Day 3: Loose in Tokyo

Day 3: Dan Does Electric City

The sun comes up really early here in Tokyo. I took a gander at a time zone map and they are on the extreme East of a really huge Time zone (includes Korea and a big hunk of Russia). So I am blamming that early sun on the fact that I am still up at 4:00.

Our plan for today was to go and find “Electric City”. You know, the place that you can find all of the really cool gadgets and stuff. (“My feet are pretty sore”, says future Daniel to past Jon). We decided to go via the subway (there is an entrance a block from our hotel). We took the light green line for a few stops to the Iwamotocho station, which is only a couple blocks from the Akihabara (e.g. Electric City) district. I could have gotten us closer, but we would either have had to walk further to a different subway or changed trains. At the time, I thought this was a good idea.

In fact, it was only a 5 minute walk to the Akihabara station. Didn't impress us much. There was this one building that was the book tower. But it didn't open until 9:30. Then we found this other huge building that looked good. It was a department store and it was loaded with Cool electronic and misc. goodies. We had a good time walking around. Daniel found a JPOP (japanese music genre) section of CD and promptly dropped a few thousands of Yen on some CD's that he couldn't get in the US.

This one if for Chip

THat is REAL FILM !!

They have this cool came where you play subway conductor and drive down this tunnel for hours.
Go Japan.

It is very strange that there are these artificial barriers to the exchange or electronic data. Take this example, Daniel would like to buy some songs by some of his favorite japanese artists (which all happen to be hot looking young girl groups, but we will let that pass for the nonce). He can only find the songs on the Japan Apple site through the Japan itunes. (He corrects me, he can also find some of it through Amazon Japan). There is, ready for download, but he can't buy it because he doesn't have a japanese credit card. HE HAS MONEY. HE WANTS TO SPEND IT. But “they” won't take it.

Daniel complains about these “artificial oceans that some CEO has constructed to keep me away from my digital content. What is up with that, Dad”?

“Frak if I know, Son”.

I have no idea why we wouldn't be allowed to download any digital content that we are willing to pay for. Want to charge us some extra tax or something. Go Ahead! Hell, we can buy Crack from Mexicon on the street corners, why can't we download the latest background music from “Full Metal Alchemist: The Brothers Return”.

And even weirder thing. Dan has a Hulu plus account. He logs in to watch an episode of one of his shows, he can't watch it because we are at a Japanese IP address. I blame this on the republicans. They want to much governmental control.

I now return you to your regularly schedule blog, In progress.

…. doesn't look right, Dad”, Daniel insisted. “I think the main street must be back that way”.

“Ok, this is your day trip. Let's go that way.” I agreed.

We didn't find anything much over that way either. We did find an interesting looking restaurant. It had the plastic samples of the food in the window out front. “We can bring them out here and show them what we want.” I say.

“I have a better idea”, says Daniel. He snaps a shot with his camera.

“ooh”. I agree. And snap a shot of my plastic lunch.

The nice pretty thing japanese girl inside the shop thought our pictures were very funny. But she did know what we wanted, and she brought us a very nice lunch. I had this:

There were a lot of restaurants in this area. It was more english friendly and better prices than in the area around our hotel.

Having not found any spectacular electric city, we headed back to the book tower. That was fun. If you ride the zig zagging elevators all of the way to the top of the (rather small round but tall (hence tower)) building, you get to the porn. Quick, 3 levels back down to the Manga. Ah, there are the titles we were looking for. Daniel wanted some Japanese copies that matched some American versions he has. As collectables.

We came out of there and headed toward some interesting shops. “Ah,” Said Dan. “Look Dad, that is a Cos Play store”.

A Cos Play store is a place where you buy Costumes of your favorite anime characters to dress up like them and cavort. To me all of the costumes being shown (in the windows for 8 floors going up) looked like school girl or french maid costumes. But what do I know. We went into the store.

Around the second story Dan finally became convinced that he had taken his Dad into a explicit Sex Paraphernalia shop. This upset him a lot. Especially the part where he had a hard time getting me to leave.

But we went a little further, turned the corner, and THERE was Electric City.

 

 

 

 

Wow. This was way cool.

I remember when I was little, my Navy Dan would return from a tour to Japan and he would always bring the latest cool Japanese Electronic gadget. He brought me a tape recorder. My brother and I were the only kids that ANYONE knew that had a real portable tape recorder. I used to bring it to school and tape kids voices and let them listen to each other. This thing was bout the size of a small microwave oven and was a real to real recorder that could hold about a 30 minute recording. It was SO COOL. (I think my brother still has it and it still works, 50 years later). I kept up the tradition by bringing my daughter, Shannon, a Discman MP3 player (that would play an MP3 encoded disk with like 100 songs) before they were out on the American market (after a buisness trip to Japan).

So Daniel and I were on the lookout for the same sort of thing this time around. I don't think that is going to happen.

Why? Because the only electric gadgets that are on the market anymore are Ipads, Iphones, and Laptops. We already go those. There just doesn't seem to be a “new thing” out there. God Apple must be making the money.

One cool store we did find was a hobby store (Laox.com) that had all sorts of cool anime and models and things. I got a few Gundam models to put together when I get home. They had some REALLY cool ones but the boxes were just too damn big. Oh well, maybe I will talk myself into them over the next few days of tour and then go back and get some more when we are back in Tokyo next week.

For the ride back to the Hotel, we jumped in the first metro station we found and this time we did the trian change. Pay attention, look at the signs twice, remember to walk on the left, and it ain't that hard to get around in Tokyo. Of course, it helps that whenever you make a mistake and stand around for a few minutes looking confused, a nice man in uniform will walk up and help you solve your problem. Japan is very nice that way.

So let me ask you this, What is the significance of the Sex industry being so intertwined (at least in commercial store front sense) with the electronics industry? I mean, walking down Electric City blvd for a few blocks there you would have Electronics Store, Sex Store, Anime Store, Pachinco Parlour, Sex Store (well, maybe that one was an Anime store too, hard to tell without going inside. But not for more than an hour or so). Are we showing that Japanese culture is super open about sex? Or super repressed? And why do the costumes that the girls on the corners dressed in the Anime Costumes and handing out fliers for “something” (no, I didn't get one. Next time) look suspiciously like the school girl uniforms the (much younger) (high school?) girls are wearing?

Who is the sicko here? The observed or the observer?

<Picture go here. Once again. No picture of Anime girls or school girls. I will try to work on it without getting arrested>

We road the Ginko (light green) line to the Tozai (light blue) line on the return trip. I love the Tokyo Metro. So Clean. So many nice people who help you out if you look confused. Though I am pretty sure that I am stepping all over some well known manners. For instance, our guide told us that the first car in the trains is reservered for women only. Ok, that evidently doesn't apply to the subway because I saw men on the first car there. Also, I think you are always supposed to face out toward the windows. Don't face in and therefor make eye contact with the people behind you looking out. I felt some hostility there for a while until I figured out that I as probably the pisser-off culprit here. Have to ask about that one. (of course, this could be one of those things that people don't actually know is good manners. They just do it by default.

When we got back to our room there was a fax there from the tour company getting us set up for our 3 day out in the country tour. We are having our big bags sent on ahead to Kyoto and are supposed to just bring our carry on packed for 2 nights. Well, we don't have a carry on. Why don't we have a carry on? See the day-1 blog. (can I hyperlink?). Well, I will make do with our dirty clothes and souvenir duffle bag. The note also said to bring plenty of cash as there wouldn't be ATMs in the country and most of the shops would only take cash. Now they tell me. So I go out to secure some cash at the local 7-11. Luckily the machine had a “English” button. Unluckily, it denied my transaction !! Dammit. Try the other card. Wrong pin. Double Dammit. I went and got Daniel and had him try. That didn't work either. So I called Wells Fargo emergency Help line. Told the lady that I had gotten this card JUST FOR THIS KIND OF THING FOR THIS TRIP AND IT DIDN”T WORK. She told me that, yes, she could see that I had been denied. That was because I went over my daily limit of $310 on withdrawel. Triple dammit, the exchange rate had gotten me again. I don't have pictures of any of this. Just as well really. Here is a random shot of something to end things on: