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*Chapter 5*

Akihabara

 
 
Of course no serious Apollinaris training ride would be complete without a final sprint and I generally fancy my chances. The town sign was pretty obvious as we approached Hadano, Tina went for a long one, which Anja jumped straight onto, I was waiting for Mum’s almost signature twitch before she launches. There it was, I made my departure a split second before her putting me alongside her as she went for it.
I thought I had the legs to take her but at the signboard she had half a length on me.

“What happened, Gab?” Mand asked when she caught up to us.
“I thought I’d let her have it, I wasn’t trying really.”
“You fibber, Gaby Bond,” Erika stated overhearing us, “you were going as hard as possible, you were leaving me.”
Bum, look it’s embarrassing getting beaten by your Mum, even if she is the World Champion, especially if she is the World Champion.
 
 
We reassembled in the car park, Dad and Genji taking charge of the bikes whilst the bus was turned into a changing room. Of course there isn’t a shower but we were able to have a wipe down which removes most of the riding crud. By the time we were semi presentable a table laden with drinks, fruit and sandwiches was waiting for us, haute cuisine it’s not but it’s intended to replace calories not excite the palate.

“Jenny, Mrs Bond?” Mand started.
“I told you before, Amanda, it’s Jenny.”
“Er okay, um Jenny, you know this afternoon, do you think me an Gabs could go into Tokyo? I looked last night, we can get a train.”
“Has my daughter put you up to this?”
“No honest, it’s my idea.”
Mum was obviously not convinced of that by her look in my direction.
“What?”
“Hmm, let me talk to George.”
 
 
Mum headed to where George, Dad, Genji and Ken were chatting – somehow they were conversing in a form of Japagermlish.
“Well she didn’t say no,” I proffered, “so what’s the big thing about going to Tokyo today, not that I’m against it.”
“It was something Caroline said when we were in Switzerland, she said she regretted not taking the opportunity to look around some of the cities she’d been to for races.”
“That’s a bit deep for Caro,” I suggested.
“Well I’m determined to see as much as I can while we’re here, we might never come again after all.”
I’d never even thought about that, heck I’m only fifteen I’ve got a lifetime to revisit places but what if I haven’t? I munched on my banana deep in moribund thoughts.
 
 
Mum returned a few minutes later, “Right you two, George has Okayed you going into the city, my condition is that Juliette goes with you.”
“I can live with that,” I agreed.
“Fine by me,” Manda confirmed.
“Jules?”
“Wassup?” the Dark One enquired coming over to join us.
“The girls are going into Tokyo, I’d like you to go with them, make sure they don’t get lost,” Mum told her.
Much to my surprise and I think Mum’s she readily agreed.
“Genji suggests you go from here, it might be further but it’s an express, the local trains stop at every station,” Mum informed us.
 
 
By some miracle I had my camera in my bag and for once my après ride stuff didn’t look too scruffy. Indeed by the time our train arrived, the application of war paint and Mum’s dry shampoo had me and Mand looking halfway presentable. Buying tickets had proven to be a cinch; the ticket machines had an English option so it was simple to select the tickets .
We found seats and settled down for the journey.
 
 
“I’ve just worked it out.”
“What?” Mand asked her nose pressed against the window.
“The train, we paid ¥778 each, right?”
“Yeah,“ the Goth one agreed.
“That’s only like €6”
“Geroff!”
“No I just worked it out, you get almost ¥130 to the euro.”
“What’s that in English?” Mand queried.
I thought a minute, doing the conversion in my head, “About a fiver.”
“That’s well cheap.”
 
 
The journey took an hour and twenty but it felt much less as we watched the countryside zip past the windows. We had table seats; the spare seat remained vacant until the last stop when a middle-aged woman sank into it surrounded by a collection of bags.
“Konichi wa,” she smiled with a nod.
“Er konichi wa,” I offered in reply mimicking her head nod.
Not a startling conversation but it nearly exhausted my knowledge of Japanese.
 
 
There was an announcement in Japanese then English; we were just a minute or two away from the main station.
“So where are we going?” Jules enquired.
“No idea, Mand’s in charge,” I answered my sibling.
“Um,” Mand prevaricated, “not sure, there’s so much.”
“You’re the expert on Japan, Gab,” Jules prompted.
“Er, the TV tower or there’s Akihabara, that’s where all the cool shops are.”
 
 
The train pulled into the station and we joined the tide of people exiting onto the wide platform.
“There’s a map over there,” Mand pointed across the crowd.
When we reached it we hadn’t got a clue where to look for our chosen destinations.
“Konichi wa.”
I turned to find a smiling woman, “Er konichi wa.”
“Englis?”
“Um yeah,“ my sister confirmed.
“You look for place?” she asked.
“Yes, we want to go to Akihabara and the television tower, please.”
“Terivision? Oh Skytree, I show on map,” she offered stepping up to the board. “We here,” she pointed to a worn area, she traced up the board, “Akihabara and Skytree,” she pointed further up the board. “Take Metro Hibaya Line, you get off station H15, see here.”
“Okay, thank you,” I allowed.
“For Skytree you go here, change to Tobu line station B3, big signo.“
Mand was busy writing the directions on the back of a receipt.
“You buy ticket for day, much cheap.”
I’d been raiding the brain cells for more Japanese, “Um arigato.”
“You welcome, enjoy visit, sayonara.”
I know that one, “Sayonara.”
Our saviour smiled and with a wave and some of the standard head bowing left us.
 
 
“That was lucky,” Jules mentioned as we made our way to the subway, fortunately the signs were all in English and Japanese so we actually found the Hibaya line easily and were soon stepping out into the afternoon sunshine in downtown Akihabara. I’ve no idea what I’d been expecting, maybe streets full of Lolita’s and otaku – maybe that’s just in the manga.
“Let’s try that street over there, looks like some interesting stuff in that shop on the corner,” Jules prompted.
I was surprised to see several other western tourists, I shouldn’t have been, this is the centre of Japanese youth culture. We made our way to the narrow thoroughfare and the cosplayer in me nearly exploded in excitement.
 
 
“What’s that, Jules?” Mand asked my sister.
The Dark One flashed us the cover of the leaflet she was holding, ‘Akihabara for Beginners’.
“Where’d you get that?”
“That last shop, they had them on the counter.”
“So what’s in it then?” I pressed.
“Keep your knickers on. It’s mostly adverts for the different shops but there is a map, let’s see, metro, oh right, that’s handy.”
“What is?”
“Well to get this tower thing we have to get a train from the main station, we’re at one end of the main shops, if we go up this street, Kiyobashi Dor or something like that we can do a loop back to the station.”
“Sounds good,” Mand agreed.
“So what are we waiting for?” I gleefully added.
 
 
Don’t think it was wall to wall ‘youth culture’ shops, it’s far from that book shops specializing in Manga and Anime sit side by side with boutiques full of Lolli fashions and food stores. The bookstores were amazing but as the thousands of ‘comics’ are all in Japanese, they were more novelty than shopping opportunity. Indeed unless you are wanting to kit yourself out with Lolita fashion those shops were more a curiosity for us.

I think even Goth Gurl was a bit overwhelmed by the stuff on offer, her idea of Goth does not run to the sort of stuff on offer here. The electrical stores were quite interesting, packed with gadgets and toys as well as the latest phones and laptops. Not that we could afford the prices, the trains might be quite cheap but that doesn’t reflect everything in the shops.

“I really ought to get the girls something.”
“We are going other places,” Jules pointed out.
“Yeah but this is Akihabara.”
“Whatever,” she sighed, “if we are going to this tower we should start making tracks.”
 
 
We started taking a less meandering route towards the station but I was distracted again by a particularly gaudy storefront emblazoned with ‘6% Doki Doki’.
“I saw some pictures of this place on the internet.”
“And?” Mand queried.
“It’s not that Lolli stuff.”

My sister had already made her way to the window, “No kidding it’s not, I’m thinking punk meets the Care Bears!”
We couldn’t resist going into the shop, I even recognised the girl at the counter as the same rainbow haired model I’d seen on the web. The Japanese never seem to do anything by half, over the top Lolli at one end and here it’s equally excessive bubblegum fashion. One thing in its favour was the prices; I bought some bits – not for me before you get any ideas, for the Angels.
 
 
“Right that’s it over there.” Mand pointed across the street from the latest station we’d used.
“Looks pretty big,” I supplied.
“No kidding, Sherlock, come on then,” Jules prompted.
We headed over to the entrance where we joined a short but slowly moving queue.
“How much is it?” Jules asked.
“I’ll go and look,” I volunteered.

Leaving the others in the queue I walked up towards the pay desk where the admission charges were displayed in Japanese and thankfully in English. I took in the information and returned to my companions.
“So?”
“We can wait here and pay just over ¥2000 or there’s a special entrance for foreigners on the next floor, no queue but it’s an extra ¥800.”
“We could be waiting here a while,” Mand observed.
“Let’s do it then,” Jules decided.
 
 
The lift was packed but the journey was short quickly landing us on the Tembo Deck that according to the guidebook is 350 metres above the ground. Rather than gawp out of the windows there we made our way up to the Tembo Galleria at 450 metres high, you go to the top up via a walkway inside a glass tube.
“Wow!”
“Yeah,” Mand agreed.
“That must be where we were this morning,” Jules pointed, “that’s Mount Fuji and that smaller pointed mountain will be Mount Tanzawa, the one you rode round.”
“It’s certainly quite a view,” Mand offered.
Understatement or what.
 
 
Whilst you aren’t exactly timed, other visitors arriving had us moving on and we returned to the Tembo Deck half an hour after making the ascent.
“Anyone else want a drink?” I queried.
“Something to eat,” Mand stated.
“Mum gave me some food money,” Jules advised, “we can get something in the café.”

Somehow eating cake and drinking coffee feels quite special, it’s not the height itself, I’ve raced at nearly six times as high, I think it’s being on this big needle, you don’t often get to be this high with nothing between you and the ground. After the food stop (and a high altitude wee) we went down to the next level where I coughed up for a model Skytree Tower for Dad while Jules got Mum a brooch. Time was certainly getting on now so we made our way to the lift to return to the ground and the transport system.
 
 
We followed the signs for the Metro and found ourselves at Oshiage instead of the Skytree station but there were trains going to Tokyo centre from there too so it wasn’t an issue. We headed to the network map to see where we needed to go.
“Hey, there’s a line that misses the centre, it might be quieter at this time.” I offered.
Jules eyed the commuters around us, “Might be a good idea, sis.”

As luck would have it the Shimbashi train came in as we reached the platform where we joined the scrum to get onboard. It wasn’t a long journey but we were glad to get off. We needed to buy tickets for the JR train to our destination, ¥550 each, the board showed a wait of five minutes when we got to our platform.
 
 
“Hope we get a seat this time,” Mand opined.
“I just hope we haven’t missed dinner.”
“You and your belly, Gaby Bond,” my sister supplied.
“Just saying.”

The train slid into the station and we started the last leg of our Tokyo adventure.

Maddy Bell 01.10.15