Tokyo Stay (The One With the Maid Café)

As I write these blogs it is actually the end of my one month Summer Vacation, considering my last update was at the beginning of the vacation, that’s a fairly big gap to fill! I suppose I really should start writing blogs more often so that I don’t get left with all these blank spots to fill in. I will try to recap the most major events of my holidays as best I can. Starting with the first and biggest event – my 10 day trip to Tokyo!

On the 29th of July I woke up much earlier than usual, as I had a very early Shinkansen to catch at 8:30 so that I could arrive at Shin Yokohama station, and meet up with fellow exchange student Craig, at 10:00. This was my second time riding the Shinkansen, or bullet train as most would know it as, and it’s definitely not as interesting the second time around. It’s extremely fast and super comfortable, but aside from this it’s essentially just another train. No complaints though, because it’s much more desirable than sitting on a long overnight bus ride.

I arrived in Shin Yokohama, met Craig and then we has to catch a few trains to get to his host family’s apartment in Kanagawa. This would have been easy, apart for the fact that someone actually accidentally took my transfer ticket from the gates as I was going out and we needed to cheat the system a bit to get through the next few gates at the other stations.

After finally getting to the station we had the task of carrying my excess amounts of luggage for the 15 minute walk from the station to Craig’s home. It wasn’t too bad with two people and the scenery was all new and interesting so it was exciting enough. When we arrived at the apartment, Craig’s host father Satoshi was just in the process of waking up, and Satomi was still asleep. Craig’s family are both very young (In their 20’s), not yet married, and often work late at night. It was such a different experience being able to live with them for such a long time and I really had great fun with them as well as Craig.

We decided we would go and see the new Harry Potter movie together that afternoon/night and headed to Kawasaki. This involved a fairly long bus ride, and the buses in Tokyo are different too! Here in Kyoto we pay for the bus fare when we get off the bus (At the front, you get on from the rear doors), but in Tokyo they use the same fare paying process as in Australia. It shocked me at first.

After we got to the shopping mall we had a look around and eventually got to the cinema where we went to see the movie. It was alright, I never have much expectation with regards to Harry Potter movies. After the film I went with Craig to search for the new Harry Potter book but soon found it futile, as with most places the shop was sold out. Eventually we ended up ordering it over Amazon, I got it and it was amazing!

Met up with Satoshimi (Satoshi and Satomi) again and we went to grab raamen for dinner, look around the stores a bit more and grab Starbucks before going home. It was storming and raining all this time, which was nice.

My trip essentially consisted of going with Craig around Tokyo and seeing/trying loads of things. Along the way I got to meet up with my friend Will from back in Brisbane who was also here on exchange, and Tomohiro and Ryoko. Tomohiro was at my school in Brisbane on exchange for a year and left towards the start of last year. Ryoko was a student teacher in my Japanese class for about the same time frame. We met them in Yokohama and went to China town and then a manmade island named Minato Mirai, where we got to ride a roller coaster and then eat dinner at an Okonomiyaki place. It was nice to be able to meet some familiar faces.

Other highlights included visiting a Maid Café in Akihabara with Samantha and Craig. This is something we were all pretty interested in doing, since there is absolutely nothing like it in Australia. Essentially it is something that first started in Akihabara, a district of Tokyo known to cater for the most elite of nerds (Particularly those fond of anime and most commonly referred to as otaku), but since the ‘Otaku Boom’ in which the geek culture got a load of media spotlight, the cafes have become more widely popular. When we went there was a variety of people there, including couples and a surprising number of female customers.

After lining up for about half an hour outside we were finally let in. When you walk in, all the waitresses (Who are fittingly dressed as anime stylised maids) all stop what they’re doing and turn to you to say “Okaeri nasai mase, goshujinsama” (Lit: Welcome home, master) and bow some of the lowest bows I’ve seen yet. One maid is then assigned to you and takes you to your seat.

We ordered drinks and Craig and I both decided to order a bowl of spaghetti as well, since I was keen to get a photo with a maid for a souvenir, and to do so you need to order both food and drink. The pricing was expensive for what you were getting, but it’s undeniable that the service was one of a kind. When the drinks came the maid serving us asked which colour straws we would like, and even poured and stirred the syrup into my glass for me!

In order to start drinking them though, we had to go through a little bit of an embarrassing routine. The maid said she was going to make the drinks more delicious by using her magic ‘moe’ powers (Moe is a hard concept to describe, it’s used in otaku culture to refer to burst of feeling one gets from something… for instance a cute girl dressed as a maid could be referred to as moe, or even the more subtle things like the lace on the dress or whatnot). She made a heart with her hands and then circled it around our glasses chanting ‘Moe, moe! Kyuu, kyuu’ and we had to do it too in order to get to our meals already.

The same deal happened with the food, but that was after the maid who brought it to us (A different one this time, and much more outgoing, I was glad that she took the time to have a bit of a conversation with us) stirred the sauce into the spaghetti for us. After we finished I ordered a photo for Samantha and me. This costs extra, but was worth it since I doubt I’ll be going back anytime soon.

We took our photos and then an event started. They have daily events where the audience participates in games with the maids who stand on the stage out the front. Aside from this you can pay to play kiddy board games with the maids like Uno, the alligator game where you push down the teeth until it bites down, and a similar one with a pirate in a barrel. This game was a big game of Scissors, Paper, Rock and the winner got invited out on stage and received a prize from the star maid of the café, Hitomi. Sadly all three of us lost in the first round! After the game had ended, and the nervous (No doubt socially inept) otaku had stumbled off of the stage, another special event started! One of the customers was having his birthday the next day and the maids helped him celebrate it by singing him happy birthday, giving him a cake and inviting him on the stage to have a photo with every maid there (Except of course the star maid, who took the photo for them). When asked what he thought of the café he replied with, “It’s the best! I’m going to come back for my birthday next year!”.

That day we also went to Odaiba with Samantha. Odaiba is a big manmade island in Tokyo and to get there you take a completely remotely operated monorail with no driver at all. On the way back we got into the front car and you can sit at the very front window and look at the tracks below.

Another highlight of the stay was making our way to Fuji Q Highland. This is a big theme park near the foot of Mt Fuji, and home to three very famous and record breaking roller coasters. One is called Fujiyama, and when it was opened it was the tallest in the world. Now it’s been defeated, but it’s still the tallest in Japan and was lots of fun. The second is Dodonpa and was once the record holder for fastest acceleration and it gets to over 150mph in less than 2 seconds. The most recently opened is called Ee Janai Ka!? and is the current record holder for the most loops/inversions in the world. This is partly due to the fact that you aren’t in the regular cars, but in seats that spin around in 360 degree circles as you are going around regular loops. It was very high too, around 75m in comparison to Fujiyama’s 80m.

Another of the rides we went on was a Haunted House that takes around 50 minutes to walk through. It was designed like an abandoned hospital and was very elaborate, and genuinely scary! One of the girls who came in with our group was with her boyfriend and kept throwing herself onto the ground in tears while screaming to be let out because she’d had enough. Makes you almost feel sorry for the guy haha.

All in all I had an amazing time, and Tokyo wasn’t a disappointing thing at all. I went to just about all the places I’d wanted to go and had fun going out to dinners with Craig’s host mother, her friends, and at another point with Craig’s friends who live in Australia. There weren’t any days where nothing at all happened, so as a result I was absolutely drained of energy when I got back.

I will hopefully write about a trip I had with my host family to Nagano soon!