, I assumed it was gura and someone else, and I thought it said umi-sea, but its actually umi-sute? If they didnt make a mistake, I have no idea what this refers to.

Mai:Lish

But it was now time to go back to my destined location! I got there a bit after 2pm and it was open this time. Hurray! There were literally no other customers there. Cute and kind maid greeted me and sat me down, she explained that you cant take pictures of the maids. Taking pictures of the food or the merch is okay tho.

She asked me if I liked Steins Gate. heh. I freaking LOVE Steins:Gate, its one of the best shows ever made!

So she opened the anime part of the menu for me.

With burning passion in my eyes, I went for the Kurisu drink and not only did she bring me the drink, but she also fetched me some Kurisu figurines from their huge collection! So kind 😭

I also ordered some omurice, but it wasnt so simple! I had to choose the drawing on it too.

I froze for what felt like an eternity.

The first one from the left, I have absolutely no freaking idea whats going on there, then there is the cat one and I am like 99% certain that the 3rd one has kanji for death???

So I go:

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Neko-Omuraisu!

And she goes:

Nyan-nyan?

The guy falling down from the stairs meme — My reaction

That was a critical hit. My heart literally melted.

I also got a Suzuha point card, because they still had Suzuha's birthday promotion going on.

After ordering, I had the chance to look around once more, and it was such a cozy place!

Cute faris poster and an old-looking phone on the shelf

They had the whole wall filled to the brim with Steins:Gate merch. Heaven

After I got my drink, another maid came close and it was actually the same maid from the morning-accident. She waved at me without raising her arm and her expression (or lack thereof) made me want to fall through the floor and disappear. I DONT KNOW if she was mad at me or she was just a kuudere.

Also can we talk about the Kuristina-drink for a second? It was sour, but as I was drinking it, it was suddently sweet! Tsundere drink! Whoever thought of this, is a genius.

Then the kind-maid saw that I was a bit bored so she came and we had a bit of a "where are you from" small-talk in Japanese, and then she gave me a notebook, where the visitors could leave a message. It was really fun seeing what you guys wrote.

After a bit of hesitation, I decided to write something too.

This was the first kanji that I ever wrote. I tried my best... it looks like poo-poo though.

After a bit of waiting, I got the rest of my order:

I never had omurice before, not even talking about nyan-nyan omurice. It was good!

As I was leaving, the kind-maid also asked me, if I liked the weather in Japan, and I tried answering, but I used the wrong word, and she corrected it for me! HOW CUTE AND KIND CAN YOU BE????

I cant...

Even though I know the tiniest amount of Japanese possible, she still chose some easy topics and tried to talk to me and helped me out every step of the way, by also doing gestures and showing stuff with her hands, to make it more understandable.

I was quite nervous, because I have never been to a maid-cafe before, but this was beyond all of my expectations. I wholeheartedly recommend that you visit Mai:Lish if you get the chance!

Exploration!

The cutetest Shigure UI poster ever! Why didnt I buy this???

This shop had an interesting buying system. You would get a paper and write down the number, quantity and the price of the figurines and then the staff member would go and fetch them for you.

I bought quite a lot of figurines here, but I`ll show you all of the spoils later.

I HAD TO get one

After all of the shopping, I found some fancy izakaya nearby.

It was cool, because you could make an order through the app! Very convenient.

I also got to sit at a cool spot, because you could see how the food was cooked.

After a bit of waiting I got one of the dishes that I ordered:

After I got my food, I realized that I didnt fully understand the concept of izakayas.

The thing is, EVERYTHING comes in small portions, because you are primarily supposed to drink alcohol and everything else is basically an appetizer. As a result you need to order like 9 different dishes (they usually have some sort of sets)

I guess this isnt a terribly small portion, but in general even if you buy something expensive - it doesnt mean that the portion will be big.

Mistakes were made, lessons were learned.

Now, as promised, here is everything that I bought that day:

All of the anime merch that I bought that day

The wrapped-one is cozy pajamas Emilia from earlier.

I also bought like 3 more cultured books, not gonna show em here though. (I guess if I know u, I could dm them to you lol)

SPEAKING OF CULTURED BOOKS THOUGH.

We kinda skipped this part, but I wanted to buy my friend some muscular-girl hentai as a prank. I spent AGES trying to find something in Akiba's Mandarake, then I mustered up the courage to ask (in my broken japanese) the staff if he could help me find kinniku onna and he tried helping me, but couldnt find anything either.