The Obligatory

Went to Akihabara Today. I expected to see an Electronic Wonderland, and was not disappointed. I was, however, disappointed to be told that Japanese DS games won’t work in an American DS system. Lame. I was planning on buying Daigasso! Band Brothers, a multiplayer rhythm game where each DS plays a different instrument in a song, and if you’re all playing correctly, you rock out in a collective manner. Alas.

I did get a picture of an old school Nintendo Power Glove, though. If only it were actually as awesome as we all remember thinking it was.



The Yodobashi store towers over the rest of Akihabara, and called us in like a beacon. It's eight full floors of anything you could possibly want that runs on electricity. It’s like Best Buy on steroids, and much, much noisier. Luis and I wandered in to browse, maybe pick up something small. We headed up to a floor stocked full of watches and cameras, looking for a cheap time-keeping device … and we were quickly pulled in by the digital cameras.

I meandered through the Canons. My old Canon Powershot has treated me well over the years, but lens cover lockups and mysterious black spots in the corners have been bothering me pretty badly for a while. And of course, this tiny seed was rapidly blooming into a full grown kudzu vine of consumerism. I was buying a camera today.

I checked out the FujiFilms and passed, remembering the clunkiness and software issues that plagued my parents when they had one. And skipped Sony altogether. No bullshit memory sticks for me.

Then I saw ‘em – The Ricoh Caplio R5 series. You can’t get them in the States, but my friend Sara got one imported a few months ago and loves it. It’s a tiny camera with an amazing optical zoom that’s light, intuitive, and powerful. And here it was, right in front of me. With a reduced price, and duty-free.



So I picked it up. It’s been raining here pretty much nonstop, so I don’t want to start using it until it clears up, but I’m very excited. It’s got more than twice the resolution of my current cam, almost three times as powerful an optical zoom, and is about as third as thick and heavy.

I heart technology.

After the spending orgy (and a little bit of Luis talking me down from the buyers' remorse my Yankee heart gets every time I spend money on something), we continued walking around to look at all the toys. There was a fairly extensive musical instrument section, with lots of amazingly complicated keyboards, some futuristic drum sets, and electrical stringed instruments of all kinds.

I sat down to fool around with the MIDI electronic guitar. Good news is, I was able to accurately and dependably play barre chords on it, which my brittle, weak fingers still can't do 100% of the time on real guitars. But the sound is just ... enh. No twang, no slides, no tones. It could be good to learn chords on, but I wouldn't want to play this thing all the time.



Oh, we also saw a bunch of these plastic musician miniatures, lined up next to each other on a shelf. They were all connected with each other, and when a CD accompanied them, they all moved and played their instruments in time.

It was a little pointless, yes, but that's what makes it great!



That, for the record, is my very first self-made video. It is not anything to write home about, but I'm hopefully going to start doing a few more of these. Now that my amazing camera lets me shoot video in beautiful 30 frames per second! If you've got anything you're itching to see videos of, let me know.

When we got back to the hotel, we met up with Kevin and Chris and went out for dinner at a random basement place in Shinjuku. It was one of the few times I could eat a decent vegetarian meal.



That's seared tofu in an eggplant soup with tuna and yam spring rolls. Mmmm. Oh, and plenty of sake.

Kevin and Luis got a sashimi plate that still had eyes on it. Gross.



Next on the list, the DS Game “Daigasso! Band Brothers” And maybe some more traditional Japanese things, too…

Second round of pics is up on Flickr, with many more to come.

Labels: travel