My last full day in Japan. Tomorrow afternoon I go to the airport and
land on US soil 15 minutes before I took off. It'll be nice not being
constantly on my feet again, they've been constantly sore since we
were in the mountains.

Today's theoretical goal today was shopping, but that didn't really
happen. We started by going out to Nakano Broadway, which was honestly
kind of incredible. Probably the coolest commercial place I've been
here and not only because it's your home base in Digimon Story: Cyber
Sleuth. I think I've mentioned it before but I like the odd pseudo-
disorientation which comes from exploring in real life spaces with
which you're intimately familiar through media. Very uncanny valley
but super cool. Nakano had tons of shops for collector-ey interests.
I was able to get some Ghibli things for my friend's gift as well as..

Seeing a handheld DDR controller. The hell?        /japan/images/ddrcontroller.png
And a cool rat. The store it represents was closed though        /japan/images/rat.png
(Side note: I also got to see a rat in an allyway. It was cute.)

After Nakano we checked into our hostel for the night and went to a
specialty store so that we could get my friend a late birthday
present from a friend of his, but the highlight came after. Near there
we saw an ad for a themed cafe called Monster Party and it was
adorable. A tiny 50's style diner setup staffed by just one monster,
Monaka. The cafe seemed to be patronized entirely by her friends plus
two clueless Americans by how they had to clean up spots so that we
could have a place to sit. Monaka had us sign her guestbook (from the
looks of it we may have been the first Americans? I saw Finns though,)
The stuff was expensive and there was a cover charge but it was
super cute and I'd do it again. Also this is still expensive by Japan
standards, so like a mocha for $5 or so. Omurice for $7.50 all off of
my memory.

Monster Party's menu, featuring cute art        /japan/images/monstermenu.png
Monster Party's Art Wall. Maybe fanart?        /japan/images/monsterart.png

I looked the place up later and it seems like it's basically just
advertising and the main business is like, character/costume design
and such?

After that we made our way back to Akihabara. I was hoping to get my
shopping done and we checked out a few stores, but between Nakano
and where we went in Akiba all I got was the Ghibli stuff. I looked at
some card games but there was no Digimon, didn't see any of the games
people asked me to look for aside from one copy of Mother 3 for like
$60. We did discover the best options for arcades there though, which
probably puts them in the running for the best arcades in the world.
If you go to Tokyo and want to play games you want the "HEY" Taito
(orange branding, not the tall Taito tower,) which has tons and tons
of old games on Taito's generic retrocade thingy hardware. The other
option is the GiGO which advertises its retro games on the 4th floor.
I think it's GiGO Akihabara 5? That had a ton of rhythm games and some
wild old cabinets. Did you know Typing of the Dead had an arcade
release, for example?

Unfortunately many of the other arcades in the neighborhood are
pretty much all gacha, ufo, or card games. I found Bandai's especially
disappointing since they took over the premiere arcade in all of
Akihabara for it, but I think I already complained about that.

.