Day 26 : Ochanomizu & Akihabara

After napping and sleeping more last night than I have been in the past week or two, I felt a lot better this morning than I had yesterday. I had considered going back to Ueno to see the rest of the permanent exhibits at the museum that I had gone to yesterday but decided that I would go to Akihabara today. Since it's my last weekeday before I leave Japan, I thought it would be good to go today rather than tomorrow so that it would be less crowded.

Rather than riding straight to Akihabara, I decided to get off one stop early at Ochanomizu Station so that I could visit Kanda Shrine on the way.

Kanda Shrine is a pretty old shrine dating back over 1200 years and I had heard via a collaboration event (the Hololive one I mentioned the other day) that there was a festival that would going on soon, the Kanda Matsuri. I wanted to go see if it was happening and see if it had a goshuin stamp that I could collect. I actually hadn't really done any research on the festival so I wasn't sure if it would be busy or not.

When I arrived, I found that it wasn't super busy, but also wasn't completely empty. In addition to the usual visitors you would expect at such a large, old temple on a weekday afternoon, I also noticed that festival food stalls were being set up. A few of the ceremonial palanquins, specifically called Mikoshi, had already been set up in the courtyard, as shown in the photo above. They definitely drew my attention immediately due to them being bright red and gold.

Along with the food stands and mikoshi, there were people that I would consider uniformed and that I had assumed would be carrying the mikoshi for the actual festival which I believe begins tomorrow. That might not actually be their role though, and is purely speculation.

Before leaving, I decided to check out the "Edo Culture Complex", a building in Kanda Myojin that appears to be a mix of information center, restaurant, and shrine store. The restaurant had a specialty Hololive ginger ale collaboration (lol) with Hololive, but as my luggage woes have already begun, I opted to not buy any. The building also was selling goshuin specific to the Kanda Matsuri. There was also a sign mentioning that regular goshuin would not be given out for the duration of the festival and the time leading up to it. With that in mind, I decided to get the special limited edition goshuin for ¥1,000.

Since it had been expensive, I had assumed it would be pretty elaborate and, indeed, it was. The goshuin was twice the size as normal, so would cover 2 pages in a goshuincho and also included gold bits in addition to the usual red and black stamps. Unfortunately, this one doesn't mention the specific date you visited, just the specific period ("Kanda Matsuri 2023") so there wasn't any hand-written portion or anything like that. Further, this one was always handed out to be pasted into the goshuincho later, regardless of whether you had the book with you or not.

Kanda Matsuri goshuin, bottom, with normal Sensoji goshuin, top, for scale

I don't intend for this series to become a goshuin rating blog, but this one is pretty cool. In the image above the gold text is hard to see because of the reflection but it's the second column of text from the right. One final interesting thing about these goshuin that I haven't mentioned before is that they actually don't say "2023". Instead, they denote the year visited using the Japanese era calendar scheme. In this scheme, the year is derived from the era name which is associated with the reigning emperor. When the current emperor, Naruhito, ascended to the Chrysanthemum Throne in May 2019, it marked the start of year one of the Reiwa era. As such, my goshuin are marked with "Reiwa 5, May".

After marveling at my new goshuin and shuddering at the thought of messing up when I glue it in later, I decided to move on to Akihabara since I was getting hungry and none of the food stalls at the shrine were open today.

As you might have expected, I ended up at Sushiro.

There wasn't a wait this time but I felt that the quality of the food at this Sushiro in general wasn't as good as the one in Yurakucho. That being said, I still ended up having a satisfying lunch.

I didn't have any specific plans in Akihabara but it was nice walking around in the daytime since it meant the carnivorous maids weren't out yet. I also found one of the Kanda Matsuri mikoshis outside of atre 1 in Akihabara to advertise Kanda Matsuri going on this weekend.

Mostly, I tried checking out stores that I hadn't visited yet and that had been closed previously when I was in the area. I didn't plan on buying anything since I was sure I was out of space in my luggage, but I still managed to stumble across interesting things. For example, I found this display in Kotobukiya, which might be best categorized as a shrine, for a specific Idolmaster character named "Mochizuka Anna". I don't watch idol anime but I'm always impressed by the dedication of idol fandoms.

I also visited a retro game store called Super Potato. It did have some cool old consoles and games in really good condition, but the price really showed how good the condition was.

Would you rather have 1 PS5 or 2 game boy colors? Also this is the price for the unboxed ones!

In a secluded corner of the HEY arcade (Hirose Entertainment Yard), I found another idol-related corner with some stamps and Idolmaster notebooks.

Even though I'm not particularly interested, I did collect the stamps. They appear to be for various Idolmaster events dating back to at least 2012/2013. I tried to figure out which events exactly and went down quite a rabbit hole but didn't quite figure it out. If I do later, I will add an update to the bottom of this post!

One of the things I had wanted to try before leaving Japan was playing Pachinko or Slots since I had been brainwashed by the advertising starring all of the most popular anime characters. Everything from Sword Art Online and Neon Genesis Evangelion to the Railgun series and Madoka Magica was used to lure in otaku passersby like moths to a flame. I did enter a few of the establishments and they were a lot louder than even the busy streets of Akihabara. Pachinko is a combination between slot machine and pinball machine that uses hundreds, if not thousands, of metal balls to act as both credits for the machine as well as the primary gameplay element as the balls bounce around much as they would in pinball. I didn't actually end up playing, so definitely look up a video if interested.

I can't even imagine how loud it would be if all the seats were filled

While I did want to try out pachinko, it was a bit advanced for me to start my foray into gambling so I decided I would try out the slot machines instead. At the places I visited, there were multiple per-play prices for machines but 46 plays for ¥1,000 seemed like the most common to me. As a side note, gambling for money is actually not legal in Japan so what will usually happen is that you exchange your winnings in the pachinko parlor for some kind of prize and then next door they will happily buy the prize back for some amount of money. It's a loophole that you can even use in the Pokémon series. In Celadon city, you can play slots in the Game Corner but in order to get an actual prize, you actually leave the building and go next door to exchange your winnings for useful items at the Prize Corner.

After I found the "A Certain Scientific Railgun" slot machines I was looking for, I tried to figure out how to use it. Unfortunately, I actually couldn't and felt like I was being suspicious every time an employee walked by. To be fair, I was acting suspicious since I was actively avoiding them. I tried to watch a few people play but it seems like you might need to purchase a point card to load with credits rather than play with cash at the machine (I also might have just been being silly). I also spent quite a bit of time looking up videos on YouTube about how to play the machines but couldn't find anything in English (or any results at all that were helpful). I was talking to a friend later and they mentioned that gambling content is actually restricted a lot on YouTube, which I hadn't thought about but explains why I couldn't find any helpful results!

The machines I longed to play

In hindsight, it was silly of me to not just ask an employee. Regardless, I didn't in that situation so ended up not gambling away my money, even though I had wanted to. So tragic.

Leaving the flashing lights and cacophonous interior of the pachinko parlor behind, I realized it had already become nighttime. I wasn't very hungry yet, but decided to eat one more time before heading home. I didn't want to make a whole deal of it though, so I ended up at Sushiro for the second time in a single day. Looking back on it, I realize I am spending too much time at this specific chain of conveyor-belt sushi, but I am leaving Japan soon anyway so I'm not too worried about it!

I got a table this time which stressed me out because there was kind of a lot of people waiting and I basically walked in and immediately got a table since I had checked in on my phone and walked over when I was almost about to be seated. It was extra stressful since I was alone and most of the people in line were in groups so they needed a table more than me. In my defense, I signed up for a table or counter so it's on the system, not me!

I wandered around a bit more and decided to walk to the other side of the station, the side opposite the main part of Akihabara that people usually think about. I was surprised to see an absolutely massive Yodobashi Camera.

It took quite a while to explore even just the hobby floors and by the time I had wrapped up, the store was actually getting pretty close to closing. I made sure not to buy anything else in here though so I was pretty proud of myself!

After leaving, I took in the sights of Akihabara one last time and headed home.