There’s a place in Tokyo, Japan called Akihabara. Or, Akihabara Electric Town as some call it. Sounds positively Japanese, doesn’t it?

Wiki:

Located five minutes by rail from Tokyo Station, Akihabara is a major shopping area for electronic, computer, anime, and otaku goods, including new and used items. New items are mostly to be found on the main street, Ch??d?ri, with many kinds of used items found in the back streets of Soto Kanda 3-ch?me.

With the introduction of the railway lines in the early 20th century, Akihabara became a popular destination for electrical supplies. Up into the 1990s it was a mecca for computers and computer games. Then the otaku came.

Otaku is a term used to refer to people with obsessive interests, particularly anime and manga. Akihabara is full of them.

From an Otaku march last year.

Patrick Macias:

… Patrick W. Galbraith arrives at the station. He’s dressed in a cosplay outfit — Goku from the anime/manga classic Dragon Ball Z. Clad in an orange jumpsuit and a totally ridiculous spiky- topped blond wig, the 24-year-old Alaskan proves an irresistible sight to Japanese people just off the train. He’s mobbed for pictures, posing with groups of girls, small children, and even tough-looking teenagers who engage in mock anime-style battles with him.

Galbraith, a student at Sophia University and an unashamed otaku, works part-time for a multipurpose company called Akibanana that caters for the needs of every geek. “I feel in a way that I’m doing people a favor,” he says of his choice of tour-guide uniform. “They come out the station and think, ‘wow, this is a weird place,’ and then they are really in the mood to enjoy Akihabara.”

Akihabara has its roots as a black market locale for electronics in the postwar era. In the years of economic miracle-building that followed, it became a haven for consumer electronics and home appliances. The area was transformed by the PC boom of the 1990s when otaku took the area over and built a striking, virtual living room-writ-large for themselves in the process, filling it up with their hobbies and objects of desire.

…A few steps further down this alleyway, just across from the gleaming Cross Fields building, is the awful truth about Akihabara. It’s actually a hotbed of pornography (both animated and otherwise), adult toys, triple-X-rated manga, and photo books of under-aged girl idols that would burn a sane person’s eyeballs in their sockets.

Maid Cafes: Sometimes referred to as Meido cafe or Cosplay restaurants, where manga-style maids serve tea and cakes. When a customer enters the café, the maids typically give a flattering greeting such as “Welcome home, Master” in order to play the role of a house servant. Unlike “ordinary” cafés, maids serve customers as if they were their masters.

Railroad Cafes: The New thing?

The place is called Tetsudou Izakaya Little TGV. The “Little TGV” is run by a fictitious railroad company, Shin Akiba Denki Tetsudou (New Akihabara Electric Railroad), it’s decorated with all sorts of railroading items, and of course the waitresses have a specific greeting: “Thank you for boarding our train”

Train geekdom is actually a well-established obsession in Japan. So this cafe, though seemingly random, meets a very specific demand.

Little TGV Website.

Highlights:

Maa maa maa maa.
Oh toh toh toh.

The lady must pour for the man. And then for herself.
This is the samurai way.

This is “gari”.
Nobody knows what it’s made from.

Taisho always have a secret personal history.
You should never ask about this.

Because some menu items are illegal, you will not discover them unless you ask.

Mmm, that’s good salt!

I remember reading an article from Mike Rogers about sushi snobbery. What stood out was this:

No! No! No! What are you doing? You do not put the Wasabi directly into the small bowl of Shoyu (Soy sauce). No one wants to see your plate with some revolting muddy green sludge – a putrid floating pile of flotsam and jetsam – in it. Disgusting. Have you no class? Take your chopsticks and lift the raw fish off of the top of the Nigiri (raw fish on a small rice ball), turn it upside down. Place a small portion of Wasabi on the underside (now facing up) and dip the upper-side (now facing down) into the Shoyu. Do not touch the Wasabi into the Shoyu. Then replace the fish, right side up, back on top of the Nigiri and eat. Try not to get any Shoyu on the rice directly. Also, please, in-spite of yourself, don’t have little pieces of rice floating around in your Shoyu bowl either. What do you think this is, an Olympics swimming competition?

Funny - this is how I, and everybody I have ever seen in America, eat my sushi. I think it happens enough that we can call it “The American Way”.

Yes, sit on toilets and eat food out of toilets! Brilliant!

We love the customer quotes:

“We’ve never eaten on toilets before, even at home!”

“I like the toilets! It’s fresh idea to put food in these toilet-like containers. My family and I came here together.”

More about bizarre Asian restaurants here.

They juggle bottles, pour exotic drinks and sometimes dance on the bar. Meet Asia’s top bartenders who are competing at the Asia “flairtending” championships at the Venetian hotel in Macau.

The winner was 18 Hsu Po-sheng from Taiwan, who practiced up to 8 hours a day. For the competition he dressed up in a Spiderman outfit.

According to The China Post:

Flairtending is big business in Asia, where several countries have professional associations. Talented bartenders are also in demand by the hospitality industry, and in places such as gambling haven Macau.

You Gotta Have Flair

Bartending Academy says:

Flairtending is a style of bartending that dates back over 150 years, when Jerry “The Professor” Thomas created a flaming cocktail that he poured in long fiery streams from mug to mug. Most people associate Tom Cruise in the movie “Cocktail” with flairtending, but any bartender who pours either two or more bottles in one hand uses flair.

Flair is the efficient movement and showmanship applied to bartending. It is not limited to flipping, spinning and catching bottles, glassware and bartools. The combination of multi-bottle pours, efficiency, accuracy and dexterity are the essence of Flairtending. Flairtending is not just for veteran bartenders, but anyone who loves to make drinks and entertain.

That’s great! Next time, though, Spidey, can you just pour the drink? Oh, and please don’t water it down. If we’re paying $8 for a vodka-tonic, we’d like to have more than 1/4 vodka in it. Thanks.

What a shithouse:

A house shaped like a toilet is poised to go public in South Korea. The house under construction in Suwon, south of Seoul, is up for grabs to all comers at 50, 000 U.S. dollars a night to raise cash for a campaign to help bring sanitation to developing nations.