Day 21 : Rainy Day in Akihabara

I woke up late again today but it was also really rainy, so I had a hard time figuring out what to do. My short list includes some parks and observation decks, but those would obviously be better on a sunny day, so I decided to just head back to Akihabara. I had known of a couple new pop-ups that I could check out and I hadn't been to every store last time so I figured why not.

Not too many people were out and about near my station or Suidobashi Station where I transferred rail lines.

However, Akihabara was still pretty lively. I don't think it was as busy as it had been went I went the previous times, but it was still crowded inside stores.

I had known there was a Hololive pop-up in atre 1 that had replaced the previous pop-up, so I went to go check it out. I couldn't buy anything because shopping was on a reservation basis for the first few days until popularity dies down, since the die-hard fans would try to go early. Since I didn't reserve a spot (and probably couldn't have), I just looked around at the decor. There were standees to take photos of (and with if you're brave enough to ask someone to help out lol) of the Hololive VTubers in their normal outfits, but outside were new illustrations in formal shrine attire.

The shrine attire on the outside of the building looked like the outfits in this official outfit (my picture was from something of an 'artistic' angle with people blocking it so the actual art is just better lol)

Original image from the Hololive Kandamatsuri site

Since it was quite after lunch, I was already pretty hungry so I decided to grab something to eat. After being so impressed with Sushiro for dinner last night, I decided to go again! Even though I was in a busy part of towm, there was no wait at all, so I basically walked right in and got a counter seat immediately.

This time I tried to have things I didn't have last time, and also tried some of the more 'unusual' items on the menu.

It was just as good a second time, even though I had sushi 2 meals in a row! I did also get a dessert from their menu, to try that out at well!

The dessert was like a frozen custard crème brûlée (google saving me with the accents! lol). It was actually so tasty! For ¥250 I'd be tempted to recommend coming just for that! Just kidding, but it was good and suited my tastes for sure. I spent just around ¥2,000 total for lunch, which I though twas good considering it was a full lunch of sushi!

After lunch, I basically just browsed a bunch of shops I hadn't visited last time. I ended up looking at a lot of figures mostly but also visited some games stores and arcades.

One thing I did notice about a lot of the stores was that they would occupy small slices of the street and end up being 7 or 8 floors. For the smallest ones, they wouldn't have any escalators so I'd have to take the stairs. Most do have elevators but they were pretty busy in my experience. The other thing about these types of buildings is that they will have the most popular floors at the top, so that it forces visitors to at least walk through every less popular floor below. I wonder if it helps sell merchandise?

I actually didn't buy anything for most of my time in Akihabara, but I made a mistake and decided to buy something near the end. This itself isn't crazy but I basically decided to buy one boxed item for ¥3,300 and one item in the display case for ¥1,400. Long story short after I already paid, I realized that it was actually ¥14,000. Display cases can either have the expensive items or the items that don't have boxes so make sure you read the tags correctly! LOL

Well of course the shop has a no refund policy and I'm too nervous to say anything anyway since the owner is wrapping up the item and it's taking a while so a line is forming behind me. Can you imagine my sweat pouring down my forehead? Even though I paid 10x what I thought the figure was worth (TBH I only bought it because I thought it was way too detailed for that price so I guess I was right), I think it's fine. Basically a $90 mistake but at least I have a physical good out of it! Be careful at stores, everyone!

I was over it in minutes, since I was able to cope with it by telling myself that it's fine since it's not even close to my most expensive figure and I haven't spent my entire budget on the trip yet, etc. You live and you learn, so better to just move on if you can.

By this time, night was falling and maids were coming out to beckon to potential customers on the street. Declining them or focusing on not making eye contact is a bit exhausting so I decided I would leave pretty soon. I will say while I was walking around the back streets to hide from the heat-seeking maids, I did see some interesting looking places.

I didn't risk stopping on a busier street to take a photo of the maids all lined up, but you can see a lone maid here on the street corner, probably ready to strike had I even gotten close to making eye contact.

On way to the station, I hit a few more shops and stumbled across some other collaboration events, such as this one for Oshi no Ko. I haven't watched or read it but I get the feeling it might be sad, so not really planning on watching it right now, but I've heard it's REALLY good.

It's like a non-stop collaboration festival in Tokyo. I think if I were living in Tokyo full time, I'd have to just do food collabs or I'd end up with way too much stuff (even without that I end up with way too much stuff!)!

After exploring the last few stores between me and the station, I made it to the station and eventually back home. Although it was raining all day, I thought it was actually kind of nice since the aesthetic of the city at night in the rain is pretty cool.

I grabbed some katsu with grated radish from Matsunoya for under ¥700 and enjoyed my dinner set. One cool thing about Matsunoya is that if you get something that comes with rice and miso soup, you can get refills of those for free. You just take the empty bowl up to the pickup counter and ask for a refill. I had been dining at the same time as a group of high school boys and I watched as they each got up in turn to get more rice (and occasionally some more soup). I don't know if it's every Matsunoya, and I don't know if there is a limit to how many times you can go up but I thought it was nice. Besides how many bowls of white rice could you really eat anyway? Surely it would be a little hard to abuse. haha