Categories
Videogames

Dobuita street at Yokosuka – Shenmue どぶ板通り

We went for a walk to Yokosuka, it is one of those places that don’t usually show up in travel guides. We are a bunch of nerds so we decided to find a good reason to go to this city hidden south of Yokohama where we have never been before.

My friend Antonio is a big fan of the video-game Shenmue, he keeps playing it on his old Dreamcast after more than 15 years. The hometown of the protagonist of Shenmue is Yokosuka and the majority of the action of the first part of the video-game happens in the virtual version of the Dobuita street. We had the perfect excuse to go and spend a day exploring Yokosuka.

The Dobuita street is located near a US naval base. The influence of United States military culture can be seen in every corner, the street is filled with shops and restaurants things in their menus like the Trump burger or Perry curry. In several places they accept US dollars for payments.


I took this pictured and found the same shop in the Shenmue videogame. If you are studying Japanese, can you find the main difference?

Categories
Food

Obama burger vs Trump burger

Walking around Yokosuka we found a restaurant where they have two different hamburgers on their menu: the Trump burger and the Obama burger. The Trump burger has 700 gr of meat, two slices of bacon and egg. The Obama one has 450 gr and gorgonzola cheese. Which one would you choose? …. we went to another place for lunch 🙂


This is how the restaurant looks like from outside. Cool!


The restaurant name is Tsunami and the
exact localization on google maps is here

Categories
JapaneseCulture

Electronic donations in a Japanese shintoist shrine

At the shintoist shrine of Atago (Tokyo, Minato-ku) they have installed a system that allows the visitors to donate money using their electronic wallets. Usually, at Japanese shrines there is a big wooden box where the visitors throw coins as a donation before praying. The word in Japanese for this box is saisenbako 賽銭箱 (sai 賽: offering to the gods, sen 銭: money, bako 箱: box). This is how a typical saisenbako looks like:

These boxes are big because originally people offered rice to the kami (gods) instead of coins like nowadays. The system installed at the Atago shrine has a keyboard where you type the number that you want to donate and then touch with electronic device on the sensor at the right side.


Left: electronic version. Right: traditional wooden seisenbako.

Via ANN News.

Atago Shrine location