Sunday! A rainy and somewhat dreary looking day.
But I was dying to try a Japanese-style Western breakfast. So off I went to one of the more common places for a breakfast set.
A number of different choices, but I ultimately chose this set.
Eggs, toast, and the unlimited drink bar were the deciding factors in this one. Japanese folk seem accustomed to having vegetables at breakfast, hence the appearance of the salad.
The meal actually came out pretty quickly and it had a hash brown like thing. The unlimited drink bar was somewhat useful, except for the fact that the juice was quite sub-par for my tastes. (I don't think I found juice that I liked the entire trip.) The bread tasted like it came straight out of the oven. Enough crisp on the outer layer, but nice soft and warm on the inside. Good stuff!
This particular chain keeps pretty late hours, and has an IHOP/Dennys-like breakfast/lunch/dinner menu rotation throughout the day.
I did think that the coffee was quite bland, so since I still had time before Sunday mass, I popped into a coffee (chain) shop.
The coffee wasn't bad. You get a familiar looking cream and sugar set. At other places I would eventually see liquid sweetner (gum syrup), and the equivalent of zero calorie sweetener.
Then it was back to St. Ignatius Church and the 9 am Japanese language mass.
http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=13139561072834157893&q=Chiyoda-ku,+Koujimachi+6-5-1,+Tokyo,+Japan&hl=en&cd=1&ei=Kh67S8OeJof6M4D98Eg&sll=35.685004,139.731293&sspn=0.009864,0.087091&ie=UTF8&ll=35.696306,139.717469&spn=0,0&z=15&iwloc=A Since mass is relatively universal, I basically knew where we were throughout mass, even if I didn't understand all the vocabulary. It also seemed like they used the word Kamisama to refer to God, which was cool to verify since that is what I assumed they would use. I'll update this post later with pictures of the mass guide. Another interesting thing was that the profession of faith was broken up into sections, and different sections of the congregation were assigned to stand up and recite their portion of the profession of faith together. Given the fact that Catholicism is relatively young in Japan, I thought that was a pretty cool way to recite, learn and reinforce it. I think we've all been guilty of robotic recitations of the profession of faith (or at least me). The sign of peace also was different in the sense that there were no hand shakes involved. Instead, everyone bowed politely to one another.
I had read on their
website that there was not only an English language mass, but a choir that sang at the mass, plus the fact that they met to practice an hour before. Without any direct way to verify if it was okay to sing along, I figured I might as well just show up early and ask directly. Anyway, rather than leave and come back, I just decided to people watch as people came and left for the 10:30 am mass.
Eventually, I got to meet the choir director (who happened to be Filipino). I got the okay to sing along. And as people arrived, I introduced myself in Japanese. This threw off a number of Filipinos in the choir, who briefly believed I was Japanese until later. It also served to my detriment, as a nice Japanese fellow was ready to believe that my mastery of the language was farther along. He basically told me about how he almost came with the wrong music, which may have been caused by his wife. Unfortunately, my lack of vocabulary limited my responses to a lot of "yes"es and "is that so?".
We were using music from OCP, which was somewhat familiar. The choir was a mix between Japanese nationals, Filipinos (either in nationality or ethnicity) and some younger and older folk and students. Of course, there were only a few male voices, one true bass, and myself as a visiting tenor.
Mass went pretty well, and we had an organ as our accompaniment. I think I've been pretty spoiled by having either a piano or an organ as accompaniment. I've been around both those instruments long enough to find keys, or spots in chords. But the organ...um...moving on! I was also concerned about volume level since I sometimes think that I can be too loud or too soft in some spots, but I guess I was at an okay level for the space I found out later.
A picture from the choir loft.
I found out at practice that they were going to practice that afternoon for music for Holy Thursday, and since I wanted to sing for Holy Week, I ended up staying for that as well. But first, time for a quick snack!
(By the way, Merienda is a Tagalog/Filipino word borrowed from the Spanish word for snack. The Japanese katakana undernearth literally echos the Japanese sounds used to say the word: me - ri - e - n - da)
Practice went okay. We were going to practice one more time next week. Although people were going to go out to have some tea, I politely declined since I was leaving for Kyoto-Osaka-Hiroshima the next day and I wanted to sneak in some more Tokyo-area exploring. The weather looked like it was going to be slightly nice after all.
Oh where oh where is an anime/manga/tech geek to go?
Akiba! Or Akihabara as it's listed everywhere else. It wasn't until later in this trip that I had a decent map of Akiba. The first couple of times, I may have gone in circles or walked back into the exact same place multiple times.
Softmap actually has multiple locations on the same street!
Akiba and neighborhood shopping districts are quite fun in the sense that most of them will have "pitch" or "promotion" people trying to convince anyone within listening range to come see new products, or to take advantage of a special sale.
The girl in blue is talking about the wonders of the Panasonic Viera line of televisions, while the girl in white is handing out promotional tissues. (They're aren't as many napkins around as you would think in Japan.)
I spent a lot of time in some of the tech stores looking at the dizzying array of components and accessories, even if I wasn't planning on buying anything. Then I lost a lot of time in stores like Animate and Gamers looking at anime, manga and related merchandise.
I did get to see セルティ. So that saved me the trip to Ikebukuro to try to find her riding along.
Since I was getting a little bit hungry, I decided to pop into a
maid cafe as well. Now despite the connotations that would occur if this existed on Western shores, the interaction between customer and waitress never reaches the uncomfortable degree that you'll sometimes see at a Hooter's. No cameras are allowed, and absolutely no contact is allowed. Some places will take a polaroid memento of you with your maid of choice. You can read about some of the more popular ones
here.
It was the weekend, and the one that I happened to pick was packed. It was a bit of a wait, but in a bit of lucky fate, I met a local person who happened to be a regular at that cafe. Between my broken Japanese, and his broken English, I was able to get a sense for how things worked. It was every bit of fun as I expected, almost as if one of those overly saccharine animes came to life. Also, the food was pretty tasty too.
With that under my belt, it was time to do some final nighttime exploring of Akiba before all the stores closed.
Comic Toranoana (tons of manga, books and even fan written works and fan drawn art)
Gamers (lots of anime/manga merchandise, similar to Animate)
Looking down Akiba's "main" road.
After two days of going at a pretty fast pace, I was feeling worn out. Day 3 would be my first time on a shinkansen going out of Tokyo, so I shut things down so that I would be ready to go.
-- Day 2 end --
