Solo Travel Japan (2013) – Finally Friday. (Part 5)

Originally Posted: March 9, 2013

When I woke up today I was hardly in an excited mood due to the previous days shenanigans. I decided, as I do not want to waste all of my money in Tokyo, (it’s been so expensive, I have easily spent $250 just on train fares) I threw snowboarding out the window, especially since I could barely walk as it is due to how much walking I’ve been doing. I now feel around 85, give or take a century.

Thinking about it and it occurred to me, I have been doing a lot of couple things and not really enjoyed my trip as much as possible, I have not done a lot of ‘Allan’ things… so off to Super Potato in Akihabara I went!

Super Potato, the promised land

It was a fairly easy trip since it was 2 stations away from me, I was thanking the heavens I didn’t have to walk very far. Before making it to Super Potato I stopped in a few different places, mainly anime and game stores as there are a lot it seems in this area, and noticed a lot of cute petite girls in anime outfits trying to get people to come into the themed bars/restaurants on the upper stories. Unfortunately, being Caucasian, as soon as we locked eyes with each other they would just turn away, so I knew instantly it was not a place gaijin (outsiders) where permitted.

If you are reading this and ever come to Japan note that there are A LOT of places you can’t go if you are not Japanese so don’t feel bad. It’s just people before us have made fools of themselves and they don’t care much for outsiders in their themed bars and other places targeted at locals.

The Land of Anime and Hentai

I walked into an anime store that was roughly 8-9 stories high and it seemed like it had everything you could ever dream of. After perusing the ground floor I headed up the stairs to have more of a browse. The first 3 floors where purely anime and games, the 4th floor was figurines and anime but then… the 5th floor had an 18+ sign on it, “Screw it!”.

I made my way up the escalator and found myself encompassed by hentai (Japanese animation porn). I giggled a little and had a look around, there where a few older Asian men and a couple of normal looking 18-21 year old guys too. The next floor obviously was 18+ again, but I thought “I never know till I go!” so I kept escalating the levels of this labyrinth. To my surprise I was now in the ‘actual porn’ level hahahhahaha.

I had a look around and most of them where very unrealistic. Big fake breasts on Asian women, yeah pull the other leg hahaha, but it was fun just browsing and laughing inside at all the random things they had. I was going to keep going, “hell” I thought, “if this pace keeps the trend up, the top level might be a brothel” haha. Unfortunately the next escalators were blocked off (or fortunately?). Since I couldn’t read Japanese I didn’t know if it said “out of order”, “do no come up” or “we have free cookies and step sisters who need assistance”. I left it at that and made my way out.

The Arrival

After walking around for a few more minutes I finally found Super Potato. It was everything I dreamed of: old games, new games, plush toys and memories flooding back to me like it was just yesterday. 3 floors of old games and refurbished consoles, some consoles I had never heard of and some I knew but had funny different names. I was going to buy some stuff but I thought it would be fun for a few goes but it would soon die after that so I decided not to waste my money.

I browsed for a while and then headed back onto the street, took a few pictures of the surrounding places and then hopped on a train to Shinjuku. Thinking back, I should have grabbed a few things that were hard to come by in Australia. Some of the games I used to play on my Gameboy and search for some collector items but I was too exhausted and budgeting harder than I ever had in my life.

Paint me like one of your Harajuku Girls

For those of you that do not know, Shinjuku is the place where Harajuku Girls can be found and a lot of street style punk fashion. It’s very close to where a lot of movies represent ‘Tokyo’ (Shibuya), big screens on the buildings and that massive people crossing with seemingly endless people. I walked around a little, walked through what seemed to be a really nice lush Park and even did some shopping ($250 later for 3 things).

I was going to go to the park where all the cherry blossoms where but it was so far to walk, even now just standing upright in the same spot for too long hurts, so I decided that wouldn’t be a great idea.

Some fun trivia: I found out Shinjuku train station splits up 2 very different worlds. On the left side you have state of the art buildings and everything is super new. To the right is old suburbs with some new buildings but not as many. The right side of the train station is also home to the biggest red light district in Japan and is owned and operated by the Yakuza.

At first I was like “haha yakuza, that’s just some sort of olden day thing that isn’t really real anymore”… I was very wrong. Apparently the police if they arrest someone in a district owned by yakuza, if the yakuza turn around and say no, the police hurry away with their tail between their legs.

Hidden in Plain Sight

There are a few different stores that make up the red light district,

• Hostess Bars: These are like regular bars but you have a woman telling you how awesome you are gets you free drinks, but you have to buy them whatever they want or get out, no touching involved. Additional fee’s could apply, drinks not always free.
• Topless Bars: Same sort as Hostess Bars, but more skin.
• Soaplands, Pink Bars etc: The other side, which is the fine line (in words only) between prostitution and ‘services’. I’ll keep it PG, but you can google what these are…

Since prostitution is completely illegal in Japan, you would think it is very hard to find somewhere to hire a girl to have ‘fun’ with (if that’s what you’re looking for)… but reality is very different in a suburb owned by yakuza. They still have to hide behind fake businesses, but everybody really knows what goes on. They don’t hide it very well, or care about people knowing, like I mention before the police won’t touch them.

Exhaustion setting in

After wandering for a while I decided to call it a night and go home. At this point again like every day it seems I was extremely tired so I just went to bed. After all the walking and the sun I felt like falling into a coma, but alas the adventure must go on! I had hopes of going out at night during this trip, make some visits to a few nightclubs and see what it’s like here, but honestly the amount of walking and sight seeing I am doing during the day has made me exhausted beyond belief. Maybe I should have done a few more trips to the gym before I came… hahaha.

3 cheers! Today was a positive one. Apart from feeling exhausted, I had a blast.

That’s it for today, I’ll see you all tomorrow. xxx