A Short Visit to Akihabara

Note: I had originally posted this elsewhere but I suspect that site deletes blog posts after they're a year old.  Thus I've reposted it here...

I usually don't go to Akihabara when I'm in Tokyo.  Shinjuku, Shibuya, Odaiba, a whole pile of other places...and wherever I end up drinking with friends take precedence over Akihabara.  I think the last time I was there was back in 2005.

For starters...one doesn't go to Akihabara for food.  I paid ¥800 for a less than happy meal of katsu-curry.  The curry was basically reheated stuff scooped out of what looked to be 5kg plastic bags.  The rice was passable but the tonkatsu was pretty thin by my standards.  For the same price I got a much more interesting meal (duck on rice with salad, soup, and mango juice) in Ikebukuro at a Thai restaurant named Pirabukao which is housed in a hut.

The other thing is that I kind of took the long way around to getting there.  I took a JR train from Shin Nihonbashi station to Tokyo station and then the Yamanote line to Akihabara.  I could've walked to Tokyo station.

As for Akihabara itself...it's there.  Big deal, eh?  I cruised through a number of stores just to see if anything caught my eye.  I really had only two things on my mind: one, visit the two Volks shops, and two, find a drugstore.  Yes, finding a drugstore in Akiba can be a bit of challenge.  The Volks hobby shop was what it was but their doll showroom was a touch more interesting than their showroom in Sendai.

Given that I had no real plan of attack, I managed to get myself comfortably disorientated but not lost.  I passed through the areas with plenty of little electronics shops, the obligatory pachinko and slot shops; the maid cafes, the Gundam Cafe which is next to the AKB48 Cafe, and the big name chain stores.

My haul...hardly anything.  Figures...zero.  Goods...three folders.  Memories...well, at least I now know which part of Akihabara is a bit of a menagerie.  It's the block where one will find the hedgehog, cat, and owl cafes!  (^o^)

Fun in auction land

A short while ago I mentioned my initial reactions to the online auction site I've been spending a fair bit of time on.  Recently I came across this gem:

Yes, you're looking at a blurry picutre of a clothing item.  If I recall correctly, the auction title was 服 (fuku), "clothing" in English.  Yes, the auction's starting bid amount was ¥99,999,999.  I'm not quite sure what the purpose of this auction was.  Perhaps the seller was trying to see if they could break the site.  Or perhaps they were waiting to see if the apparent lack of common sense would earn them a sharp reprimand from the powers that be.  Either that or it was some weird money laundering scheme....

This year can't end soon enough...

I was planning to wake up on Tuesday and phone home to wish my mother a happy birthday.  Around midnight I was alerted to an e-mail.  I checked it and read it to find out that a relative had passed away earlier in the day.  Aye...I most definitely won't be sending out "nengajo" (New Year's greeting cards) this year....

Nonetheless, I did make the phone call...after sussing out that I hadn't really reactivated my Skype credit when I had called a North American toll-free number back in September!  😆 

Oh...so where did November go?

It seems to have gone past rather quickly.   I intended to put up a post per month but it appears that November got away before I could peg anything on it....

Anyways, here I am at the start of December.  In a short while we'll be heading into the year-end party season, followed by New Years, and then the New Years party season.  Oh yeah, there's a friend's birthday in there somewhere too.

Last weekend was proceeded by a holiday on Thursday.  So I booked Friday and Saturday off and headed down to Tokyo.  The original goal was to take in a concert on Thursday night and then hook up with friends.  Things changed when I was asked if I'd like to attend a concert on Friday night.  So I ended up spending a bit more than I had expected to.  I'll go into details in a later post...if I get around to writing one up.

Upon my return home on Sunday evening, I dropped my stuff off at home,  took a nap, and then went out for dinner.  The next night I headed down to the local AEON Cinema to take in a movie.  The movie in question being "Chef".  It's a few years old and it was being screened as part of the company's "Past Works" program.

When I arrived at the ticket counter of the theatre I was greeted by a radically different sight.  The ticket counter is no more.  It has been replaced by several machines.  So the movie going experience in Japan is finally catching up to that in North America.  Or perhaps I should rephrase that as "the movie going experience in rural Japan".  I found it a touch ironic that the machine required a bit of coaxing to make it through a ticket purchase process.  It probably took as long as it took when one was dealing with a person.

Anyways, the movie was a good one.  I enjoyed the music and the story.  I didn't spend a lot of time worrying about trying to remember who the actors were.  Which is a bit of a contrast to one of the movies whose trailer was screened, the latest version of "Murder on the Orient Express".....