Today I went to Nakano Broadway but there was really nothing there. I had dinner at a cutlet fast food place--note for the Japan-bound: Japanese fast food is the cheapest way to eat out if you know a little of the language--and headed home. But I felt like I was returning empty-handed. Never before have I felt like I did not spend enough money in town, but Tokyo will do that to you. So, I stopped in Akihabara and did my normal rounds. What did I find but a $10 doujin I had been unsuccessfully looking for... for $4.20! Yay! I decided to celebrate by going to a miko cafe. Or, rather, a cosplayer was on the street handing out brochures for a miko cafe that I had thought was closed, so I decided to take a looksie.
Unfortunately I did not bring a camera on my trip. Taking pictures was probably forbidden anyway but there were many funny things that I would have liked to show you. The door to the cafe had a torii gate behind it. It was like a Shinto shrine on the 7th floor of an office building, which was funny. The manager gave me an "English menu" which was also very funny. I guess I should have recorded some of the items on this menu because I can't really do it justice. Basically the cafe had this wacky Japanese-Western fusion menu, which made sense in Japanese, but when translated it was incomprehensible and did not sound entirely like food. I asked for a Japanese menu and ordered a short item, which turned out to be pound cake with anko (adzuki beans).
The cafe's theme was a Shinto shrine run by "miko", the shrine maidens or vestal virgins common even today at Japanese shrines. There was a real shrine (a mirror on a perch; it looked like a Tenrikyo shrine) and offering box inside, and a miko gave me a 5 yen coin to throw in the offering box. I threw it in, clapped my hands, and bowed for the housed gods. Was it making a mockery of religion? Well, I guess Japanese people don't take religion too seriously anyway. According to the website the cafe/shrine houses some kami who will help you get better at drawing anime or making money.
After my anko cake arrived, I asked for cheki-kuji. You may recall from my Schatzkiste entry that cheki is a service in Akihabara where you receive pictures of the waitresses for a fee. It is supposed to be the English words "check it", but God knows why. Kuji, found in the common words omikuji (a fortune which you draw from a box) or takarakuji (the lottery found on every street), means drawing lots, but there is some sort of implication that fate is involved. So, although cheki-kuji is an absurd mixture of new and old concepts, when you think about it, it fits the miko cafe very well. Anyway, they gave me a wheel of sealed cheki photos and I took an envelope. It turns out that it was a picture of the miko who did the cheki-kuji for me and she was very embarassed.
I somehow managed on my own in the miko cafe even though nobody knew English. Since Fumi was not there, I screwed up slightly on the crucial moment of blessing my food with moé magic, but the miko were very nice and talked to me in simple Japanese about their favorite anime and America. I ate very slowly and some of them got bored, but they all came out at the end to bid me farewell in super moé fashion. Weirdly, nobody else came into the cafe for the half hour I was there. If you visit Akihabara, please go to the miko-san cafe! Miko outfits are the cutest.
In the evening I went to the Asakusa Tori no Ichi matsuri and saw some real miko doing their duty. These miko were guys, though. Traditionally miko were the daughters of the head priest but understandably this tradition has not carried on in recent times so now male miko are more common. The miko stood over the entrance to the shrine and waved bushels of white paper over our heads. Uh... I didn't really understand the meaning, actually. In any case, the purpose of this festival is to purchase New Year's wreaths to ensure prosperity for a family or business, and you'd better believe that modern Japanese are all over any festival that involves buying things.
Yeah, this festival is popular in a big way. When you purchase a wreath, you clap your hands in synchrony with the stall owner while chanting in Japanese. I told my Japanese friend that the miko cosplayers at the cafe did the same thing for me. "No, not the same," he insisted, laughing.
I ate a taiyaki, a chocolate-covered banana, and a hot dog. The end!!
