Japan Trip Day 6 Part 1 Akihabara & FF Cafe

And we're back! The previous day was a bit packed and all of us were quite tired. So on day 6 we decided to take it easy and just do some wandering around. We went out to find breakfast first so down the main drag we went!

 

001 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

002 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

004 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

005 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

Cat café!

 

006 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

And kitty in the window!

 

011 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

Of course it was early and the streets were all but deserted.

 

007 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

We decided on Mos Burger for breakfast.

 

008 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

I got two burgers. The girl behind the counter asked me 3 times if I wanted 2 burgers, it was like she had no idea why anyone would order TWO of them. The best part was when she asked me "One and one" One, one?" as she pointed to the menu meaning one of this type and one of that type. She said it fast so it sounded like she was saying "Wan wan" which is the Japanese word for "Bark bark". So I was laughing inside my head because this poor girl was trying to figure out why the big dumb American wanted two burgers and all I could hear was her barking at me in Japanese.

 

009 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

After eating we headed to our favorite goodie shop. They opened early at around 8am and it had 4 floors and some super narrow stairs. This is looking down the stairs from the top floor.

 

010 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

We went back to the apartment to drop off stuff before heading back out to meet Ed's friend. My favorite shop didn't let me down either, I snapped up these awesome Nendo Petite goodies!

 

012 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

Becca picked up this Nendo body that holds faces. It was so cute!

 

013 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

Heading towards the café we were meeting at, we saw these cuties all dressed up.

 

014 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

The café we went to was a Final Fantasy themed one. Here's everyone waiting to order.

 

015 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

We had cute little placemats.

 

016 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

The place was really detailed and had tons of FF stuff in it including computers you could go on for free and play the newest FF game.

 

017 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

All the food and drinks were themed but I had no idea what any of them meant or were supposed to represent but they looked really cool.

 

018 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

019 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

020 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

021 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

For food, Becca got this potato and cheese plate thing.

 

022 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

Ed got this egg roll type thing with a cutout Chocobo on it.

 

023 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

I got this amazing sausage plate with onions and some excellent mustard. And it was served on a really badass sword!

 

024 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

We brought our girls along because the café was having something called "Little Ladies Day". Yeah, there were no other dolls there but ours. LOL As you can see Manami confiscated the sword after I was done eating.

 

025 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

Man, I just love Japan! Here's the coolest thing about this café.

 

When everyone came inside, they handed out lottery tickets for a drawing later on. As luck would have it, I didn't win squat.... as usual.

 

BUT.........

 

Becca won something!

 

What did she win?

 

A free dessert! A really, really, REALLY BIG FRIGGIN DESSERT.

 

It was absolutely amazing! Here's what they brought out to our table:

 

 

 

 

026 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

Yup, THAT was a dessert! The tower to the left topped with a little Moogle was actually ice cream, pancakes, mousse, dango and some other stuff. The gold coins were wrapped chocolate in the video games currency, all the other stuff down there was corn flakes. And that big ass cake thing was a Honey Toast. That was basically bread smothered in honey and toasted in an oven. The center was nothing but a soft, gooey mass of honey..... it was just sooooo crazy good.

 

Do you have any idea how big that thing actually is? No? Here's Manami in a drunken stupor of awe so you can see how absurdly big this thing was.

 

027 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

"Is.... is this for ME???"

 

028 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

Rin gets in on the action before Manami scarfs it all down.

 

029 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

The four of us did our best to eat all of it but we just couldn't do it. Even Manami passed out before the end. Here's what was left:

 

030 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

I took some pics around the café after we ate and were ready to go. They had some really cool stuff in there.

 

031 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

032 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

033 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

034 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

035 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

036 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

Here's the sign outside the café with the name on it. Eorzea or something...

 

037 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

Manami walked with us for a bit and insisted I take pics of her out on the street so she could prove she was in Japan. Something about appeasing her online fans or something...

 

039 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

040 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

041 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

"Ooooo! is that a sexy maid café? I'll be riiiight baaack...."

 

042 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

Jade also popped out for some pics.

 

043 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

045 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

046 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

We had to go drop the girls off at the apartment because were heading out to another part of town where we'd be doing a lot of walking so we didn't want to carry much with us. On the way to the train station we saw this nice car.

 

047 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

And some random buildings.

 

048 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

We came across this wild hobby shop that was packed with radio control cars like drifters!

 

049 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

050 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

051 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

They had this awesome bike out front as a sign. It was small but too big for the DD girls to fit. Maybe the new 1/2 scale Mirai Computer Doll would fit well on it...

 

052 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

Ice cream vending machine in the train station.

 

053 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

I had heard of this but I didn't think I'd see it.

 

054 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

Damn drunks! LOL

 

055 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

 

Well, that's all for now. When I make the next post, you'll see another Final Fantasy themed place, some more cool cars, lots of neat buildings and then Shinjuku at night!

 

 

 

Billy

The café we went to was a Final Fantasy themed one. Here's everyone waiting to order.

015 by Billy Bennett, on Flickr

Are those ipad/menus?

Are those ipad/menus?

 

Ha! I totally forgot about those! They sure are touch screen menus! They had pics and descriptions of everything on those pads and when you were ready to order you just pressed what you wanted and hit send then they'd bring your food out. Once you were done eating, they updated the pads wirelessly with your total and you could run your card right thru the pads or give them cash. It was pretty slick!

 

I'm amazed you figured that out, how did you know?

 

 

Billy

I'm amazed you figured that out, how did you know?

I had to go to the "big picture" to check the details, but three identical looking ipads/displays, they were either menus or you guys all just happened to have ipads and decided to play the same movie/game. And that picture was before the "food" shots (no food on the table yet).

Cool pics! I'd love to go to Japan someday, fingers crossed. That desert looked so yummy though, honestly after looking at all the pictures of food I'm hungry now. It's also pretty cool that the cafe let you play the FF game for free.

Cool pics! I'd love to go to Japan someday, fingers crossed. That desert looked so yummy though, honestly after looking at all the pictures of food I'm hungry now. It's also pretty cool that the cafe let you play the FF game for free.

 

Thank you! Hopefully you'll make it over there someday! The food and dessert were wonderful, I was really impressed with it. Well, you had to buy tickets to get into the place ahead of time so it kind of makes sense that they would let you go online to log into the FF14 game. Ed checked in just to tell his online friends where he was and brag about it.

 

 

 

Billy

yes japanese people do get perplexed with how much north americans can eat.

 

mos burger is always a highlight on my trips lol. It really is that good, even when surrounded by so many other awesome places to eat.

yes japanese people do get perplexed with how much north americans can eat.

 

Ha ha! Ain't that the truth? Same with how much we can drink with our meals. I was always wanting twice what I was given, even with the supposed "large" sized drinks there.

 

mos burger is always a highlight on my trips lol. It really is that good, even when surrounded by so many other awesome places to eat.

 

I totally agree, Mos Burger is an amazing place! All their food is well made and tasty.... I wish we had one here in SC, I'd be eating there every week!

 

 

Billy

I, and 2 of my friends have the honor... or shame? of being cut off at an all you can eat grill your own meat place outside of kyoto. Their menu had no english and we were unable to read the katakana and kanji on it... however... they did have pictures of the tastiest cuts of meat on it to point at. The fools didn't know what they had unleashed.

 

Now, the thing about japanese restaurants in japan is that they don't order more than they think they can sell that day. However, it could also have been a quiet 'please stop ordering the wagyu.' hint. But we were told they ran out of beef.

 

So we either have the honor of eating all their beef, or the honor of scaring them so much they cut us off from ordering more.

I, and 2 of my friends have the honor... or shame? of being cut off at an all you can eat grill your own meat place outside of kyoto. Their menu had no english and we were unable to read the katakana and kanji on it... however... they did have pictures of the tastiest cuts of meat on it to point at. The fools didn't know what they had unleashed.

 

Now, the thing about japanese restaurants in japan is that they don't order more than they think they can sell that day. However, it could also have been a quiet 'please stop ordering the wagyu.' hint. But we were told they ran out of beef.

 

So we either have the honor of eating all their beef, or the honor of scaring them so much they cut us off from ordering more.

 

HAHAHAHAHAHA! That's like THE best story ever! I bet they were all in the kitchen trying to figure out how to get rid of those damned barbarians eating all their meat for hours before they cut you off.

 

 

Billy

... I just can't get over how much bigger the dessert looks than the actual food ^^" (or is that just percepted? Were the servings equal in size?)

... I just can't get over how much bigger the dessert looks than the actual food ^^" (or is that just percepted? Were the servings equal in size?)

 

That dessert was about 4 times the size of our menu items! It was supersized on purpose as it's meant as a lottery prize only, I don't think it was available to order.

 

 

Billy

it's a theme cafe as well... I found the deserts were usually far more appealing at those types of places than the actual food. lol Dessert/tea houses were everywhere when I was there. I would have liked to have seen the FF14 cafe, but we didn't have enough time/meals to fill for it to make the list. We did do a maid cafe in akiba, more of a maid staffed restaurant/pub than a typical maid cafe. It's pretty interesting stuff, you can easily find any themed restaurant over there. Quality of food and pricing can be suspect though.

 

Was the staff bilingual? hod did they find the winner?

 

That dessert was about 4 times the size of our menu items! It was supersized on purpose as it's meant as a lottery prize only, I don't think it was available to order.

 

Billy

 

4... times... I'll go dream of dessert. Don't wake me

Was the staff bilingual? how'd did they find the winner?

 

The server we had wasn't really great with English but we really didn't need to say much since we had those interactive menus. As for winners that was easy.... they called out the numbers in Japanese over a P.A. system and then held up a large card with the winning number on it. My GF just held up her ticket with the matching number on it. The tickets with numbers were handed out to people as they came in the door.

 

 

 

Billy

ah that would make it easy. I had forgotten about the wireless table menus. That's always a bonus. lol Can't beat pointing at stuff on a paper menu though.