AKB48! Or is it SDN48? Or SKE48?

OK, the title is kind of an inside joke for Japanese music fans. There's this ultra-popular, ultra-bad group of "singing" and "dancing" and "acting" pop idols called AKB48, which is short for "Akihabara (Akiba) 48" which, I suppose, should imply there are 48 of them. They were started by some music promo guy with the idea that if you have a bunch of cute girls wearing skimpy outfits bouncing around on stage and pretending to sing utterly vacuous, drab, sugary pop songs, it would sell records. Well, it works. Very well. And by having over 70 of them (including "trainees"), they can flood the airwaves with "different" (so they say) songs by various AKB girls and their spinoff groups, so you can have all sorts of records in the charts at the same time, which makes them look even bigger, thus selling even more....you get the idea.

They used to perform daily on the 6th floor of one of the buildings in Akihabara, but have just recently finished construction on a brand new AKB48 Cafe and Shop (oh, boy), so now they can sell themselves alongside overpriced, bland sandwiches to match their "hits"

Exploitation at it's finest

This, of course, takes away from some of the more traditional Akiba sights that have the kind of flavor one is looking for when visiting the Kingdom of Otaku (for the non-Japanese geeks, Otaku is usually a derogatory term for people, usually young men, obsessed with all things anime), like, for example:

The Gundam Cafe, where the overpriced food is shaped like aliens from the series, and artwork, statues and figurines adorn the walls. The sign this guy is carrying says "Please Do Not Touch the Gundam"

People have been complaining that Akiba has been losing its old fashioned geek culture for a while now and it is true, to a point. There used to be street performers dressed up in random cosplay, some singing, some acting, some just enjoying being stared at, and the shops had some unique stuff that wasn't always based on images of young girls with big eyes and even bigger breasts. It's still there, but it's harder to find, and you need to wade through the muck to find it. The street is filled with nothing in early January, but even in the summer, it is now girls dressed up as maids trying to get you into their cafe and theaters full of AKB girls all trying to take the otaku's money, rather than celebrating their own special brand of weirdness. It's too bad, but that is the trend, whenever there is a good or unique thing, business comes in to capitalize on it and, in the process, makes it less unique and almost always less good.

For us, Akiba is still a great place for windows shopping (they don't allow pictures in any of the stores, sorry) or to find stuff we can't get in the US, like Japanese books from one of the biggest bookstores in Tokyo, Shosen Book Tower

The largest selection of Japanese CPU books in the world

8 floors and over 500,000 books.

or new games and game consoles that haven't been (or won't be) released in the US:

We luv our toys!

We're not into buying DVD's or Blu-rays of anime here, since they are just outrageously priced (¥11250, or $130, for a single Blu-ray with two twenty-three minute episodes) and full seasons on DVD come to the US in a year or two for less than $40. Sooner or later, even the very loyal otaku dollar is just not going to keep supporting the industry's greed. I'm not looking forward to that day, since it will mean even less quality anime and more "commercial" output that can sell tie-in goods by the boatload (think Pokemon, Dragonball Z, or anything with the word "harem" in the description).


Food is, as usual, good and an adventure at the same time. The more we're here, the more comfortable we are trying places, which is usually pretty rewarding. This morning, however, since we were up looking for breakfast at the ungodly hour of.... 7:00? we had very few choices, all of them western. Japanese people rarely go out for breakfast, and if they do it is usually grabbing something fast on their way to work, like McDonald's or a doughnut, and so even those places (McDonald's excluded) don't open until at least 7:30 and usually 8 or 8:30. So here we are, having walked to Ueno Station (about 25 minutes from our hotel) to find only one place open that was not McDonald's:

Nothing says Japan like the Hard Rock Cafe

and only in Japan is a hot dog considered a normal breakfast item. We tried the other two meals, which were surprisingly good.

This is seriously a special dish here. What looks like a normal pub burger costs...¥1780? $20 for a burger and fries.

This afternoon, however, we got to eat like the natives! There are all sorts of tiny shops that specialize in one kind of food and are very fast and very good at making that one thing and usually very cheap

The sign reads "Soba ¥260 Udon". That's a cheap lunch. (about $3)

Some places use vending machines to sell meal tickets that you bring to the counter when you order, speeding things up even more for the salaryman in a hurry to eat and get back to the office.

Some choices even have helpful pictures.

The menu is also hanging above the counter. Don't let it fool you. Those are all just different ways of serving soba and udon noodles. You bring your ticket up to them and tell them which noodle you want.

Sumi's "Curry Set": Beef Curry and soba noodles in chicken broth

My all-time favorite: Curry Udon! Complete with "traditional" wooden spoon.

The appropriate way to eat noodles in Japan involves a LOT of slurping.

There is a saying in Japan that the more noise you make when slurping your udon, the better it tastes. If that is true, then the guys eating here must have been absolutely LOVING their noodles. The sounds inside this place were almost comical. No music, no TV, no talking except the employees yelling "Irrashaimase!" to the arriving customers and lots and lots of loud slurping from a bunch of grown men in business suits. Excellent, satisfying food for less than a McDonald's value meal.


No firm plans yet for tomorrow, other than to try and sleep past 4:30am (yay jetlag).


I'll leave you with some AKB48 "Classics":
Everyday Kachuusha (exploitation by swimsuit)
Seishun Girls (exploitation by school uniform)
Baby! Baby! Baby! (you can't make stuff this good up)