Akihabara Electric City

Since it was Monday, when most of the museums and other tourist attractions in Tokyo are closed, but since I wasn’t jet-lagged, I proposed a morning shopping trip to Akihabara Electric City. I didn’t make up this name—it’s the name of the JR stop in the Akihabara neighborhood of Tokyo, or rather the name of the exit from the station.

What makes Akihabara famous is a stretch of several blocks along the main drag, populated entirely by five-to-ten-story department stores selling every imaginable form of technology. There are computer stores, cell phone stores, stores selling random PDA-like gadgets—all far cooler-looking than their American counterparts. A comparison of the Xbox with the GameCube or the PlayStation 2, or a Dell laptop with a Sony or a Toshiba, makes it painfully clear that Americans are simply unable to design high-tech gadgets that don’t look like dorky industrial equipment; Apple may be a lonely exception, and even they get by with just a small number of clever design concepts. Japanese gadgets are endlessly inventive. Their cell phones display a bewildering array of colors and yet never look garish. Ryan flew home with a pair of earphones which consist entirely of a plug with a wire connecting it to two translucent discs of an inch-and-a-half radius, one for each ear. They look something like conventional earphones whose connecting band happens to be invisible. Akihabara storefronts even sported some intriguing iMac redesigns.

And, of course, Akihabara has video game stores! I was on a mission to locate Zwei!!, an obscure RPG which isn’t as German as it sounds, at the request of a friend. After combing ten floors of Sofmap (“For the computer information age!”), I found a used copy. Now, a used video game in America is usually a bare cartridge or disc, probably scratched or dirty, with no packaging or documentation at all. What I got instead was something spotless, shrink-wrapped, and complete, in near-mint condition. I didn’t even realize it was used, until I looked closely at the label. I found used copies of twenty-year-old games that were complete in their original packaging. I don’t even know what this says about the culture but I think it’s wonderful.

And then there are video arcades. You can find these in any commercial district but we saw our first, a Club Sega (Sega operates arcades?!), in Akihabara. Most, if not all, of the arcades in Japan have crane games containing slimes, as well as rhythm games involving input devices shaped like drums and guitars. I was enjoying myself at one of the latter until I was humbled by some eight-year-olds.

And of course, since this is Japan, there was at least one random Shinto shrine tucked between the high-rise electronics stores.

After we exhausted ourselves on information technology, we refreshed at McDonald’s and then, seeking nature, took the train to Ueno Park, where I would return the next day for a different reason.