Shopping, weird stores, and MEAT

Well my third week in Japan is over and it has been another fairly active weekend.

On Saturday me and a group of other international students went to Nakano.

I have become pretty familiar with using the train systems here. Probably because almost all the places we have been to have been along the same train line.

 I had read online that it was kind of like Akihabara, a place full of different toy stores, video game stores, and much more. What I read was kind of true.

The train stations leads right into this long strip of stores. It had a good variety, food, electronics, clothing, etc.

There is apparently a store here called "Card Shop Jesus"

One of the really interesting places in this first strip of stores was the "Junk Store"

It was basically a store that sold old junk electronic parts for really cheap. This included cameras, laptops, and even some video games. everything ranged from 100-1000Yen. So it could be hit or miss what you get.

We also found our first game store fairly quickly.

It was called "Big Mario" an interesting name. Unfortunately this place was only ok, mostly new stuff, and since it was right at the entrance it had fairly high prices. So we kept walking until we came upon Nakano Broadway.

Also known by some people as "Otaku Tower"

It is a very large 4 store shopping mall full of different stores. As Alex put it as we were walking there were to many to see all at once. But we tried, and found some rather interesting shops.

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Like another Junk shop

I was surprised when I saw a Game Workshop here I thought they were only in America and Europe.

A couple different video game stores.

A costume store.

And this is just one of the many different Hobby Stores we saw.

Then we started to find some very weird stores.

One store was selling some kind of weird deformed Troll Doll.

This was a sign we saw outside of one of the stores, we decided not to go look inside.

Then we came upon my favorite store in the entire mall, just because I thought I'd never actually see something like this and that all I heard were just rumors.

We found a store that sold used panties. They sold other things like model kits and anime figurines, but they had a huge section just for these things. Some sold in boxes on a beg board, and for people feeling lucky, they can buy used panties via a Gachapon machine. I had heard that this was a growing industry in Japan, but thought it was kept to the Internet. Then I found this. I even saw some people walk up and buy stuff right out the Gachapon machine, pocket what they found, and just go about their day like it was nothing. But the icing on the cake as this...

 

I won't go into details about what these are so here's a link to the Tenga companies wikipedia page. So just know that this is a Gachapon selling their product.

Tenga Wikipedia page kind of nsfw so be warned.

As for shopping, I bought another Kamen Rider belt

I have it above my bed next to one of the ones I bought earlier. The one on the left is what I bought at Nakano. Buying things like this is hard sometimes because not all store sell them new, but they come in the box and everything. And they write on the price tag if its broken or missing pieces. Unfortunately I can't always read it, so I have to ask. Unfortunately in my Japanese lessons in America I was taught a completely different word for broken then is actually used. The word I was taught is from a text book written in the 80's so some of the vocabulary is out of date.

I also bought a Gundam Themed Slots/Pachinko game for the Wii. Was a purely impulse buy because I've never liked slots or pachinko, but it was brand new, and had been marked down from 6000yen to 500yen. So for basically $6 I decided why not.

This was something I wanted to buy but decided not to for not. It basically turned a Bandai Wonderswan, an old handheld video game system, into a fishing radar. May buy it if I see it next time I go back to Nakano.

After Shopping we walked around the city a bit more. There wasn't really much else to see. All the interesting stuff was around where we were, the rest of the city was just office buildings and restaurants.  Though we did see a Karaoke place.

This guy had to stand outside it shaking a tambourine. Possibly the worst job in the world.

After we all finished in Nakano the group split up. Some people went to Akihabara looking for better video game stores. Some people went to Shinjuku to go shopping there, and some just went home. I was one of the ones to go home.

Then Sunday came around. Woke up fairly early considering I had nothing to do today. Probably because my roommate had his alarm go off around 7am because he had a huge English test today. I slept in till about 9am. Then got up and just sat around with the rest of the people in the dorm watching TV. Then around 1:00 we decide to at least go out. We go check out the big Sega GameCenter that's about a 10 minute walk from the dorms. It was pretty fun. I played quite a few games and registered with some of them.

One is for the MarioKartGundam game they had there. It is a game in a giant pod so it kind of simulates like you are actually piloting a gundam.

I didn't have my camera with me so I had to find a picture from online. It is a really fun game, and it connects with people all over Japan playing in giant robot fighting wars. The card, like the Mario one, keeps track of my in game money, bought Gundams, etc.

Then we we go back to the dorms and prepare for dinner. We made niku yaki tonight.

Basically they are big pan we coat in cooking oil, pile full of meat, cook and then eat. We had all different kinds of meat. Pork Cutlet, Chicken Breasts, Steak Cubes, and Hot dogs. No veggies allowed

It got dangerous pretty quickly for multiple reasons.

1. It was basically a free for all. We pack the meat on and everyone flips it as they see fit. Then one a piece is done its basically a battle to see who gets it. we had two pans, about 5 person to a pan, but people would be reaching over to the other one at times to steal their meat. Some people even stole directly off the plates of others while they weren't looking. But it is all in good fun as there was never a shortage of meat, and if you lost a piece it was easy to get another one fairly soon.

2. It was very hard to tell if some of the meat was cooked all the way at times. especially the chicken and the steak cubes, because you cannot easily cut them open and look inside with chopsticks. So it was either trial and error, basically take a bite and hope it is cooked, if not you put it back on to cook more. Or you can wait for one to basically start to burn, but then it doesn't taste good.

3. After the first patch has been put on the pan there is a ton of grease. Which has a tendency to splash when adding more meat to the pan, or when flipping the pieces of meat over. So anyone wearing short sleeves got theirs wrists burnt sometimes. I was one of those people. Nothing major, more just a shock.

This is basically the end result. You fill your plate with the sauce you want, and once the things are finished cooking you put them in the sauce to marinate a little bit. Then eat. It doesn't look like much but it is pretty tasty. Hopefully I didn't consume to much raw meat, but if I did luckily I only have one class tomorrow.

All in all a good weekend. Probably could have studied a bit more, but I'll be fine, I only have one class on Mondays.  Besides having to talk Japanese with the people in the dorms while eating, or asking them to help me read the instructions for a game is studying right?