Tokyo Day 5 - Akihabara Revisited

I'm gonna warn you straight up - this is a post chock full of hardcore geekiness.

I'm getting pretty late with this trip report - been almost a month since we've been back now. But I've still got one or two posts left to go. And I definitely want to say a bit about Akihabara, especially after my last post about the neighborhood, when I was almost completely down on what the area had turned into.

It is still true that "Akiba" has changed. I don't take any personal offense to this (like I do when certain neighborhoods in New York go through major changes). I have no real claim to the area, but some locals and even a lot of tourists seem to be really unhappy with what's going on there. The Japan Times, for example, posted an article about this rising discontent just after we got back.

I was disappointed on my last trip to see that the big box stores and chains were taking over the area, driving the mom and pop shops out in an attempt by the government at "normalizing" the neighborhood. This has always been an area for geeks and their various geeky interests; first with the ham radios, then the computers, then the anime and video games. A lot of that's being literally torn down, even still. But I will say that this misguided urban renewal plan seems to be backfiring on the government; if anything, Akihabara's actually getting weirder now.

I sort of hinted that this was happening in my post last year; it's even more apparent now. The most obvious indication of this is that maids are everywhere. They greet you as soon as you get out of the train station. You see them walking down the street, sometimes alone, sometimes with "customers" who have paid them to walk around arm in arm. You can't throw a rock without breaking the window of a maid cafe. I finally broke down and went to my first maid cafe on this trip - actually a fun experience - but it's almost out of control how many of these places there are now.


I was a little uncomfortable with this at first, but eventually I just learned to go with it. This is the new Akihabara, still home to everything a geek could desire. If that now includes real girls dressed up in maid costumes all over the place, who am I to judge?

That's the building that houses the maid cafe we went to. There's another one on the second floor! The third floor is like a massage place, actually, if I remember right.

(The Japanese have a word they apply to this maid obsession, though, and it's not a flattering one: "moe". Click the link and read about it. When we were on our way to the maid cafe, my wife's sister-in-law actually asked her "are you on your way to moe?")

We also got a little further off the beaten path that is Chuo Dori this time, which you really need to do these days if you want to find the remaining independent stores selling games and computer parts. It used to be that most of the good stuff was concentrated on that main avenue; now, it's almost the opposite.

I also gotta admit that this was the first time I managed to find Super Potato, the legendary used video game store. Yes, "and I call myself a gamer", blah blah blah, I know it's some sort of blasphemy to go to Akihabara and not visit Super Potato. The truth is I just could never find it before. See, Tokyo isn't like New York or really any other city in the United States. Even people in Tokyo have trouble with addresses in the city. It's an ancient city and its address system... well, it just doesn't make any sense. So even major sites in Tokyo always put a little map next to their address showing you where they are in relation to other landmarks in the area. It's the only way to find them.

I never had such a little map for Super Potato so I just missed it on all my previous trips. But I found it this time, with the help of a little thing called "the internet".


I unfortunately didn't get too many photos inside, because they don't technically allow them and I didn't want to get kicked out. Check out their web site, though, and you can see some of what they've got. It's pretty goddamn amazing. Not even like a museum, because museums only ever have one of anything. This place has about 30 of everything, including rare systems like A/V Famicoms and Famicom Twins. Downside is their prices are not very good. If you can manage to find any of this stuff elsewhere (especially outside of Akihabara), you're guaranteed to pay less.

I did take one photo inside, because I wanted to show it to someone:

That's the almost mythical Atari 2800, rarest and most prized of all Atari systems. They've got 'em sitting out on the floor at Super Potato, waiting to be kicked and bumped into by uncaring Japanese consumers on the make for that one Sega Saturn dating simulation missing from their collection.

Anime is also still huge in Akihabara, although there are fewer places to get it. That just leaves bigger crowds for the remaining stores. Check out this line (you may need to open the photo up):

That was actually for some Neon Genesis Evangelion thing - I don't even know what. Incidentally, I don't remember the name of that building, but it was amazing inside - floor after floor of wacky toys and merchandise you probably won't find anywhere else.

Evangelion was almost as common in Akihabara as the maid phenomenon this time; it was just as pervasive.

This is a series that ended 10 years ago! But there was a new Evangelion movie out that hit #1 on the Japanese box office chart while we were there (we went to see it), so interest has sparked again and now there are Evangelion ads up all over the place hawking everything from licensed video games to pachinko machines. After seeing the film, I couldn't help but get caught up in it myself. I bought a couple little Evangelion trinkets at both the Tokyo Anime Center and on the street in Akihabara (right outside the building above):

May be hard to believe for westerners with that level of detail, but that's actually a capsule toy! It came from a machine in this:

The Japanese do take their capsule toys seriously. A lot of them are pretty high quality and they come in sets. I only got Rei, which I sort of regret now. She was only 200 yen - I should have gone for the whole cast of characters. Of course, that's how they get you. They put 20 of every toy in the collection but one in that machine. That last one, they only put a single capsule right on top. You can see it there; it's tantalizing you with the final piece of the puzzle. But you can't get to it unless you buy every single capsule below it first.

I also now have two little tschotschkes hanging off my phone:

That round thing is a NERV screen cleaner from Evangelion. You use it to wipe your phone's LCD screen - the other side is soft fabric. It works like this:

Very handy! These things are pretty popular in Japan. I really have no idea why people don't buy phone accessories in the United States - they cost like $3 each and they add a little personality to your phone while even being occasionally useful. A lot of people in Japan have both a screen cleaner and a keitai strap/charm, just like I do.

Going with the "when in Rome" theme, I had to pick up a box of these when I saw them:

I actually bought a box for my co-workers too, more or less as a joke. It went over well!

Even the cookies themselves are cute. Have a look:

Different cookies actually have different pictures on them! The maid has all sorts of different moods reflected in the facial expressions on the cookie. (I'm not sure which that one is, but she's angry in one of them!) The cookies actually tasted pretty good, surprisingly enough.

The area does still pay homage to its hardcore nerd roots occasionally:

We looked in there and didn't see much that would distinguish it from any other cafe. My guess: off in a corner somewhere, they've got a PC running an unmaintained, obsolete distribution of Red Hat so their geek customers can feel comfortable.

We had fun in Akihabara this time, no doubt about it. You just have to accept the neighborhood for what it is, which it took me a year to be able to do (or maybe it took until it had gone past the tipping point - it wasn't clear when I was there last which direction it was gonna go). These days, it's gone off the deep end into "moe" on the one hand, while on the other, Chuo Dori's been taken over by chains so you really can't just concentrate on it and then consider yourself done with the neighborhood anymore. Maybe that's even a good thing in some ways, if it forces people to visit more of the stores on the side streets and keeps them in business.

I didn't actually buy any video game paraphernalia for the second trip in a row, and except for Super Potato (which caters to retro gamers), I don't really consider Akihabara the best place for game stuff anymore. I have done better on my last two trips just going to WonderGOO and BOOK*OFF in the suburbs. But for the overall geek experience, Akihabara's on top again... just in a different way than it used to be, and maybe for a different kind of geek.

Tokyo Day 5 - Harajuku on a Sunday Afternoon

Hard to believe it was more than 2 weeks ago now, but on our last and busiest day in Tokyo, we took a quick visit to Harajuku. We also visited there a year ago, but I wanted to go on a Sunday. See, that's the day when the kids dress up as their favorite bands or characters and stand around hoping to get their pictures taken for street fashion magazines. It's a strange little scene.

This apparently all started in the 1980's, completely organically. They used to close the streets on Sunday back then, and so all the kids who had nowhere else to hang out would gather around Harajuku, often dressed up to look like their favorite "visual kei" rock stars. Over time, the styles got more outlandish and more varied and eventually the media descended. That's about the time it exploded regionally - even today, in the pictures I took, you see a lot of these kids carrying suitcases around. They're not even from Tokyo anymore.

They don't close the streets anymore, so the whole scene is now basically concentrated on Jingu Bashi, a little pedestrian bridge near Harajuku Station. I'm sure the turnout isn't as large as it once was, but there are still quite a few visual kei cosplayers, punks and lolitas (both gothic and sweet) hanging around. The really odd thing is that the tourists and photographers clearly outnumber the cosplayers at this point, as you can plainly see in some of my photos and videos. It's really voyeuristic, as these crowds of tourists go chasing these kids around the bridge. Most of them are perfectly happy to have their picture taken - why dress up otherwise? - but some of them were obviously pretty freaked out. I didn't really understand how that could be - they should have known what they were in for - but maybe it was the first time for some of them.

A couple little clarifications for anyone who's curious about this stuff and may have read some other blogs on the net:

• The people in the pics below do not dress like this every day of the week. This is what real Harajuku fashion looks like (from my previous post last year):
  
  But the stuff below is not - it's costume play.


• These kids are not really there to get their pictures taken by tourists. Most of them seemed to be happy enough to let us photograph them, but not all of them were, and they all seemed a lot more interested in people that looked like they might be pros. They want to make it into big magazines, not just some guy's blog or family travel album.
  

Anyway, some pics - videos at the bottom:

Looks to me like a sweet lolita, a maid and a punk.
These girls were super-young and didn't seem to know where they were going.

A visual kei "band". Not sure if they're meant to be anybody specific.

One of the girls from the group above.

These girls were actually western. I just wanted to show the crowd around them here.

The girl on the left was probably my favorite - she really put some effort into that look.
Somehow I'll bet the lollipop was intentional.

There's a little "rest area" off to the side where people just go to hang out.
Anybody who tried to take photos there got waved off pretty quick.

These girls came and went in about 5 minutes.
They just weren't having any of it.

A few of the more outlandish people we saw.

Some videos of the general scene:






After hanging out on the Jingu Bashi for a while, we took another walk down Takeshita Street. Our real objective was to hit BOOK*OFF, which was one of the only things my wife wanted to do while in Tokyo. Takeshita Street is really the only way to get there from the station, and it's good for people-watching anyway. I didn't take too many photos there this time, though.

There were a lot more westerners all over Harajuku this time than last year. Maybe it's just because it was Sunday, or maybe there really are more tourists all of a sudden. Who knows.

Crepes! These two crepe places (above and below) are literally across the path from each other. It's a big gathering/resting place in the middle of the street (it helps that there's a public bathroom and a set of vending machines right near where I was standing). If you're new to my blog and wondering what a Japanese crepe looks like up close, see the photo at the bottom of this post. Crepes are one of Japan's most popular street snacks.


There was some sort of festival that passed us as we walked down the street. It was super-crowded and this wasn't all that pleasant, but everybody got out of the way - I think everybody there understands this kind of thing. My wife supposedly had to participate in a festival like this when she was younger.


In fact, definitely do not go to Harajuku on a Sunday if you're afraid of crowds. Especially around the train station and on Takeshita Street, it's practically elbow to elbow. It doesn't help that the streets are all fenced in (no doubt to keep the crowds from spilling onto the street itself) which just leads people to sit on the fences, making even less room on the sidewalk. Takeshita Street is not a real street but a pedestrian walkway, but it's so narrow that there's barely enough room to walk when it gets crowded anyway.

The following picture was taken inside the Harajuku train station:

Yeah, not a good place if you're claustrophobic (or agoraphobic).

Japan Fast Food Part Deux

Surprisingly enough, the most popular post (in number of hits) from my last trip report was my entry on Japanese fast food. So why not make it a two parter?

This trip was about equal parts McDonald's and MOS Burger. Oh, sure, I ate my share of teriyaki burgers and deep-fried pies. I also tried my first "Ebi Filet-o", the shrimp sandwich I mentioned in my earlier report that McDonald's was heavily promoting at that time. It was okay, though nothing special - didn't taste much different than a Filet-o-Fish. This year, McDonalds' new sandwich is called, funnily enough, the "McPork".

If you say it like the Japanese say it, it's not as goofy of a name. They call McDonald's "Mac" to begin with, so this is a "Mac Pork" sandwich, not a "McPork" the way we'd say it. I love the logo - took me a minute to notice it was the shape of a pig.

I didn't try one, but my guess is it's just a teriyaki burger without the teriyaki. Probably pretty good, actually, depending on what other sauce they're using. The poster next to it above is for another new sandwich that's a hamburger topped with fried egg and bacon. Talk about a heart attack on a bun, that's a quadruple bypass right there! (Speaking of which, McD's in Japan has gotten a lot of press lately for the "Mega Mac" burger - a giant hamburger even by US standards. Well, like Pepsi Ice Cucumber, it's gone. So you can quit talking about it. It was a limited time thing.)

By the way, even Japan has its share of weirdos that take half an hour to order at McDonald's, even though the menu's exactly the same at every single one (in Japan that means prices and all). This guy was right behind us in line and he literally wasn't done ordering until we were done eating:

The amazing thing to me, though, was that he actually ordered a pretty decent amount of stuff, and when it was all done, the McDonald's clerk actually brought his food to his car for him. That's service! I don't mean he was waiting in his car and she walked out with it; I mean he walked out alongside her carrying nothing as she carried his bags of food for him. Some westerners would probably look at this and misunderstand it as some sort of sexist subservience thing, but it wasn't - this is just Japanese service. It would have been the same had he been a girl and the clerk a guy.

I love McDonald's in Japan, but this was the trip when I discovered the "Spicy MOS Burger". This is basically just a MOS Burger - a freshly-made burger topped with chili sauce - stuffed with jalapeños. And I mean spicy jalapeños! The Japanese don't do anything half-assed; if they say it's spicy, they mean it. The first one I had was like when you drink your first bottle of Vodka... by the end, you swear you're never going to do it again. Then the next time you're around one, you can't resist. Here is a Spicy MOS Burger in its native habitat:

That's it on the right, along with my melon soda. The other sandwich is my wife's regular MOS Burger, sans jalapeños.

The habitat itself:

Tokyo regulars will probably recognize that as the MOS Burger on Chuo-Dori in Akihabara. I find it interesting that the sign says "Japanese fine burger & coffee." That's not a combination I'd ever think of having.

Not all MOS Burger signs say that. In fact, not all MOS Burgers have English signs at all. Here's how to find a MOS Burger outside the city, where they care less about attracting western tourists:

Just look for the giant "M". By the way, this MOS Burger is literally a shack in the middle of a rice paddy. It's surrounded on all sides by rice farms.

I also wanted to finally try some Japanese pizza on this trip. I railed a bit about Japanese pizza on my post about random stuff last time around, and I've had it homemade at a Japanese friend's house in New York City. But I've never had Japanese pizza in Japan. I was actually a little disappointed to find that Japanese pizza is now getting a lot more authentic. Even Dominos, which used to have soba noodle pizza and lots of pizzas with hard boiled eggs and other weirdness as toppings, is now pretty standard. They even have an "American Special"!

It's actually possible now to get real Neapolitan-style pizza in Tokyo, which it didn't used to be. That's actually a theme now - a lot of ethnic food that used to be either terrible or just unavailable is now common in Tokyo, and with good quality. It's become a lot more of a "world city" even in the eight years I've been visiting. Still, I wanted to try some damn Japanese pizza. We ended up picking a place that looked not too terrible but not all that authentic, either (on purpose) - it's a chain called "Miami Garden" that, for some reason, specializes in Italian food. (Or a Japanese interpretation of it, anyway, which is what we wanted.)

I know, that probably doesn't look very good. Part of it's the lighting, and that was the best I could fix it. But yeah, it wasn't the greatest pizza either - though it wasn't bad! It was prosciutto and asparagus, which is not entirely in-authentic, but not common on pizza in the US. The pie itself was very light - I finished all of it, which would be impossible for a pizza like this in the US. (My wife did have a slice or two, but then I had a few bites of her doria.)

Here's a totally different sort of fast food - this is called an "Akiba-can":

It gets its name from the fact that they're available only (or at least mainly) in Akihabara. This is ramen and other full meals in a can. You can heat it or not - most people don't. They're meant to be eaten on the street - you can see one can even comes with utensils. I didn't try it but my wife did, and she said it was disgusting. Definitely can't hold a candle to this:

I covered this in my ramen shop post. This is what real ramen looks like.

Lastly, Japan's got its fast food desserts too:

Yeah, Doughnut Plant New York City. This is a funny place, because they apparently have one shop in New York City... and nine in Tokyo. It's like they only exist in NYC so they can lay claim to the name for marketing purposes. I've honestly never even seen the one in New York, but I always see it whenever I'm in Tokyo, and this was the first time we tried it. The doughnuts are expensive - 300 to 320 yen each - but that's par for the course in Tokyo. Mister Donut, the largest donut shop in Japan, is not much less than that if I remember right.

Anyway, I can honestly say that this place has the best store-bought donuts I've ever had, bar none. They're really like home-made; they have that dense, doughy flavor that you only get with fresh, hand-made donuts. I like Mister Donut too, but this place is on another level. And come on, you have got to give props to a donut shop that advertises Twin Peaks DVD's on its web site.

Of course, nobody can forget Japan's favorite fast-food dessert, the crepe:

I'll be posting more about that when I write about our latest visit to Harajuku. That's where that crepe came from. Watch for that post soon!

Tokyo Day 3 - Roppongi Hills

On our first night in Tokyo, we'd taken a walk around our hotel that eventually led us to Roppongi. I didn't have my camera with me and it was pretty late so we really didn't do much other than walk around a bit and gawk, but we knew we wanted to come back. We did on night 3, after an already-busy day that had earlier taken us to both Akihabara and Shibuya.

Roppongi has long had a reputation as a sort of seedy hangout for people looking for a pickup. In the mid-90's, the government was looking for ways to inject a little upscale living into the area, and that ended up taking the form of the massive Roppongi Hills complex. This is a combined office/retail/residential development that's home to high-priced condos, a ritzy shopping center and companies like TV Asahi, which has its headquarters there. While Roppongi Hills has had its share of hiccups like any major development, by all accounts it's been successful in helping modernize the neighborhood and make it more of a destination for visitors. Both nights we were there, a steady stream of people could be seen walking from the train station directly to Roppongi Hills, and the interior was consistently crowded.

(A new, similar complex called "Tokyo Midtown" has also now opened nearby, but it seemed pretty dead when we were there.)

The main building in Roppongi Hills is the Mori Tower, a 54 story office tower and one of the tallest buildings in Tokyo. (Tokyo buildings don't get much taller due to both earthquake regulations and "sunshine laws".) At the top of Mori Tower is an observation deck, art museum and aquarium, sharing much of the same floor space but each with their dedicated area.

We bought a combined ticket that let us in to all three - you have to buy a ticket at least to the observation deck and aquarium, and the museum is only 300 yen extra. It turned out that the museum was completely taken over by a single exhibit on artist and architect Le Corbusier, who I'd learned about in college but didn't otherwise really have much interest in. My wife felt the same. The museum itself was more interesting; it feels very large but really can't be, as it's only about 1/3 of the 52nd floor of the building. It shares its space with the adjacent aquarium, although the two areas are not directly connected except through the observation deck, which circles the outer edge of the floor. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures at all inside the art museum.

After exiting the museum, you're automatically guided into the observation area. It's really nice and quite interesting - it's not just a ring around the edge but includes a small and a large cafe, several hidden sub-areas, a gift shop, and more.


It's different than the Tokyo Tower observation deck in that it feels like a regular furnished building, not like a purpose-built sightseeing deck (though that's what it is).

The night we were there was crystal clear, a rarity for Tokyo in summer:

One minor disappointment we had is that the deck doesn't wrap all the way around the building - it circles about 2/3 of it and then is blocked the rest of the way by a cafe that was closed by the time we got there. The missing piece unfortunately would have contained the view of our hotel, which I was hoping to get a picture of.

Reaching the end of the observation deck, you're again automatically guided into the Sky Aquarium.

Everything looked really beautiful at night - I'm glad we went at that time. During the day, with all the lights on and full sunlight, I think everything would have been a lot less interesting.

The aquarium is decent size and has a lot of exotic marine life that I've never seen before, although nothing too large. There's no shark tank, for example, and no manitees or sea lions swimming around. It's all stuff that you can fit in a regular size fishtank or smaller - with the small tanks leaving more space to walk around, in turn making the aquarium feel bigger than it probably is. There are some interesting setups, too:

That tank changes colors at random intervals. Incidentally, there are big signs saying "no photos" all over the place here, but you can see there that everybody was taking photos anyway so I did too. I have no idea why you wouldn't be able to take photos of this, except maybe for flash bulbs agitating the fish - and in Japan, everybody's smart enough not to use flash bulbs around living things. (Seriously, I didn't see one flash bulb go off in the entire aquarium.)

Getting out of there is kind of an adventure. There's a high-speed elevator that takes you down to the 4th floor, but it's up to you to make your way out after that, and the place is a maze on its lower floors. We followed the crowd until they all split up in different directions and we realized we were going in the opposite direction we needed to anyway. We ended up in a series of deserted hallways to nowhere before finally finding our way back to the subway station. We were dog tired by that point, having been out walking around for about 14 hours straight, so we definitely didn't feel like walking back to our hotel.

Coming next - Akihabara, Harajuku, Japan fast food part 2 and a little venting I need to do about various things that drive me crazy about the country. Also, I'll be updating this post with scans of the Roppongi Hills brochure, so check back for that if you care.

Tokyo Day 5 - Beer Museum Yebisu

I'm jumping around a bit in the timeline here now that I'm home, but I'm just writing about whatever I happen to be thinking of at any given time. Today, I happen to be wearing my Yebisu t-shirt, so I'm thinking about the Yebisu Beer Museum.

Day five was our last day in Tokyo, and we had a couple things planned. The first was a visit to Harajuku to take some pictures of the gothloli and cosplay fashion on display (a post on that's coming soon), and the last was dinner at a garlic restaurant my wife knew from her days in Tokyo. It happened to be in the neighborhood of Ebisu, and since we had some time to kill in between activities, we decided to hit the Beer Museum Yebisu that's in the same neighborhood. (In fact, the neighborhood of Ebisu is named after the beer! Both spellings are pronounced "ebisu"; "Yebisu" is just the old way of writing it.)

What is Yebisu Beer? I'm not an expert on Japanese beer, but here's what I know. Yebisu Beer is made by Sapporo and is considered their "premium" brand. It is almost as old as Sapporo itself, dating to 1887, and was originally a Tokyo alternative to the Hokkaido-brewed Sapporo - I can imagine beer probably didn't travel too well back in those days. Both Sapporo and Yebisu were dormant brands in mid-century as Sapporo and Asahi had merged operations, but were revived after the two companies later split again. Yebisu has been back on the market since 1971 and is now extremely popular in Japan as a premium malt beer. It's at least as common as Sapporo itself, especially in Tokyo.

Sapporo, in fact, now has its company headquarters in Ebisu, at the former brewery of Yebisu beer. (Both Yebisu and Sapporo are now brewed in various places throughout Japan - but not actually in Ebisu or Sapporo!) And they've also created a little city-within-a-city around the former brewery that includes a shopping mall, several restaurants, and the Beer Museum Yebisu. The great thing about this beer museum? You guessed it: cheap beer on tap!

The museum itself is actually pretty dry (no pun intended), with some really basic exhibits showing how beer is made and the history of Yebisu and Sapporo - all in Japanese only. As you make your way around to the end of the museum, though, you'll come across the main attraction - the beer garden.

The Yebisu beer garden is fashioned like a modern version of beer halls across Europe - with long granite tables and benches in a large, open room. It's meant for "tasting", but of course everybody seems to go just to get drunk. The beer is not free, but it is cheap - 200 yen per glass for most varieties, and there's a tasting "set" of four beers that you can buy for 400 yen. That wasn't actually available when we got there, though - there are vending machines (what else?) that dispense tokens for the various beers that you then take up to the bar, and these tokens do sell out. I guess this way they can regulate and predict how much beer they're going to need every day. Every other option was still available, though, just not the 400 yen/4 beer deal.

Both Yebisu and Sapporo are offered for "tasting", and pretty much every variety they make - including some that are only offered at the beer garden.

We initially bought three beers - a stout, an ale and a weiss. Yebisu and Sapporo are both based on German beers originally, so they take the same nomenclature. The weiss, if I remember right, is not sold anywhere else - only at the beer garden. Now, I'm not a beer snob, but I gotta say that the ale and weiss definitely tasted better to me than pretty much any beer I've ever had of either type. Maybe it was the freshness, maybe it was just because we were damn thirsty (another hot day), but they were mighty tasty. The weiss was obviously a lot lighter, but not too light - it was still more flavorful than most American beers, and without any bitterness or aftertaste whatsoever.

The stout was not as good - and I do like stout - but two out of three ain't bad. It had kind of a burnt coffee flavor to it, whereas the stouts I like (like Guinness) have more of a licorice taste.

Little sidenote: they give you a package of "beer crackers" for each beer you buy. I've never even heard of these before, but they're supposed to taste like beer - they're made with hops. They're definitely interesting, and they do match the taste of beer really well.

We ended up buying two more of the ale and weiss and got pretty tipsy before our trip to the garlic restaurant.

I do really like Japanese beer, and especially Sapporo brands. It's what American beer wishes it was - a good copy of German beer. It tastes similar to American beer, but just better - more flavor and no aftertaste. You can get "Japanese" beer in America, but look closely at the label - I guarantee you that the can or bottle you're drinking is brewed in Canada by either Anheuser-Busch or Molson. It's not the same stuff you can get in Japan. It's basically Budweiser and Molson Canadian. The only exception to this right now is the 22oz. cans of Sapporo, if you can find them - they don't make this size in Canada, so these are still brewed in Japan.

Still, even real canned or bottled Japanese beer doesn't taste as good as beer that was brewed probably that day and then served on draft. This was some seriously good beer, and for not much money, so I'd highly recommend checking this place out on your next trip to Tokyo. Get there either early or late, though (they close at 5:30), because the crowds do gather and as you can imagine, they seem to stay a while.

Tokyo Game Show 2007 - Overall Experience and Impressions

I'm a little late with this, and I'd originally planned on writing a bit more about the Tokyo Game Show (it was the main reason we went to Japan at this time, after all), but I'm going to close out my "coverage" of this year's show with an overview post giving some general impressions and views of the show floor.

First, if you haven't already, you might want to read my 7-year belated show report from TGS 2000. Then remember that I also have reports from this year about the campaign girls and the line wait - yes, the line is worthy of its own post!

For those who have never been to the show, a short primer is in order. The Tokyo Game Show is not actually held in Tokyo - it's held in Makuhari, itself a city of 800,000 people just a bit further down Tokyo Bay. It's a fairly large but otherwise quiet city - sort of the San Jose, CA of Japan. For some reason that I'm not aware of, it was chosen as the home to the Tokyo area's largest (though not only) convention center, a truly mammoth complex known as the Makuhari Messe. A sort of virtual city of hotels and shopping centers has now sprung up around the convention center and the neighboring Chiba Marine Stadium, home of the Chiba Lotte Marines baseball team and also host to various major concerts and other events.

The show itself used to be twice yearly, but the attendance levels weren't high enough to justify that. Around 5 or so years ago, the organizers cut the show to once a year. Since then, attendance has risen pretty dramatically.

It's a two day event, with now two extra days for the press. TGS is and always has been a show for the public - the press days were instituted only after the media complained that they couldn't cover the games properly having to compete with the public for play time. So the CESA (the event's organizers) initially opened the doors a day early for the press - but when I did this seven years ago (hard to believe it's been that long), it literally was like walking into a building still under construction. There's no actual show, and half the booths were still being built. These days it may be different, but still, the show proper does not actually begin until the public days. That's when all the game stations are turned on, all the events are scheduled and things really start hopping.

We got to the show at around 9:45 on Saturday and made our way into the convention center right around 10AM. By that point, there were probably already about 60,000 people inside, and we decided to just take a few minutes to survey the floor. For some reason, the table nearest us when we walked in was not stocked with the official TGS info guide, so we were sort of walking around blindly for a while. Luckily, I did at least remember the layout of the convention center, so I knew basically where I was going - just not the location of any of the actual booths I wanted to visit.

This is 1/3 of the Tokyo Game Show

We wandered through halls 1-9 - the entire building - and then just decided to have something to eat before the little cafe corner got too crowded. By then, it was around 11AM and we'd done exactly nothing and played exactly no games. I think we were both feeling a little overwhelmed already.

We wandered back through, passing a huge line at the Squaresoft merchandise booth (this was a theme of the show; massive lines for god-even-knows-what) and then huge and still-growing lines for all the games I wanted to play - NiGHTS for the Wii, basically any Squaresoft game, Metal Gear Solid 4, etc. We did stop on the outer edge of the Sony booth to play some Heavenly Sword - basically the only game Sony had that wasn't jam packed with people. We took most of our campaign girl photos on this pass through the convention center before ending up back at hall #1. We sat down, already worn out and sweaty, but still having played no games. My wife finally asked a woman sitting near us where she had gotten her floor guidebook, and she just gave hers to us. Gotta love that about Japan - this is not uncommon there.

I read through the guide and mapped out some games I specifically wanted to play - including the new Bangai-O for the Nintendo DS, several PS3 games in the Sony booth, and another try for NiGHTS. We first headed over to the D3 Publishing booth for Bangai-O, where I managed to get some playtime without really any wait at all. Not a big surprise, I guess - this is a niche shooter, but from one of my favorite developers (Treasure), and a sequel to one of my favorite Dreamcast games. It seemed fun, but I couldn't get much of a sense of it from the small amount of time I had. I remember the Dreamcast game being similar - it's not until the later levels that it starts getting into some mindblowing destructive action.

Along the way to the Sony booth, I noticed Namco-Bandai was showing both a new Space Invaders game (the annoyingly titled Space Invaders "Extreme") and a new Arkanoid for the DS. There didn't seem to be much of a wait, so I got in line for Space Invaders. It turned out to be really fun! There have been numerous updates to the original Space Invaders over the years, so it's not as if it was an entirely new experience, but there were a lot more features and just a lot more going on in this new game than any other Space Invaders I've played - and it makes good use of the system's dual screens. For completing a level, I won a prize that turned out to be some sort of cheap Space Invaders tapestry.

We finally made our way to the Sony booth and literally got stuck in a foot traffic jam. The booth was packed - it couldn't have been any more full, literally. Elbow to elbow people. We couldn't even tell where the lines for the games ended. It took us about 15 minutes just to make it from one side of the booth to the other, and I didn't even try getting in line for any of the games. My wife told me later that she was actually getting scared she was going to pass out. It was pretty ridiculous.

The Sony booth
We got the hell out of there and then took stock of the situation. By this time, it was around 1:15 and things seemed only to be getting worse. I had no confidence that I was going to be able to try any of the games I wanted to try, and there weren't all that many I wanted to try anyway. My wife actually looked sick, and I wasn't feeling all that well either - a combination of dehydration, feeling dirty from the sweat, the moist, stagnant air and noise inside the convention center, and the crowds. We decided to just take a few more general photos and then go. And when we did, it felt like being liberated from some sort of sadistic prison.

Some overall impressions:

* TGS is much, much more crowded than it used to be. In 2000, I went on both the press and public days - neither were anything like what I experienced this year. Something's going to need to be done about this if this show wants to continue expanding. Maybe add another public day - even a weekday. That way, people who really want to avoid the crowds can just take a day off from work. Either that, or rent out the second convention hall building and expand physically. There is just not enough room for this show as it exists now, even in the massive main hall.

* The most crowded booths were Sony, Squaresoft and Sega.

Level 5 also had a large line. Microsoft's booth was almost completely empty when we first arrived (other booths were already full), but the spillover from the other booths filled it up eventually. It seemed like a reluctant crowd in their booth, though - like they just had nowhere else to go. It's no secret that the Xbox 360 has not been doing well in Japan, and that was reflected at their booth.

* Every large exhibitor had some sort of stage show this year. In 2000, this was the exception, but it was a big hit for the exhibitors that did it and now everybody does something similar. Most of them are just dumb little song-and-dance routines by the campaign girls, but a few are larger productions.

In addition to the publisher-sponsored shows, there were larger shows too - one of them by idol group AKB48, whose main claim to fame is that they represent the Akihabara otaku contingent. Perfect for a game show. We missed that - I actually kinda wanted to see it, just for the novelty factor - but we didn't want to wait around.

* The Makuhari Messe really needs to invest in a decent air conditioning system.

This was going to be the centerpiece of our trip, but it actually turned out to be a pretty minor event for us and not one of the most fun things we did. I'm glad I went, though mostly just to be able to say I did. I didn't really get a whole lot out of the show itself. Luckily, we left pretty early, which left us most of the day to do other fun things. Watch for more posts coming soon!