Tokyo 08 - Akihabara Stop #3

I found myself back in Akihabara several times during my October trip to Tokyo... 

10月の東京のトリップ時、何回秋葉へ行った。これ最後だった、パット君とぺまぺまちゃんと一緒行った。もちろんメード喫茶店へ行った。実は二個入って行った。下の写真見て下さい！

the third stop was a lot of fun,  mostly because it was with Patrick and Pemapema-chan:

You know Akihabara right?  the world capital of Maid Cafe's, right?  (the above is a rare case where there are maids outside doing promotions and willingly taking pictures with tourists).

Its always fun to go to a place like this with a Japanese friend cause you can learn new things that you'd have trouble figuring out as a foreigner.

Like in this case Pema Pema showed us a unique item in Akihabara - the Ramen Can Vending Machine:

As you may be able to see from the labels, its basically a bunch of different versions of ramen, udon, soba or other japanese foods in a can... (served warm, as many japanese vending machines serve hot and cold items in cans).

the top row is: Sapporo Ramen, Curry Udon,  Oden and Dandan Mian(担担面)

bottom row is: Udon, Hakata Ramen, Chinese Soba, two more kinds of Oden and "Soup & Pasta with White Cream Sauce"

crazy. :-P

We went to the world famous Pinafore Maid Cafe (which we visited in August).  It was quite fun to go with Pemapema-chan because she was cracking up at the whole experience (watching the nerdy customers try to interact w/ the maids, etc).   

 Pat and Pemapema ordered the cafe latte.  As part of the 'maid service' you can request custom artwork on top (normally you can't take pictures inside this place, but they let us take pics of the food and drinks as long as the maid wasn't in it). before....

after!

Pema-pema-chan decided to challenge the maid's chocolate syrup drawing skills:

she asked her to draw this... Atom, aka " Astro Boy"... not easy!

But she did a good job:

almost a shame to drink it!

definitely jaw dropping:

"woah!"

It was actually pretty funny,  we left this place and walked around a few minutes and then decided to go directly to ANOTHER cafe... this one was actually quite unique...not quite a maid cafe,  it was more towards the cosplay side -  it was a cafe that was actually a fake classroom... and instead of dressing up in maid costumes and calling the customers 'ご主人様',  here the girls dressed like high school jr. classmates and refered to the customers as ' Senpai' (an elder classmate).

They had desks and a chalkboard, etc...  very strange.  You're not supposed to take pictures here either, but i snuck one just to show you guys what it looked like.  very weird:

apologies for the secret camera! ;-)

it was pretty empty when we arrived, but by the time we finished it was actually packed...    this one is unique also because stays open all night...  i guess for otakus in Akihabara who miss the last train, they can come here and geek out w/ their comic books and PSPs til the train starts up.  :-P

All in all, a fun trip to Akihabara.  Can't wait to go back. ;-)