Alright, last full day in Japan/Akihabara, gotta buy all the shit, buy all the food, merch and souvenirs! At the entrance of the Radio Kaikan building they have a store dedicated to anime related/collab omiyage from many different aspects of anime culture, they even have stuff from vtubers and hololive.
We had just brought another luggage yesterday because we honestly needed it and with that said, we opened ourselves to be able to buy more things. With reckless abandon, I decided to go to Amiami’s second store that had pre-owned figures and ended up buying a big one, one that I normally wouldn’t buy because damn the shipping and customs is too painful. The best part is that some stores, even anime ones like Amiami offer Tax Free discount if you show your passport and your purchase is over 5,000 yen. They have a great selection of pre-owned items and in great condition, rated from A+ to D. Highly recommend.
To top off our morning/early afternoon, we decided to seek out a Japanese burger place, and our research led us here; to Shogun Burger where they offer Wagyu Burgers and other slightly fancy upscale fare. The shop itself is in one of those gourmet eating floors at the top of a department store and such similar to Yodobashi Camera, but I believe this building was commercial office space for businesses.
Not exactly cheap with a double patty wagyu burger costing about 2,000 yen but it was certainly pretty damn good. I wouldn’t say it’s the best burger I’ve had but it’s certainly tasty for sure, although the fact that this is supposed to be partly wagyu beef is largely lost when it’s ground and mixed with other meats I can assume. Nevertheless, good burger.
After lunch me and my sister decided to do our own thing for the rest of the day and go off on our own to explore/shop/play crane games. I decided to hit up some of the more ignored stores like Hobby Off or Hard Off which sell used goods including Book Off, that sells preowned books. It’s interested they they have those replica rifles in the back like nothing; airsoft and military gun replicas are a huge big hobby in Japan and there are entire stores/segments in department stores that have them on display.
While I was on my way exploring junk stores my sister sent me this picture of a much sought after win from the Taito Station crane game. Noice.
As I continue my exploration into more obsecure stores, I find myself in Lashinbang one of the more popular used anime goods stores ranging from video games, manga, doujinshi, figures, idol merch, pretty much everything that falls under Japanese popular culture can be find here at a discount and old/rare things that are hard to find in newer stores.
This section of display focuses on doujinshi focusing on FGO/Fate characters. I find it extremely organized and considerate that they sort and organize each of the books based on the featured character/servant. Makes shopping for something in particular very easy, even for foreigners who just like to look at pictures. Every section they had was like this, which was cool.
On one of the other floors in the building they had the standard used boxes where people rent a display and put their goods for sale on display. There was a surprising amount of foreigners here which was interesting. The merch itself was variable but yea, nothing really interest me here so I moved on to other stores and places for the rest of the afternoon.
After a short trip back to the hotel for a rest, which my sister also went back to, she told me her nice stories of her afternoon of crane game wins, which far exceeded her expectations and even my own. After a rest, we decided to go to Gyu Kaku, a fairly popular all you can eat yakiniku chain where you grill your own food and such, similar to what we know at home as korean bbq/gyubee experience, except for, you know; is real.
After stumbling upon their menu and ordering system a bit, we finally got up and running by ordering via our own phone from the restaurants menu site. It’s a similar system that’s appearing even at home where you scan a QR code and you order directly from your own phone, none of this Ipad tablet thing. Cool. They automatically give you some cabbage and beef tongue first to get you started before you start making you orders.
After putting in our order of various meats and dishes, this is what our tiny table looks like, a familiar feeling for sure. Their bimbimbap was delicious, considerably better than the one at Gyubee and their kimchi was good too, seasoned very well. In fact, the kimchi sold out midway through our session which was too bad. They had all kinda of cuts of meat and different marination styles like shio, tare, miso, black pepper honey to choose from. We tried our best to sample everything but with the course we chose, the mid tier one, we just didn’t’ have enough time to try everything and we were already full by the time was up. You have 90 minutes to sit, cook and eat your food but only 70 minutes time frame to order only which kinda sucks but what can you do I guess. Overall this was a great last dinner in Japan, and I’d highly recommend it to others or even other chains/yakiniku places to eat.
With that said, this is the last full day post in Japan before we travel back home. This trip has overall been a great success and would probably continue posting more complication posts once we get back home when I sort through all of my photos and shit.
Now, just to get back home safely with all our goods and heavy luggage.. hope our travel back home goes smoothly without incident.