I've Den to DenDen Town!

Sugar Chocolate Waffle! That is what I'll eat!

A group of us took a trip to Nipponbashi, otherwise known as DenDen Town the other week. Why is this significant, you ask? Well DenDen Town is essentially Osaka's Akihabara, the DenDen being written with the characters for electricity twice. As you can imagine this is a pretty big deal. As a quick follow up to last post, however, I feel a need to show you two other foods (hopefully the last in the conbini series).

Another one of the many Miku items FamiMa [Family Mart] stocked during it's We Love Miku! campaign was a sugar chocolate waffle based on the song "Waffle." They really could have done something weird with it, but they luckily just left it at sugar and chocolate and it's a dessert I wish they continued to carry, even if it no longer had Miku on it.

If you can find it, drink it. NECTAR OF THE GODS.

The second is something nearly all conbini stock and some vending machines if you're lucky. The taste can only be described as liquid mahou shoujou. It's lichi water. It's probably one of the most delicious flavors of anything out there. It's sweet and refreshing, and probably because of that it seems an awful lot like mahou shoujo.

Back to the topic of DenDen Town. If you have ever been to a convention then you know about the massive amounts of anime goods there usually are. If you've been to a used electronics store than you know that feeling of being surrounded by silicon and wonder. If you combine the two into a city, then you have an idea of what it's like. Mind you, that's just a feeling. The place is so big that we were only able to explore a small portion of it, but that's largely because we grew so distracted by the arcade. It was a terrible idea to say "hey, let's meet up at the huge arcade with Space Invaders on top of it." A really. Really. Terrible idea.

Because we never wanted to leave.

The Arcade Gods would not let us.

What could be so interesting that it kept us there for two hours?

One game was a taiko rhythm game that we waited in line for, watching some really amazing people going at it. I'm still not sure how they read rhythm notes that fast. It was a little ridiculous. Meanwhile one of our other friends was taking several goes at the new game Gyrozetter which incidentally has me hooked as well. It's a pretty straightforward game on the outside. It looks like a driving game that also happens to have giant robots in it. When you sit down to play, though, you realize that you also control the giant robot. During a transformation sequence you lift the steering wheel to sit horizontal on the main console, at which point mech controls emerge from the machine. By pushing or pulling the trigger you control how strong the mech's attack is as well as select what type of attack you will get. They also had Music Gun Gun, a music game combined with a shooting game, where you have to fire in time to the music. It was only later I found out you can increase the volume of the music by using main controls next to the guns. To really understand these games I recommend checking them out on YouTube. Gyrozetter recently received an anime thanks to the popularity of the games, and has probably one of the best endings I've seen in a while (giant robots dancing? Yes please).

The sign reads "Dr. Pepper served cold."

Thanks to the popularity of Steins;Gate, Dr. Pepper is available is Japan, but its still very hard to get. It's my favorite soda so I really missed it as well as home, so imagine my surprise when I saw Christine advertising a store's stock of the stuff. Of course I immediately grabbed a can, as well as several others in the group. We were really confused by the store, though, as it appeared to be a military surplus store on the outside, but when we entered became a figure and gunpla store. When the clerk asked what I wanted, I pointed to the cans of Dr. Pepper that had just been brought down and asked for a normal one. It was super duper exciting and a great way to top off a trip to the doujin store.

I think the story about the doujin store is for another time, though.

For now know that if you ever need an Akihabara in the Kansai Area, you should check out Den Den town.

Until Next Time!
AAO