On the second glorious day of our stay in Tokyo we decided to nerd it out in Akihabara, Planet Earth’s Geekopolis if there ever was one. I had my sights set on picking up a used film camera, and had been looking around for one the previous night while we were in Shinjuku. My comrade wanted to dish it out on some arcade games and look for a digital camera.

This day, it was kinda like the scene from Raiders of the Lost ark, where if you don’t close your eyes when the Ark of the Covenant is open your fake playdough body either melts or explodes with extreme hostility. That is to say, if you stepped into the sun, you were opening your eyes, but if you were in the shade, you were as cool as Michael Jackson pre-Dangerous. So depending on the time of day, and the position of the sun, the shady side of the street would be packed with people and the sunny side was deserted.

Apparently there’s these cafes where the waitresses are dressed up in over-exaggerated French maid outfits, and this is a trend. Some of the maids are out in the streets trying to solicit customers. I tried to take their pictures and they were none too pleased. Having been in these situations before, its rather pathetic how easily they accept my fake evidence of having deleted the photo of them from my camera, when in reality I just popped out the memory card. I was hoping the little vixen would draw some blood, or perhaps give me a nice smack on the cheek, but alas she was satisfied with my weak lie.

We checked out some used gear stores, but this being Japan, and the Yen being seriously over-valued, everything was a such a rip off that it made silk-market bargaining look good. The only used camera stores we came across stocked junk or used digital. Finally we wound up at the absolutely mammoth Akihabara Yodobashi camera, where we found my friend a new digital SLR. Interestingly enough the big Yodobashis are fully equipped with an army of Chinese sales staff, so we had good times talking to them and learned a bit what life was like for Chinese people in Japan. Amusingly, they said it was so-so and they didn’t really like it. But when we asked if they had any plans to move back to China, the answer was a resounding no without hesitation.

The rest of the afternoon was spent playing both modern and classic arcade games in many of the massive temples devoted to the machines whose ilk have been totally decimated by PC gaming and consoles.

After a day totally spent out, we reached up to an area of Tokyo I’ve never been to, Ikebukuro, to see what the scene was like. Actually we heard there was a small Chinatown up there, and because we didn’t have time to see the real one down in Yokohama, we were hoping for a second place prize. Instead we found an international town, with restaurants hailing from all over the world. Unfortunately they all looked a little japanified. Instead we settled on a ramen place that seemed to be quite popular. Outside the fine establishment were pictures of various what I assumed to be famous customers, trying the ramen live on TV. There was actually a line up to get in, and considering it was already 10pm, we figure it must have something special going on. That something special turned out to be a spigot that tapped directly into the FIRES OF HELL. Yes this ramen was the spiciest infernal ramen I’d have ever tasted. They actually had a spiciness scale of the different ramens they offered going up to ten. I was wise enough to opt for a 7/10 as I actually wanted to eat and enjoy my food, instead of becoming a sweaty nervous pile of waste. My comrade put me to shame, and went for a 9/10 bowl, a level only Satan could enjoy. For those curious the 10/10 bowl was actually just a plate of noodles with a bowl of purified magma broth.

Filed under: tourist shit