Akihabara scavenger hunt

When friends come to visit and want to go Akihabara, I give them a map and send them on their way. Maid cafes, anime, video games, computer parts — none of it speaks to me. So I was surprised to find myself navigating by the glow of a big electronics store and a bank of gashapon capsules to find a shop the other day. My visiting friend hadn't had time to make it to this one store, and had become enamored with some manga-inspired clothes there that he saw online after going back to New York. There's no place else in the world to get this stuff! Part of the reason he hadn't been able to go is that their business hours are between 6 p.m. and midnight, Fridays and Saturdays only. Or so the internet said. Last Saturday night, I found the building and started up the steep stairs. There were signs for the figurine store on the third floor, but nothing beyond that. Just narrow stucco walls and a metal lip, just loose enough to bite, on each step. Wouldn't there be a sign if there were really a famous shop up here? The fourth floor, a non-descript, locked door. One more twist, and there was... something. It seemed we had stumbled onto a storage pile. Except it wasn't a pile. The giant shoes and bike tubing and the plastic alligator were arranged to leave just enough room for a foot on each step leading straight up to the door. It looked like everything might be covered in a heavy layer of dust, but it was all clean. There were postcards freshly taped to the door. (One was an ad for the shop on the first floor. Which seemed backward.) The metal doorknob turned, but the door was bolted. I knocked. Looked around at the junk again to see if there was anything that said this was the right place. A corkboard propped up at waist-height and half-draped in burlap had more postcards for C-list idol shenanigans in the area. 5okai is a bleeding-edge fashion shop whose designers take inspiration from Akihabara street culture. It had to be the place. But there was no sign, no hours, no phone number. There was nothing more we could do but knock again, shrug, and take a few pictures. We climbed back down to street level, the mission a complete failure.

Except that if felt like a complete success. After five years in Tokyo, we go more to places we've been before than places we haven't. Having a reason to see someplace I would never go on my own was great. I'm about to leave one of my jobs. Maybe I should start a Tokyo scavenger service, and I could always have reasons to go to places I don't have any reason to go.