A fishy business (Part 2)

The fish market isn't a tourist attraction but a fully functioning fish market, which only allows tourists to enter at 10am, when the commercial side of things is clearing up for the day.

Clare wandered around taking photos.  Mainly of Rich taking "arty" shots.  

Or market stalls full of boxes of dead and alive fish and other sea food...one fish even tried to escape from its box, splashing us all as it had to admit defeat and jump back into the water!

Some eels and some fish, in the fish market...

Then, when Clare got bored of the fish, she took some more photos of Rich...

After the fish it was off to Harmarikya Gardens. On arriving at the gardens, Rich  spotted a little Japanese "resting building" and promptly rested for a while. In the meantime, Clare took a single arty photo.

Clare managed to find some sugar-filled moochi to keep Rich going.  Rich ate these too fast to photograph. After the rest and sustenance (the camera is very heavy) Rich was ready to continue the tour of Tokyo.  

Off we went to Akibara - the "geek" area of anime and Sega (photo above). 

Even in his tired state Rich managed to beat lots of small Japaneae teenagers at Mario Kart.

While Rich was playing games, Clare found herself a new husband.

Not wanting to get left behind, Rich managed to find a new wife too (we have to put the PG version here as we don't want our Mums' sensitive natures to be hurt)...

Oh what the hell, this is the weird crap Tokyo has on sale (and this isn't even the creepiest).

That is about £80. Oh dear.

There is anime everywhere here:

And model anime dolls that adults are paying serious money to buy...why?!??!

We then went to the AKB48 cafe, which is part of the same named pop group franchise.  

The franchise is based on a group of 60 12-18 year olds who work as a rotating girls group called AKB48 - there are 5 "teams" of girls "A", "K", "B", "4" and "8". It's like a slave trade version of the S Club 7 Juniors.

It was the oddest place. Lots of 50 year old men just eating chocolate Sundaes while watching re-runs of Team B's shows.  Our sundae was invented by one of the girls in "team 4" and consisted mainly of cornflakes with chocolate sauce underneath (with a team 4 flag on top). In Rich's words it was like something one of the girls in the "band" invented when their parents left them at home alone. No photos allowed but in the shop, there was a t-shirt that entirely failed to sum up the show...

What's particularly weird is that this group is huge in Asia (and has franchises in Kyoto and Osaka) but this sort of sexualisation of children is totally normal. They have "maid bars" where girls dressed like children in short skirts serve you drinks. Below is an advert for one called "Maid Dreamin'". 

Rich wouldn't let Clare go in because he thought it was wrong.  Clare thought it was creepy and hilarious but mainly saw a picture of ice cream without cornflake sprinkles.