Around the World in Two Weeks - Tokyo Day 3

Woke up in the morning, had breakfast and waited around for late colleauges at a nearby cafe. We decided to go for a walk to the famous Ginza area before going to our partner's office. Everyone has seen Ginza at one time or another on television or in the movies. It's the place where there is a large interscetion with dozens of huge neon advertisments. Ginza is quite nice but I looks very high-end. You have to go into the back streets to find things other than big names in fashion and fancy restaurants. This is exactly what I did while my colleauges had lunch.

I also visited the Tokyo Mac Shop which is absolutly huge. Its a total of four floors:

• Ground Floor: Main Boutique
• 1st Floor: The Genius Bar
• 2nd Floor: Demo Theater
• 3rd Floor: All things ipod

After this, we made our way to the office where I spent a good 4 hours with Nakano-san while Hajimi-san and and the others talked business over a coffee.

Finally the day there ended with Hajimi-san offering to take us to Kaiabasha - the "electric city". We took the Metro from Ginza for about 15 minutes. There were not very many people on the train something that was quite weird for Tokyo. Hajimi explained that it was because it's not rush-hour. During rush-hour, he said, they have hired people that keep the peace and actually make a human wall between the platform and the track so commuters don't push each other into the train tracks.

We got off at our destination and were in for a huge surprise. Not only did Hajimi bring us to Akihabara - he made a peronalized guided tour!

Tour 1: The figurine shop - This shop is an 8-story apartment building that contains the largest selection of figurines, dolls and models I have ever seen. There is anything from your typical Disney characters to Manga, historical, aliens, animals, Spongebob, Pixar...everything!

Tour 2: Radio Tunnels - That's not what they are actually called but it's the only way I can describe this place. It's like a fish market but with electronic parts and products. You can buy anything from a lightbulb to a pair of nightvision goggles here. This is a hobbyists heaven...

Tour 3: Tokyo Animation Centre - This place is an exposition of Tokyo's (or generally, Japan's) most well-known anime characters. Hajimi explained that it is a boutique that promotes Japanese animation industy - partially to raise the value of the artform. It's actually quite a small place with huge dolls of characters, 5 information booths with some history and facts, a shop and a recording booth where the voices of famous Japanese cartoon characters put on a show. The weird thing was that all the spectators were sitting cross-legged in perfect rows in from of the booth. What was even more bizarre was that 99% of the spectators were between 23 and 40 years of age...

Tour 4: The Comic Shop - This place is a anime-lovers paradise. The whole place was just packed with any kind of Japanese comic ever imaginable. There must have been tens of thousands of books...all in Japanese.

Tour 5: The Computer Supermarket - Here it gets a bit too much. This building is 10 stories tall and every floor is at least twice the size of a floor in Globus or Manor. The first 7 floors are dedicated to PC's (parts, periferals, cards, fans, coolers, screens, you name it). The top 3 floors are for books, DVDs and a restaurant. I was actually sickened by the amount of stuff there was. Fnac is Paris is miniscule compared to this. Very overdone and very extreme but imressive nonetheless.

After our tour, we went back to the office to pick up our stuff and Nakano-san to go out for dinner. Tonight it was "shabi-shabi" - a word that describes the action of dipping food into a pot of boiling water. Something like suki-yaki. We spent about 2 hours dipping veggies and meat into this pot. Every 5 minutes or so, a waiterss (dressed in a kimono) would come and scoop the floating fat out of the water. Hajimi explained that this meal is very healthy because any fat off the meat melts into the water.

Back to hotel now for a good sleeeeeeep....