Robot Claw

I caught the train back to Tokyo today, once again in Gran Class. Here’s the entire car:

And here’s my seat:

The seats are extremely adjustable, and can nearly full recline. They also have active suspension, so you don’t feel all the usual bumps of train travel. To say they are comfortable is understatement, and I’ll admit I slept a bit during the 4.5 hour journey from Hakodate to Ueno.

The friendly attendant kept offering me food and drink (there were only me and one other person in the car for most of the trip) and I kept saying I was ok, but eventually I asked for some juice and she gave me this very tiny can of apple 🙂

The view was like this for much of the way, which I’ve many times mentioned I love. Of course there’s also an undersea tunnel connecting Honshu and Hokkaido, and now I’ve gone through it in both directions! At its deepest the tunnel is 240 m below sea level, and it takes about 20 minutes to pass through. It’s the longest underwater tunnel in the world!

Interestingly the tunnel has two stations in it (yes, underwater) that are no longer used but remain for potential evacuation purposes. Before the Shinkansen ran the route and they sent ‘normal’ trains through the tunnel they used to stop at the stations for tourist purposes!

When we got to Ueno I noticed the train had gained a ‘friend’ at some point and where I originally had been in the last car there was now an entire additional train attached to the back 🙂

My final thoughts on Gran Class: the comfort level is astounding, and I’d love to be able to fly in such a seat all the way home. But it’s also true that Gran Class is very expensive. Converted to USD, the return fare from Tokyo to Hakodate was about $150, and the Gran Class upgrade was about $450 extra, which means I paid four times a normal ticket. It also takes longer and costs much more than flying! But for the experience, I’m absolutely happy I did it, and if you ever have the option I’d suggest considering it as well.

I’m staying in Akihabara now for the remainder of this vacation, and I’ve got a typically tiny room that I’ll be comfy in. I’ll be focusing on shopping and game centers anyway and only using the room for packing and sleeping!

Speaking of game centers, I finally got myself to Takadanobaba to visit the second Mikado retro arcade (the other is in Ikebukuro and I blogged about it last year). This one is smaller, with a basement full of pinball machines – a very rare sight in Japan – and a second floor full of mostly obscure shoot-em-ups. It’s rare I see an arcade shooter I’ve not heard of and today about half these games were new to me.

I played several games, and had a flip though one of their guest books. These are always fun, and sometimes I feel people spend more time drawing in them than actually playing games 🙂

Lunch was Kura, and I sat at the counter between two tiny Japanese women who each ate multiples of what I did. Their tempura shrimp nigiri is so good, although I need to return to Sushiro to have some hamburger sushi again before I leave.

Then it was back to Akihabara for a bit of night shopping. I bought stuff, saw more stuff I may buy, and saw even more stuff I’d love to buy but for various reasons can’t, like this cocktail Qix cab:

Isn’t it amazing that’s just sitting there in a shop and can be yours for only $3500! Sights like this is one of the reasons I love Akihabara so much 🙂

I’m waiting for my Shinkansen to Tokyo, so bows a good time for a blog post!

As always gacha machines are everywhere. The only notable change to the last trip is that the average price continues to creep up, with even ¥300 machines rare now (especially in Tokyo). While the ‘premium’ ¥500 machines used to have their own small section, they’re now mixed in with others and hardly identified as special.

The contents continue to be as varied as ever, from anime toys/merch to miniatures of things you’d never imagine anyone would want (an x-ray light?!?) to even stranger things like used tickets (!) or foreign coins. There so many different ‘prizes’ now: the top photo showing banks of machines (taken in Tokyo and Sendai) are only a subset of what each location had and all the machines were unique.

About a week ago I watched a documentary on a company that designs gacha prizes. They specialized in ones with gimmicks – like light or sound – and their current most popular one was a stop button like you’d see on a bus that makes the same sound when pushed. Now I want to buy one but I’ve not (yet) seen them in a machine.

The documentary also revealed that the small company it profiled tried to have a few new product series available each week. I just did a Google search and read that there are hundreds (one estimate is 500+) new series released into machines every month, or over 10 a day! No wonder that every six months I visit all the prizes are new 🙂

One of the weirdest I’ve seen this trip is this full face mask. There are four options, which are described as ‘nice guy’, ‘blonde beauty’, ‘zombie’ and ‘alien’. As a rule I don’t open gacha prizes until I get home, but I made an exception for the sake of research:

What do you think?

I’ve been here so long I’m now acknowledged as a local, and therefore it was only natural for me to join a bunch of other locals for a 9 am screening of the new Mission Impossible film.

The girl that sold me the ticket was insistent about trying out her (frankly poor) English on me. I’ve seen lots of Asian tourists here (Chinese and Korean) but no westerners, and speaking English to an old western dude seems to have the novelty here that it once did in Tokyo. Yesterday in a Saizeriya restaurant the waitress even came and chatted with me (in broken english), which was so unexpected I can still barely believe it occurred!

The ticket was cheap (about $6.50) the drink was cheap (about $2) and the much-better-than-expected cinnamon churro was very cheap (about $1.40). Plus they even gave me a free sticker sheet promoting another film entirely:

Mission Impossible was… well it was trash, but I still enjoyed the experience. The seat was comfy, the screen very sharp and the sound system incredible. It was also notable that not a single person spoke in the cinema, including in the pre show when all they played were adverts. It was so quiet in there I was surprised when I glanced around and saw a majority of the seats were occupied.

Afterwards I had a soak in the onsen (thirteen times over the last five days if you’re keeping track), had a delicious sliced candy apple, and headed for a ferry museum docked not far from the station.

I’m the sort of guy who usually reads all the text on the displays in a museum, but this one had no English! My phone reception is poor here and the translator didn’t work, so I only got a portion of the boats full story.

It was a ferry that used to transport trains from the north of Honshu to Hakodate. It ran for about 30 years until the undersea tunnel was opened on 1985 at which point the ferry was retired and became a museum. I’d never heard of a ferry that transported entire trains, and there were detailed illustrations and photos showing how the ferry coupled with tracks on land to allow the trains on board. Fascinating stuff!

Afterwards I headed to the ‘Red Brick Warehouse’ which is a tourist shopping district in old converted warehouses once used for storage. There were a few very interesting stores inside, but my luggage is waiting for me in Tokyo so I tried not to be distracted into buying anything. I made an exception for more stamps though, if only since the post-office was so tiny (about as big as a toilet).

It rained in the afternoon and I was tired so I had a well-needed soak and a rest. I’m packing up now for an early train to Tokyo tomorrow, and trying to summon energy for 3 days of shopping before it’s time to go home. I’m looking forward to a few crazy days 🙂

There’s a place very close to my hotel called ‘The Morning Market’ and it’s a city block with dozens of shops selling fresh seafood. Most of them have tanks full of live animals that you can buy and have cooked (or served raw) right on the spot. It’s a bit overwhelming to be honest ; I’ve never seen so many live crabs!

Hakodate is a squid-eaters paradise, and you can fish one up yourself at any one of a dozen or more places, and they’ll prep it for you right in front of you. Grilled or raw: your choice!

The squid’s are cute, and I’ll be honest I found the entire spectacle a little sad. But I say this on the same day I ate beef and chicken so who am I to judge?

Afterwards I walked about a half hour south to Mount Hakodate at the end of the city. A ropeway took me to the top where the views were astounding.

Apparently this is one of the best views in Japan, and even better at night. I very much doubt I’ll see the night view (I turn into a pumpkin early these days) but I was more than happy with the day version!

You can see the entire city, with the beach on the east and the bay on the west. These photos hardly convey how good visibility was, and certainly don’t reveal how hot it was on top!

Indeed, I had a coat in my backpack because I had read it can be chilly at the top but it was quite a bit warmer and humid than at the bottom, and even 30 seconds outdoors on the viewing platform was enough to get the sweat running!

There were a few restaurants and souvenir shops at the top (and a working radio station) and I also saw this little diorama box. I’ve seen a few others like this during this trip, and they’re usually placed near gacha machines. The idea is to buy a gacha that is some sort of figure, then you can take a photo of them in the diorama for social media. This one specifically says to put stuffed animals in, but I watched two girls take photos of Demon Slayer characters they had just pulled from a gacha. Maybe I should use one of these?

I had originally decided to do the mountain today and Goryokaku tomorrow but rain is forecast so I moved the park forward. It was too far to work in todays heat (it reached 29C/84F with 90% humidity) so I hopped on a city tram. There’s only one route and it’s a bit slow, but in the absence of a subway it’s a handy way to get between tourist spots.

Shortly after getting off the tram I reached my second destination: Goryokaku Tower. There wasn’t much of a wait before I was on the observation level and took this photo:

That is Goryokaku Park, a star-shaped fort built about 150 years ago that is now a public park. Once again the view was better in person than in the photo, and it’s remarkable to appreciate how scenic this fort is when that was hardly a motive for its construction!

That’s the view from the same tower in the southern direction, showing the mountain with the observatory that I had up earlier in the day. As you can see Hakodate is very flat, and the views of the city from both the mountain and the tower were great.

The tower had a small glass floor section, and the vast majority of visitors did their best to not step on it! I like these, and would like an observation towers where all the walls and floor were transparent!

The day was still young when I descended the tower and headed into the park, and I had an open afternoon. I perhaps foolishly decided I’d walk to a bookstore I had heard was good (it was!) but this ended up being too much walking for such a very hot and humid day, and afterwards I was more ruined than any point so far on this trip. Luckily I found a taxi and was able to revitalize in the hotel onsen before my hit points reached -10.

Speaking of the hotel baths, they’re great. Not only is there a hot bath, but also a cold one and a sauna. The sauna is so hot I’d probably pass out if I went in, and the cold bath is so cold I’d get hypothermia so I’m settling for boiling myself in the hot bath. It’s not as fancy as Ichinobo, but I’m an unsophisticated onsen fan and I’m happy. (Image from the hotel website.)

As I said it will probably rain tomorrow, so I’m happy I got these two viewing platforms out of the way. There’s other historic things to see, and even if the rain becomes heavy I’ve got a few others activities in mind for tomorrow as well…