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itsayaze · 23 days

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Day Three - Nakan-oh shit my legs hurt

"Tomorrow will be a chill day"

This is something I've been telling myself every night, and every time it's been a lie. So, we took the Chuo Rapid to Nakano Broadway, which is haven for Mandarake shops. They have specific branches all throughout the mall dedicated to specific things, such as trains, video games, boy's love manga, titties, CDs, etc.

It's also the day where I spent quite a bit of money on a few things. Normally I'm journaling in the morning, but because on the third day of your stay, APA do housekeeping wether you are prepared or not, so I took some time in the morning to clean up after myself a bit to inconvenience the staff less. As today's shenanigans have gone on, memories of yesterdays have become a little more hazy.

The main attraction of the day for me is Namco Nakano Broadway. In there, they have a full-size cabinet of the newest Densha de GO! game. As I've only had the opportunity to play the heavily watered down PS4 version of the game, this was very exciting.

At 300 yen a pop for a 2 station run, it's expensive, but as its a larger cabinet with a whole host of features, I personally think it's worth it.

It has FOUR screens, one of which is a touch screen, as well as a pedal for the horn, and the mascon for power/brake. The touchscreen is used to emulate the point and call system that train drivers in Japan follow to ensure that they make no mistakes. So, for example, if the speed limit was changing for that stretch of track, you'd slide a point on the touch screen, and tap the speedometer to acknowledge the change in speed.

On top of this, there's a bass speaker inside of the seat that I'm pretty sure is tuned to specifically react to the track sounds which makes it pretty damn immersive!

I played on a familiar Yamanote line route to get my bearings with the new controls - I've only played this on PS4 mind - and it went well! I got an S rank on the mission and only messed up a few things such as honking over a bridge. (They don't do this on actual JR trains as far as I'm aware, so I'm unsure as to why this is a gameplay mechanic?)

After this, I wandered around the broadway, poking my nose in all the different Mandarakes. I got a few games, but unfortunately I don't remember what ones. To take a break, we sat in an interesting artsy cafe on the 4th floor. It turns out its directly tied to the artist who was responsible for My Lonesome Cowboy. If you know, you know.

I had a nice melon soda, which had a scoop of vanilla ice-cream shaped like a flour and the juiciest cherry I've ever eaten. With my drink, I also got a special token to play the cocktail arcade cabinet table that you sit at, which was Space Invaders Deluxe.

Once we were done looking around the huge 4F complex, we headed by Shinjuku on the way back to the hotel. There's a Like a Dragon pop-up shop taking place over the course of this week, and I wanted to take a quick peek to see if there was anything left later in the evening. I got a handful of things, but showing it all would be spoilers to the people whomst I've bought gifts for.

Tomorrow morning (JST) I'll do a quick writeup about my proper experience in the pop-up, the results of the final round of the chigyu championship, and government buildings...?

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itsayaze · 25 days

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Day Two - "Wait, what did we come in here for again?"

I woke up early that day. 6AM. When I wake up before I actually want to I lay there for a few minutes to see if I'm AWAKE awake. And I was. That morning, I hopped into a Discord call with my friends and just hung around with them whilst I wrote the previous day's journal.

After that, I went outside for a quick nibble. There's a Famima directly across from the hotel, so I dropped in for a drink and my trusty favourite: tuna mayo onigiri. I returned to the hotel and got ready for the day.

Later on, we made our way towards the day's destination: Akihabara.

However, there's a little detour we need to take first. So from Shinjuku, we made our way over to Ochanomizu's Hijiribashi Bridge, because we had a mission: can we get the fated triple?

We patiently waited as many trains came and went, chatting all the while about a theoretical Pokemon Snap-like for transporting, since its a fairly universal hobby. After a while, we'd assumed that it wasn't gonna happen, and just as we were getting ready to walk to Akihabara, the 3 trains (and a bonus fourth) all rocked up at the same time!

With that achievement bagged, we headed off towards Akihabara to continue the Chigyu Championship.

Now, I stayed in AKB with my partner in 2018 when we visited it last, so I'd like to say I know it pretty well. And whilst it is mostly the same, the lack of Club SEGA breaks my heart a bit. I don't WANT to get into the gaming oasis. I want to join club SEGA!

Round 2 of the CC found us at Sukiya. We ordered up, and the fabulous cheese gyudon arrived. At Sukiya, they also give you tabasco sauce, so I slathered it over and stirred. The cheese is better than that at Matsuya, and the addition of tabasco elevates the dish higher. Sukiya currently sits at top of the ranking. Next up, Yoshinoya.

Beefed up, we went to Excelsior Coffee, where I got a iced latte. It was there that my buddy showed me a sticker he'd stumbled upon in a prior visit to the city. It was a lenticular sticker of a guy driving a car, but pulling over to stop and look at you at the right angle. There was a website on it, and it's a Web 1.0 delight.

We went to go and see if the sticker was still there out of curiosity.

Curiosity satiated, and we went to start the day's mission proper.

My goal for the day was to try and find a neGcon, the weird PS1 controller made by Namco. Apparently, it's a really good way of playing Ridge Racer, so it makes sense to have one.

We went to a few places. Let's do a quick rundown:

Super Potato: Cool retro shop, but now has become so well known its basically a tourist trap.

Beep: "Super Potato but gooder" - they also carry a lot of PC-98 stuff. Recently, they published Radirgy 2?! I must remember to grab a copy... As soon as I spotted the Game CD section my quest for the neGcon went straight out the fuckin' window. I grabbed a whole bunch of Ridge Racer OSTs and a Phantasy Star Online Ep I&II arrange album.

Surugaya: I've known about Surugaya when importing stuff using OneMap. I bought quite a lot of stuff in here, mostly some nice gifts for my girlfriend.

Trader: Usually good, but way too busy today. Maybe I'll take a nose another day.

Mandarake: Was comically busy. We were both kind of hurting at that point so we turned around immediately. We're heading to Nakano Broadway soon anyway.

The hell began when we went across Akiba to Yodobashi Camera. Initially, we were going there because Dave wanted to find a fancy-ass cable for his fancy-ass phone with a weird charging standard.

Just over an hour and a half later, I've got a whole bunch of shit in my basket. As we're standing at the register to deal with the tax-free shopping process, I turn to Dave and say "Wait, what did we come in here for again?"

We headed back to the Chuo Rapid to get home to Shinjuku, completely forgetting that another one of the things we were going there for was to play the big sitdown Densha de GO!! cabinet at Taito Station.

But, not to worry, there's a Taito Station at the East Exit of Shinjuku Station! The DDG website said that on its location list, they had one, so we figured we'd drop in on the way home to right that wrong.

Whilst yes, they technically have a DDG cab, it is not the full-size model. Which makes sense, considering the real estate. Dave asked me "do you really want your first experience of the DDG cabinet to be on the small one next to a Taiko?" and on that note, we'd left.

Thanks a lot, Big Crappy!

After a soak with a strong zero to calm my leg muscles down, and a quick nap to put some more gas in the tank, we went to a Bankara Ramen for an outrageously great bowl of tonkatsu. After this, a little stop into the Game Panic. This is pretty much our home arcade since it's right next door to our hotel.

That day, we focused mostly on racing games. I'd set up my profiles for Initial D THE ARCADE and Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 6RR. (MaxiTune 6 is hilarious, we've gone from 6, to 6R, to 6RR. Sadly, 6RR+ comes out a few days after I leave Japan, and it adds the new Nissan Fairlady Z... I love that car, man.)

So many intense races, close calls and outrageous drifts. I love these games so much. After that, I played Chunithm until a staff member came over to inform us it was closing time. I grabbed some snacks and something to drink from the nearby 7-Eleven, including Coca-Cola K-Wave, which is a limited-time K-Pop flavour, and a pouch of Coolish, of which I am now a massive fan.

Time to rest up. Tomorrow is the RGG pop-up shop and potentially Nakano Broadway.

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itsayaze · 26 days

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Day One - Touchdown

After a 13-hour flight, I landed at Haneda Airport at 7AM local time. Haneda is an airport I like a lot. It’s open and airy; with floor-to-ceiling windows through entire hallways that take considerable time to walk down. Travelators are chiming, and nice Japanese voices advise you to be careful when using them. A man operating a cart to ferry passengers around drove past with a jingle adjacent to an ice cream truck.

Immigration is always going to be one of the longer parts of getting through an airport, sure, but getting to the front was almost an hour. And this is after disembarking the plane much before the rest of the passengers. Thankfully, I had filled out the customs and immigration forms much ahead of time online, which gave me a QR code to speed the process up.

As soon as I hit the front, I flew through immigration. The plus side of the queue being so long is that by the time you get out, your luggage is already spinning its way down the carousel. Using my recently acquired AirTags, I didn’t need to squint and wait for a bunch of bags to drift past; A helpful arrow in the Find My app set me straight. I grabbed my suitcase and headed straight for nothing to declare. I didn’t even get stopped and searched for gold bullion this time!

The arrivals hall was bustling. People stand around holding signs for parties to get chauffeured around their opening hours in the country. I’ve done Haneda before, so I knew what I needed to do, but this time there was an extra complication: I needed to find the JAL baggage delivery counter.

I was hellbent on getting this suitcase out of my hands and delivered to the hotel I'm staying at. But I couldn't find it anywhere. Looked on the maps around the airport? Nothin'. So I took out my phone and looked it up. It's on 1F! That's... where I just came from after the sign told me it was on 2F... etc. etc.

After about 30 minutes of aimlessly wandering around, I conceded and made my way over to one of my favourite parts of the country: the rail system.

Haneda has a monorail that will take you to the Yamanote Line, where you can make most of your connections in Central Tokyo. They run frequently and have many stops along the way. I let a few go past because it was the Haneda Express I was truly after.

You get on, and it goes. Straight to Hamamatsucho. No stopping on the way, just hauling ass across the monorail, drinking in the sights. It's still technically Sakura season, so I did see some Sakura trees along the river. I happened to pick a week to travel here that conveniently has a really nice weather forecast, so it was clear skies and sun all day; a comically drastic difference from the weather I'd left behind in England.

So, at Hamamatsucho then. I make my way through the station, touch out of the Monorail section and drag this huge-ass suitcase to the Yamanote line. On the platform, an all too familiar jingle rang out, and what I often describe as "a fine boy" arrived - the E235. The unit. The lad. I love him.

There are plenty of E235s in the rolling stock, but the Yamanote green one is particularly striking to me. As a Densha de GO! fan, I'm having a ball. I hop on and put myself into a corner out of everyone's way.

I leave the train at what I have consistently described as "real clown shit" - Shinjuku station. I gotta leave from the East exit. So I follow the signs pointing to the East exit... Am I at the East exit? You bet your ass I'm not! So I go back the way I came like a fool and try again. Eventually, I get it, all whilst my buddy whom I'm meeting up with goes through a similar experience on the other end of the station.

Now that we've met up, we walk through Shinjuku, down towards Kabukicho. I saw the iconic red gates and walked up that street constantly drawing comparisons to its fictional Kamurocho counterpart. Mostly, it's strikingly similar! I've managed to make my way around based on the knowledge I've accrued being a franchise fan, which is hilarious to me. We walk past the Toho cinema and wave at Godzilla.

Bags were dropped off, and we had some time to kill until 3PM check-in. So, the short version of those events:

Coffee in Kabukicho Tower.

Cheese Gyudon at Matsuya. The Chigyu championship starts today.

Game Panic Kabukicho (or Club Sega in Kamurocho if ya nasty)

Buy an eAmusement card, because I left mine at home.

It gets stuck, but one QR code and a quick message to a staff member sorts that out.

IIDX. Sound Voltex. First time I've played a Lightning/Valkyrie cabinet, which was a very pleasant experience.

Buy a BanaPassport for fun. We'll probably play MaxiTune soon.

Played some new Konami Chunithm bootleg with influencers and v-tubers all over the gaff. (I did not like it much)

Walkabout Shinjuku aimlessly for fun.

We check in at long last, and I'm finally bed-adjacent. I lay down for a bit and let a hot bath run. Normally, I prefer showers, but I was recreating an event from my last trip to Japan in 2018: a strong-zero in a lovely warm bath. I soak for a good while, dry off and then have a quick nap. That was the beginning of the end.

On waking up a few hours later, we make our way over to Torikizoku, a real nice yakitori place. There was quite a wait, but that was fine. I needed some more time to get PROPERLY hungry anyway. By the time we were seated and we ordered our food, I was ready. A quick breakdown again:

A comically large "MEGA Lemon Sour"

Potato salad, cabbage, and edamame.

Tsukune Cheese Yaki... (chicken meatballs drowning in cheese...)

Mune Kizokuyaki (chicken & leek skewers)

More chicken

Another MEGA Lemon Sour... but they brought me two!

More tsukune cheese yaki (fuck me, it's so good man)

Then we ventured Kabukicho until 1AM. A very unusual occurrence for me, being out that late. But the "dangerous" part of Tokyo really is much safer than London. Back at the hotel, I pretty much immediately KO'd on the pillow, exhausted from a day on my feet.

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