May 31, 2014

Autumn Japan Day 6 : Kabukicho + Izakaya & overnight KTV

On the 6th day of my Autumn 2013 Japan trip, I went to the Square Enix cafe with Amanda!

 

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She graciously allowed me to bunk over at her place when I was in Tokyo T_T. Helped me out a lot!

 

Read about the square Enix cafe at my cosplay blog by clicking here.

 

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Amanda asking the Telco Store staffs about acquiring a data sim card for tourists.

 

Before we went to Artnia, I had to get a data sim card.  We went to so many shops to look for it but it turned out to be such a HASSLE because NONE of the telco stores sold them! Can’t even remember how many stores we tried!  To learn how to get data sim card for your phones in Japan, check out my blog entry here.

 

My B-mobile data sim card for my phone in Japan.

 

After Artnia, we walked to Shinjuku central to look for the big departmental stores in hopes of finding the data sim card my prior online research had said is available in Japan. On our way to Shinjuku’s BIC CAMERA, we walked pass a Kabukicho; which according to Amanda, is a red-light district.

Kabukichō (歌舞伎町?) is an entertainment and red-light district in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. Kabukichō is the location of many host and hostess clubs, love hotels, shops, restaurants, and nightclubs, and is often called the "Sleepless Town" (眠らない街). The district's name comes from late-1940s plans to build a kabuki theater: although the theater was never built, the name stuck.

 

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We were a little too early to sight any Hosts or Hostess out on the street though. Pity!!

 

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One of the Love Hotels in the area.

 

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Host Clubs posters. The guys in this particular club looks so visual-kei.

 

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One of the LED poster we saw there. According to Amanda, this is a premium spa. Amanda also educated me that there are ‘bathing’ services where the girls will bath you with their bodies at a premium price ahhaa.

 

 

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Weirdly enough, the CAPCOM Bar is there too! Sorry for the lousy picture, this is a screen cap from the video I took >.<! Amanda who has been there before said the restaurant is pretty good! Judging from the photos online, it does look like a really cool place that features collaboration menu with titles such as Sengoku Basara, Biohazard, Monster Hunter, Gyakuten Saiban, Okami and Street Fighter!

 

 

The Biohazard Brain Cake sells for just 680yen XD Photo taken from CAPCOM Bar’s official website.

 

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Anyway we finally reached BIC CAMERA in Shinjuku and found my data sim card. It was all so much work @_@;;; In this photo, Amanda (God sent Angel!!) and a very helpful BIC CAMERA staff was helping me set up my newly purchased B-mobile.

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After that we met up with some of Amanda's friends and went to an Izakaya called Toriton Dining (If my memory serves me correctly)!! Hahah you can’t see the signboard in this picture xD

 

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Izakaya are Japanese Pubs where people go to drink, eat snacks and hang out.  I'm not a fan of alcohols but I ordered the "Nomihodai" (all you can drink) set anyway since one drink would set me back at 300 yen at least. So its better to get the all - you - can-drink set and order the mild alcohol cocktails. I honestly cannot remember the breakdown of the cost of dishes that night but we paid around 4000yen each. Yeah, it isn't cheap. Especially because our table ordered quite a bit of alcohol hahaa.

 

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The food are very tasty but the portions are miniscule for the price. Food served at Izakayas are usually finger foor to go with alcohol.

 

 

And because we dined for so long we missed the last train (actually I think its just that the company wanna hang out more XD) . So what does the Japanese do when they miss their last train home?  They go for mid-night ktv! Which is precisely what we did.

 

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We went to this newly opened Corte D'azur ktv branch nearby (ikebukuro) and it was so pretty! Check out the Victorian furnishing (and my lovely curly hair that stayed curly the whole day! amazing Japan air 8D)!

 

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You find and select your songs with one of these little mobile devices

 

And Japanese ktv are so competitive!  You can sign up for an account (we used Amanda's) and whatever songs you selected and the scores you got for it will get affiliated with the account and your avatar. The more you sing, the more items your avatar will get.

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And when you sing, you are constantly being graded against others who have or who are challenging the same song.  At the end of the song they will tell you your score and ranking. Lol such competitive KTV.

 

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Bee and I did a duet of “A whole new World” ehehe

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We ordered the all-you-can-drink ice cream set again.  The set costs us 3200yen and it includes 4 hours of KTV with unlimited flow of drinks. And their drinks aren't bad at all, there's actually ice cream and strawberries in them!

Ok shall abruptly end my day6 adventure here!

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