Akihabara - Electric Town

Today was our real first day getting to travel about Tokyo, and our first stop was to be Akihabra - the Electric Town.

Bright and early around 8:00 we set forth from our hotel to catch the Yamanote train line. Much like everything else here it was a breeze to find, and very simple to catch.

The biggest surprise actually was the fact that there was practically nobody around. Nothing like the videos at all.

We traveled from station to station, each about three minutes apart, all featuring their own song when you arrive until eventually we made our way to Akihabara.

The station here, like the others, was well labeled, leading us in the right direction to our first store, Yodobashi Camera. On the outside the store looks huge, but once you get inside of those 9 stories of goodness you really realize just how big it is The store was full of everything you could ever want, rather that be a hand-made minture piano, or a bicycle made by GMC, it's all here.

Below is a small sample of some of the more bizzar things that I found while looking around, you can view the rest at the bottom of the page:

Cassette players? Really?

This lovely man wig. If you look at the before and after you will notice that it turns you from constipated to trasvestitical.

Ah yes, a face up roller. Exactly what ever Caucasian woman uses each day.

This is actually a regular cell phone. I'm not sure why it says "help" on it.

Continuing on we stopped along at as many shops as seemed interesting. As Akiba is a hub for geeks and freaks there was a lot Anime and Manga stores mixed in with a fare amount of girls in maid costumes trying to push flyers in your face. Thankfully I'm married, so that sort of thing doesn't really work.

With a nearly full day spent walking around this district we called it good, packed up the horses and set out on the Yamanote for home. Remember how I said before that the train wasn't busy? Well guess what? That's right, in the afternoon things seem to change quite a bit. Not only was it packed, it was packed full of a wide variety of people.

There were children wearing outfits from the Newsies, young girls with socks and open toed high-heel shoes, older women in kimonos, and last, but not least, there were lots of old men who seemed to like to glare at me. Thankfully it hadn't managed to get to the height of crazyness that youtube would show you, but it still was a little too close for comfort.

In fact, all the time I feel as if things are too close for comfort. I'm not a giant here, but I'm still much larger than 90% of the people. This has caused me to get use to using the phrases, "sumimasen," and "gomen nasai" a lot (that's "excuse me" and "sorry).

Constantly I'm bumping into people, and in fact I elbowed a lady in the face today. I felt horrible and before I could manage to think about what to say she appologized to me and went on her way.

So, besides smashing into people, finding little to nothing to eat, and almost getting lost finding a market, today was a really fun day. I just love everything here makes me laugh, rather it be the advertisments or the doorways that are too short for me, it's all a great laugh.

If you would like to continue laughing with me I suggest you check out this link to all of our photos from today: CLICK HERE