Our Tokyo adventure started with shopping. It didn’t end with shopping, but there was a
lot of shopping all throughout the week.
Basically only in akihabara. Our
roommates at first did not go to akihabara because they didn’t know what it
was, and later when they did go they never wanted to again, because it was too
overwhelming and strange for them apparently.
Akihabara is a
district of Tokyo that is unique to the world in what you can find there as far
as I know. Lots of Tokyo is like a clean version of new York city. Big buildings and lights everywhere
especially at night time. Except
Akihabara is even more exciting. It was
originally the electronics district of Tokyo and grew over time as electronics
did. But Anime and technology must go
well together, because as anime became more popular it took over the area. It’s a dual purpose area of Tokyo. It’s the only place in the world I know of
where certain anime goods can be bought, and its also a place with a hell of a
lot of computer stores. It’s great.
But it’s
also a bit like a flea market or bazaar.
The anime stores are all over the place, sometimes with different stores
inside of one tall building, but other times with a large store crammed inside
of a small, but again tall building.
Some stores were a bit like catacombs in how you had to navigate
them. And many of the stores I only went
up so many levels because top floors tended to be adult material. Just right out in the open like that.
There
were also many girls in costumes on the streets trying to get customers for
themed cafes or I think even brothels.
The place is really extreme and like my roommate said,
overwhelming. I had trouble navigating
the place the first time I went, where there were certain stores I was worried
about entering. But the more times I
went back the more I learned that none of the stores are anything that I needed
to worry about, but just mind my own business and ignore certain content / stay
on the lower levels. Bought lots of
anime goods and video game goods in the non-tech stores.
As for
the technology stores.. it went a bit like this – I pointed out the first
technology store saying we needed to go there / go back to there, and then did
that with the second and third.. and gave up after that. Because unlike a normal large city where you
might have to keep track of what kind of store you wanted to go back to, there
were just technology stores at every corner so there was no need to keep track
of them. And that’s great. I bought a few tech items when I was there –
ones that I could make use of on the trip and that wouldn’t waste a lot of
luggage space. Speaking of luggage
space, I did get a new suitcase which the cost was split between me and my
friend since we are sharing it for extra room on the trip. It seems to me that Japan doesn’t have a lot
of cloth suitcases, only the more expensive hard shell kind. But we got a good deal, so it is nice to have
one of those.
Shopping
was likely half of the trip to Tokyo, and lots of money was spent. But I bought lots of great stuff. Though, I also saw some nice areas of Tokyo
which I will talk about next.
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