Lions and Tigers and... Maids?

So today, I’m on my third day of my internship and it’s going fantastic, but I’ll go into more detail about what i’ve been doing in my internship at a later date. 

I got great news from my mom this morning that she wants to come play with me in Tokyo after I finish my internship and before I go to Seoul! I seriously can’t wait to see her! I honestly thought it was going to be Christmas until I could see someone familiar from home. 

Anyway, I’ll dive straight into this weirdly titled post. After the sheer exhaustion of the previous day, I found myself having to meet my boss for the first time. He had called Rob to schedule a pre-internship meeting and to take us out to lunch. We, being broke college students in what is probably the most expensive city in the world, took him up on this offer. After stopping by the company and informally introducing ourselves to some of the fellow staff members , we headed out to grab lunch in Shinjuku. On the train we were discussing some of the places that we had yet to cross off our list with our boss and he happily suggested that we try Akihabara. Akihabara is known worldwide for cheap electronics and Japan’s anime and manga culture. Ironically, Akihabara is also the place that the previously mentioned group 64-member girl group AKB48 was founded. 

We grabbed lunch at a small sushi place in Shinjuku and talked for a while with the chefs and our boss. The chefs complimented both Rob and I on our ability to speak Japanese so well. We both denied profusely (a Japanese cultural practice) and said we were still learning. Once lunch was finished, our boss surprised us and took us to some Shinto shrines in Shinjuku and Akihabara. At the first shrine he took us to in Shinjuku, he showed us how to properly pray in the Shinto fashion. I felt a little foolish and ignorant since I (obviously) don’t practice Shintoism, but overall, I’m very glad that he taught us the proper way so that we could be more respectful to future stops. 

In Akihabara, he took us to some more shrines and an old Confucian school. I unfortunately left my camera at home that day, so I don’t have any pictures to share.

While we were shrine hopping, the sky opened up and Rob and I experienced the beginning of our first typhoon. Our boss decided to halt the shrine excursion and take us to an origami museum/paper-making factory. We happened to stumble across a class and decided to participate. The instructor was probably in his late seventies and was a frequent volunteer at the museum. He made origami look effortless. He would explain what he was making while inserting witty jokes and laughing with the observers. He noticed Rob and I were foreign so he folded us some souvenirs.  For me, a star brooch and for Rob, a paper dog. 

We decided the rain was too much after that, so we departed and headed home for the night. 

The next day was filled with the most random events. We first stopped in the “Electric City” in Akihabara, and walked around some department stores and anime/manga stores. The colors of everything in the electric city were so amazing. Being outside was like watching an LED screen. It was scorching hot after the typhoon and Rob pointed out a six story arcade that he wanted get lost in, so we decided that we would take a few minutes and play some Tekken. As much as I love video games, I am absolutely terrible at button punchers. I just sit there and punch the same button a billion times and lose instantly. Rob, on the other hand, was quite good. He got through a lot of the levels in the street fighting game. 

Akihabara's Electric City

Losing at Tekken

When we left the arcade, we decided to stop at a maid cafe that was close to the station. Maid cafes in Japan are huge. To me they are extremely strange, but Rob was in heaven. Basically the concept is that a bunch of twenty-something girls dress in french maid costumes wait hand on foot on their “masters” (or princess as I was so called). Every girls is adorable in a child-like way, has a voice that is probably ten times higher than normal, and sing and dance much to the enjoyment of their “masters”. I will never really understand how some guys could get turned on by that, but I digress..... Rob loved it. He couldn’t stop grinning and squealing. (Totally threw you under the bus there, Rob) The extremely unfortunate part of the experience was that they don’t allow pictures to be taken, so I ended up taking a picture of the food they served us. 

Turtle Matcha Flavored Ice Cream

Rob's Bear Curry

The biggest problem I had with the maid cafe was how expensive it was and not with the concept. To just sit there and not order anything was 1,000 yen. But with drinks, food,  polaroid pictures of the girls, and glowsticks (all part of a package you had to buy with the food) brought us out to around 6000 yen (over $60). Absolutely not worth it if you’re someone like me who’s not into older girls acting like they’re five years old. But it was an experience in Japanese culture nonetheless. 

Rob’s family gave him free-entry tickets to the Ueno Zoo so we headed to Ueno next. The park that the zoo was in was amazing. It reminded me a lot of Central Park, skyscrapers everywhere and locals relaxing in the nice weather. When we first entered the zoo, we checked out the ever-so-famous pandas that everyone hypes up (is there a zoo in the world that doesn’t hype up pandas?). They were lackluster, though, as were the rest of the animals. I’ve never been a huge zoo person, so I let my exhaustion creep up on me as we walked around. Rob, on the other hand, majored in Biology when he was at U of A, so he really enjoyed it. Don’t get me wrong, I was very appreciative to have received a free ticket to the zoo, but I always feel bad for the animals in the cages. 

Rob and I

Cute sign saying "Don't feed the animals"

Ueno Zoo!

Engrish is the funniest here in Japan. What exactly a "Jackass" Penguin is, I don't know.

There were two big parts of the zoo that I did enjoy though. The first was a huge pagoda that they had towards the front of the zoo. It was beautiful. The other was the giant lily pond in the center of the zoo. It held a lot of the zoo’s cranes and swans. With the skyscrapers surrounding it, it was a beautiful sight. After a quick pit-stop and an Asahi later, we decided that we had enough for the day and headed home.

Pit Stop. The lady passed out in the back is how I felt that day.

The Lily Pond and Tokyo.

Pagoda in the zoo!

On my way home, I stopped by the local shrine in my neighborhood and took a few pictures. It was so peaceful that I’m thinking about making it a frequent stop on my way home from work.

Sanctuary

Have a good rest of the week! :)