Japan: Hello, Kitties! And Akihabara

This  morning we had breakfast at a cute French bakery around the corner and headed out to the small neighborhood of Bunkyoku.  Gotokuji Temple, also known as "Lucky Cat Temple", is a Buddhist Temple that was completed in 1681.  Is is a very peaceful location with a few burial grounds and a graceful three-leveled pagoda.  It may be the site of the Japanese maneki-neko (lucky cat) origin story.  To the side of the temple there is an area filled with neko large and small.  Visitors can purchase them at the temple shop and leave them in place.

 Six jizo guardians and a wall of prayer tags.  

The cat represents the temple and the boar represents this year of the pig.

A nice man pointed us to the several wooden cats on the pagoda

The weather was promising to deliver another truly beautiful day so it was nice to take a stroll through such a quiet place and neighborhood filled with small but lovely homes and well-tended gardens.  I was not expecting to see all of the azaleas that seem to be planted absolutely everywhere.  We may have just missed the cherry blossoms in Japan but the everyday urban shrubs are bursting with color.

Azaleas, azaleas everywhere! 

We found a Denny's under a bridge! 

We spent the rest of the day in Tokyo's electronics district, Akihabara.  All of the multi-storied stores put American big box ones to shame.  Each floor is absolutely crammed with refrigerators, light fixtures, camera equipment, hobby crafts, and toys (of course).  What to guess which floors we spent the most time on?  Hans and I bought some interesting souvenir items.

 Hmm...

From the thousand-yard stares I assume these Mad Max type of cats have seen some things 

When we were ready for lunch we headed over to a gyukatsu restaurant that was highly recommended.  We waited for over an hour to get inside the 20-seat basement establishment and thankfully it was worth the wait!  They serve only one selection of dishes, fried breaded beef, miso soup, a nice cabbage salad, rice, and pureed yams.  Your only choice is how much beef and wheather you want yams.  They serve it all on a large tray and the beef, while crispy on the outside, is still rare on the inside.  This is where the fun begins.  Each guest had a little sterno-heated tile where you finish cooking each bit to perfection.  The beef was good enough quality that I ate a few pieces quite raw but I also enjoyed making some bits extra crispy.  There were pitchers of cold tea at the tables and we drank most of ours.  I think it was a barley-based tea.

To finish off the afternoon we ran around some more arcades.  At SEGA Building 3 I was in search of Cho Chabudai Gaeshi, Super Table Flip!  This stupid game is an oldie goldie in Japan and I was dying to try it.  You get to choose from four difference scenarios.  The game gives you a 60 second countdown and the scene begins to play.  The controller for the game is a large plastic table and you get points in two ways:  First you bang your fists on the table occasionally to ramp up the tension.  Then, during the final ten seconds when you have built up enough rage, you literally flip the table and cause as much mayhem and destruction as possible.  It.  Is. Amazing.  The game gives you several slow-motion playbacks from which you can view the carnage from all angles.  I chose the wedding scene and let's just say my bridezilla avatar definitely lost her venue deposit.  Hans played as an angry father at the kitchen table and almost sent his digital wife flying out of the window.

Hans was defeated in Street Fighter by some kind of hot blonde Abraham Lincoln 

Gashapons on every corner! 

Super Table Flip.  The rules are simple:  Flip the table.

In one corner I spoted several girls waiting to use the purikura photo booths.  They aren't cheap and you have to have an app subscription to have the photos texted to you.  Part of their allure is you can choose from a variety of instant face tuning and photoshopping so that you end up looking like a weird anime character.  I added my money and punched through the menu randomly (because of all that lingering table-flipping adrenaline) and I took pictures of the results with my phone.  

The following images may be unsuitable for some viewers:

OMG I was crying from laughing at those photos.

We played through a few other arcades and wandered a few more stores.  By 5 pm we were done and decided to regroup at the hostel before going out for dinner.  The latter part of the plan did not unfold because I succumbed to jet lag once again!  Tomorrow my goal is to stay awake past 7 pm...

SEGA Building 3 in the back was our favorite arcade today