Tag: travel

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Enjoyed

Tokyo 2009: Cat Room Chamamo

While we’re away, we’re lucky enough to have friends in our building looking after poor ol’ Buttons. But after glancing at a picture of him being kept company, we pouted *just* a little. It’s hard being on the other side of the world from a beloved pet.

But we must not forget: this is Tokyo, where there is a solution to nearly any problem. So when serendipity struck in Harajuku in the form of a perfectly placed advertisement, we knew what we had to do.

Cat Room Chamamo

On the fifth floor of a nondescript building half a block south of the (closing) flagship Gap store sits Cat Room Chamamo. It is a cat café, providing visitors a chance to play with any/all of the nine resident cats for a nominal fee. Drinks and light snacks are also available.

There are prerequisites and rules, of course – mandatory hand washing and sanitizing, no picking up the cats, no outside food, etc. But you do get your choice of complimentary cat toys to use to attract the attention of the cats.

Cat Room Chamamo

Leaning Out The Window

Nap With A View

Play Time

Is it a silly way to pass the time? Sure. But I love the idea that if you are away from home, unable to own a pet, or otherwise animal deprived, there’s a place you can go that directly solves that problem.

Katie and Miruku

Count us as fans. A few more pictures are up on Flickr.

(For people with other tastes in pets, you can rent a dog at Odaiba’s Puppy The World, or have a stop at popular bunny cafe Usagi To Cafe in Nagoya.)

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Narrated

Tokyo 2009: Shibuya + Akihabara

Hachiko Crossing

Shibuya seemed like a good district to start our trip in. Easily accessible via the JR Yamanote Line, home to a few specific destinations, it is energetic without being completely overwhelming.

Hachiko Crossing, iconic sight of Japan that it is, is not very intimidating at 10:30 AM. We proceeded across and walked up *Center Gai*, a pedestrian area lined with restaurants, clothing shops, bars, and towering *pachislot* arcades.

Center Gai

Our first major shopping destination was Tokyu Hands, the “Creative Life Store” which holds just about everything in its seven stories. There was a certain bemusement that many things that I’ve seen at AC Gears in the East Village could be found here, often for much cheaper. An hour later, we walked away with a truly mixed bag of merchandise, including a very tasty iPhone case.

Guhroovy Signage

GUHROOVY is a hardcore techno record shop tucked away on an isolated third story in Udagawacho. Run by DJ CHUCKY, the store is somewhat notorious in the IIDX/Bemani community for being a key resource for albums featuring popular artists from the series. It is less than 200 square feet in total, but for techno junkies, it is blissful.

This was the only business that I had gone so far as to print out directions for and to seek out, and seeing as I may not be back in the neighborhood beyond this day, I did not let the opportunity slip away from me.

Fun fact for the Bemani faithful: the store has, with no explanation or price tag, a copy of Beatmania US on top of one of the shelves.

We then started to backtrack, finding that a doll shop that Katie had seen earlier – Doneunyo – was now open. Katie has been collecting Japanese dolls for few years; an opportunity to go to an official Blythe dealer was not one she could resist. (Junie Moon, her go-to destination, had closed for the holiday week.) She walked away very happy.
We stopped into a few SEGA World arcades, where I learned that Katie has a crippling addiction to UFO Catcher machines. I also got a big round of applause, a bow, and a picture taken from two Japanese girls who were astounded to see someone foreign play Taiko no Tatsujin well.

After a quick lunch, we returned to the Shibuya train station, but not before stopping at RanKing RanQueen. Time Out Tokyo describes it as “an intriguing insight into the mind of the Japanese consumer”. All products are categorized and ranked by popularity – so for example, you can buy the most popular bath product, the Bloodtype Bath.

After sundown, we headed to Akihabara. No pictures were taken; had I brought the camera, I probably couldn’t have fit into 90% of the stores we visited.

Akihabara is truly a nerd paradise – stores selling electronics, games, and manga as far as the eye can see. It’s also overwhelming in the crowded dark; after two hours, the jetlagged and fatigue set in and we were forced to retreat. We plan to return later in the week.

I did manage to find Super Potato, famed gaming mecca, and it is as awesome as I had hoped. No purchases yet, although I may return to buy the Takeshi’s Challenge strategy guide.

Categories
Found

Tokyo 2009: Grappling With Technology

## iPhone

The horror stories are well known about what happens when you travel internationally with an iPhone and leave “Data Roaming” on. So both of our iPhones have been ratcheted down – data roaming off, email checking set to manual (just in case), etc. We’re bridging the in-room internet into wifi so we can still use our phones while we’re in the hotel.

But two odd iPhone things have come up during the trip that are worth mentioning:

Turns out you **must** have 3G turned on to get a cell phone signal while in Tokyo, even with data roaming off. I tend to keep it off, usually out of battery concerns, but also due to this whole international traveling thing. (If the data does have to go on, at least that way I’ll be rate limited.) But there’s seemingly no GPRS signal, so as soon as I turned 3G back on, I got full signal from NTT DoCoMo.

It gets weirder: despite the settings being the same across the board on both phones, Katie’s iPhone is not able to get a cell signal. The Carrier/Network Selection menu is displaying, it sees DoCoMo and SoftBank, but selecting either throws a “Network Lost” error message. This is baffling and, admittedly, troubling. Only thing I could find as a troubleshooting tip was running a Network Reset, which has done nothing. (If anyone knows a fix for this, I’d love to hear it.)

## Skype

Skype works like a charm on Katie’s laptop, but I really wish the app better defined the preferences. I had to turn off “Use Skype Access”, which is about as nebulously defined as you can get, before it would connect.