Akihabara in 45 minutes, "Maid in..." omiyage

(tags shopping, purchase, goods)

During the week I had a business trip to Tokyo so I planned a little bit of an excursion to Akihabara. That is, for every free moment I could think of, I planned a train trip to and from Akihabara. I even had a "last-minute" shopping time limit calculated out, thank you Jorudan. But I was only able to go for a short while.

That last week's article in Kotaku ("How to Lose Yourself in Akihabara") had a great picture of Di Ji Charat, one of my favorite animes, nyo! They had some good ideas for stores, but I already had a list in mind: K-Books, Messe Sanoh Chaos, Akibang, Game Hollywood. K-Books is the closest used character goods shop I could think of, although I also wanted to go to Mandarake. Messe Sanoh Chaos and Game Hollywood fills my need for foreign gaming, but I budgeted Chaos on the trip and didn't figure that it was closed moved to a new location! Ah, so disappointed. I didn't have time to visit Game Hollywood, but if I wanted to buy a GBA or NDS flash cart, that would be the place. I did Akibang, but they are mainly a blank media store. I was hoping for some other shooting strategy DVDs (攻略), but they still had the Ikaruga Appreciate DVD in copious amounts. Looks like you can order it online, now.

With my main list of stores exhausted and no time to visit Hirose Entertainment Yard (HEY), I settled for a Trader store to buy some Dijicharat Nyo used DVDs. Gotta complete my collection. And that's it, that's all I got at Akihabara. Not very interesting haul at all.

But there is one thing I was able to get from the Haneda Airport which was Akihabara-related. They were selling "Maid" cookies and pudding as omiyage, that is, maid cafe themed snack gifts. I'm sure they are edible, but you aren't buying it for the taste, right? I recognized the character designer as Oji (おーじ, over 18 link) with a talent for really cute eyes, so I couldn't pass it up. The omiyage company is Daito Corporation, which doesn't have any product page for this "joke" gift. Thanks goes out to my Japanese teacher, who recalled in horror at the deteriation of fine airport gift shops (but no maid outfits, haha). More expose at Senaka Ota Road blog.