After a hard week, I finally got out and did the tourist thing... shop!
I started the day with lunch at Omotesando at a little Indian restaurant with a friend. Then, I met a coworker at the Akihabara area (Electronic City). I got distracted once I went inside a multistory department store dedicated to electronics, so there are not very many photos of Akihabara. I did see the girls dressed up in maid costumes and other anime-style, space cadet costumes. They were passing out flyers for different things. I had my coworker pick them up from various girls. Of the flyers we got, they were advertising for a:
1. Salon - You can get your hair cut by a girl in a maid costume.
2. Date - You can pay to have a girl in a maid costume escort you around while you shop in Akihabara. (I think we actually saw this in action.)
3. Cafe - This was the original gimmick. Cafes with waitresses dressed in maid costumes. I had heard about this and had wanted to go to one, but we didn't have time today.
Akihabara attracts the computer and anime geeks... all of these services with a girl in maid costumes helps the guys who are in need of female companionship. Nevertheless, I find this very amusing. If you see one of the photos, there is a sign on the wall recruiting girls for this sort of stuff. The pay is less than $10 an hour.
Then we spotted a shop that actually sold these costumes. There was everything from Sailer Moon to school girl to maid to nurse to anime-vixen costumes. Crazy! The prices for these costumes were in the $100 range.
Then we headed to a new gigantic 5+ floor electronics department store. It had everything you could imagine and had good selection too. I didn't get anything. There was just so much, I couldn't decide what I wanted! I'll probably head back next week when I make up my mind. There was like a 300 GB external hard drive for ~$120. What a deal!
Afterwards, I went to meet another set of coworkers in Tsukishima and went to a monja-yaki restaurant. There are about 70 restaurants all in that street/area that serve monja-yaki. Each restaurant offers different mixes of stuff to cook. One of the guys actually live in the area and goes to this specific restaurant regularly. We plan to go again next week, and it'll be my turn to cook. Yoishi!
Here are some photos for your viewing pleasure. It was a fun Saturday!
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=95reg1b.cn5zt0qn&x=0&y=-hv9dxm