Day 10 "Rubber Ducky Onsen and Akihabara"

Day 10 (December 23, 2018)

Following my theme of “places I must visit because I saw them on NHK” the goal this day was the “rubber ducky onsen”.  I saw it in passing on one of the tourist videos available at NHK and had to do some deep internet diving to even find the exact place.  Past that, it took several emails to confirm that a private reservation would, in fact, net us a “ducky onsen” experience.  For the record, the real name of this place was Maenohara Onsen Sayano Yudokoro (more info here) and those rubber duckies are actually changed out to fit the season, so we would be treated to the "winter animal" set instead. Per Japanese law, only same sex is allowed in any public bath or onsen past 10 years of age.  That being said, Matt once again decided he didn’t want to bathe with other naked males (this happened in 2010 as well) and decided to go on a walking trip around Asakusa while I took Terra to the fated destination.  I was SUPER nervous at first as it was only our second day in Tokyo and this trip required an hour of train travel with several line transfers, as well as a 15 minute walk from the nearest station.  I packed up our things and left with more than 2 hours to spare with a set of “don’t lose me rules” ahead of time for Terra.  It turned out to be a super relaxing ride to the countryside (still astounds me how close “countryside” is to central Tokyo).  We got off the train and start walking via Google Map GPS services to the doorstep of our destination.  Plenty of parks along the way, families out enjoying the brisk morning and scenery to behold.

To this day, I have never had the nerve or felt safe enough to take Terra to D.C. by myself, yet not one single time did I have the same reservations here.  It was so refreshing.  Staff inside the onsen spoke just enough English and had English signage to get us exactly what/where we needed to be.  It was a large resort/onsen bathhouse location and was not busy upon our early arrival time.  We had to remove our shoes and use lockers at the entrance, then were given towels and shown to the private bath down an outdoor hallway.  Once inside it looked like a large changing room with adjoining bath, which was surrounded by the outdoors/greenery!  It was also special in the fact that you were encouraged to wear a swimsuit and take pictures for social media (usually clothing in the bath or onsen is a huge taboo). So, of course, we did just that!

It was a huge traditional tub with washroom once entering the outdoor environment, one of the most interesting places I had ever been.  A great mix of entertainment and relaxation, because how could you not smile and take pictures while being surrounded by hundreds of rubber animals?  Terra (as expected) had way too much fun playing with the animals while I could just relax after the photo taking had ended.  Our reservation was for an hour and half, we were done right around that mark and fully relaxed.  It was SO NICE.  Hands down, would go here again and take every woman I knew with me.

After the refreshing morning, it was off for lunch and the Asakusa drum museum, where we met back up with Matt seamlessly. The “panda cafe” we thought he found ended up being a small kids play area/eatery upstairs and a burger joint downstairs, unfortunately.  Since we didn’t really fall into the “small kid” category, it was decided a quick burger lunch would commence and then we could head over to the drum museum.  No photography was allowed inside (explaining my lack of pictures for this paragraph).  It was an entertaining hour or so where we could all get hands-on playing various drums and musical instruments of Asian heritage.  I would overall leave a positive review of the place, but wouldn’t go out of my way to visit or recommend it (more info here if interested).  If you find yourself in the area with time to kill, or with small children, then perhaps the 700yen ticket per person would be worth it.

With time still left in the day, but not enough to knock out anything major, it was discussed to throw the first trip to Akihabara in. The “tech shrine” (Kanda Myoujin) was the first must-see, but turned out to be a way further walk than I had originally mapped.  It was a solid 20 minutes from the station and accumulated in a very steep climb up a lot of stairs.  There wasn’t much to see here, a few basic torii and prayer hall with plenty of anime girl themed charms and omiyage.  Purchased a few standard “ward off evil tech virus” charms (which turned out to be expensive at 1500yen each!) and one set of omiyage cakes and back off into the shopping district we headed.

One of the major stores on my list was the Animegane (Anime Glasses) store, where you could purchase frames (or even full glasses after an exam) stylized in anime or gaming themes.  They had ones from SOA with the sword as the sides of the glasses, Evangelion, Cardcaptor Sakura and more.  I ended up with a pair of silver/blue frames from Azure Lane for 12,000yen and was more than happy to just get lenses when we got home.  I still get compliments on these as they are my everyday pair right now!  Close enough to anime/gaming for otaku, but far enough that a casual person has no clue.

Akihabara is a spinning daze of places to visit and areas to bookmark when doing research.  It was such a huge mish-mash of cafes, shopping, shrines and arcades that it becomes difficult to find purpose on which ones to enter next or where you should be aiming to go.  We ended up wandering in and out of more anime, gaming, arcade and capsule machine shops than I could count within a few hours.  Dinner for the night was set for the “Train Cafe” I located while doing “cafe shopping” online.  My intention was to find a place with fun food and displays that both Terra and Matt would enjoy, but pictures/information on this place were a little obscure. From what I could tell it would be worth it with train model displays, train themed food and you even paid to enter with a “train” ticket stub.  I THOUGHT it would be a fun place to eat.  Instead, when we finally located it on the 4th floor of a back alley of Aki, up one of the rickiest elevators we would see the entire trip, we were greeted more by the creepier “old guy patron” atmosphere with cute waitresses dressed like train conductors and a smoke filled bar atmosphere.

I DID see one other family within the small 30 seat or so dining area, so we entered and I hoped for the best.  Things never really got better though, there was the standard “maid cafe” attempts at entertainment and they did have a small working train model in the corner Terra enjoyed, but overall the food was subpar for Tokyo, the prices were too high and the smoke filled atmosphere was a little much for me.  They didn’t even have anything on the menu Terra wanted to eat, so it was a big letdown, especially after stumbling into the awesome train diner a few nights before in Kyoto!  To top it all off, when I went to gather our bags to leave it was noticed that the beloved “Fluffy” was missing!  Oh, the chaos this would cause.  He was our instagram buddy and in almost every picture thus far.  We quickly retraced our steps into MOST of the shopping areas we could remember/find and even all the way back to the shrine, but come up empty-handed.  This Fluffy was determined to stay in Akihabara forever. Slightly defeated by the second-half of the day, it was time to return to Asakusa and turn in for the night.