go somewhere else nyo

You would not believe the day I'm having.

Today started out greaｔ. For the mosｔ part, it remained great too. Later? Not so much.

We started out the day exactly the way we planned to: a quick subway trip to Shin-Osaka station, and the first serious use of our JR passes--a shinkansen ride to Tokyo! The shinkansen is actually quite remarkable. It's admittedly been a very long time since I rode AmTrak, but from what I can remember of it, this kicks its ass in many ways. Beyond going ridiculously fast (Three hours from Osaka to Tokyo, and that's not even the fastest train), it's just comfortable. Plenty of leg room, reclining seats, pleasant bilingual announcements. If I could ride this thing home, I would. Fuck Economy Plus. This makes it look like the goddamn crawlspace it is.

Reaching Tokyo, we hopped a quick second train to our target destination: Akihabara.

gema

Akihabara is every bit the nerd mecca they say it is, and now I've experienced it too, and gone broke in the process. I picked up quite a few gifts here today, and more than a few personal purchases as well. Let me explain Akihabara to you: Imagine a brightly lit cityscape, full of neon, monitors, tall buildings, and noise. The effect is not unlike Times Square or Las Vegas. Now, imagine that the first thing you come upon is a six-story game store. Next to that: Six-story porn store. After that, there's another six story game store, followed by another porn store, which is next to a game store neighboring a porn store. Every so often, there is a store which sells pornographic games. Repeat until you are both morally and financially bankrupt.

You may notice that most every store here is multi-levelled. Tokyo, far, far more than Osaka, is a very vertically-oriented city. The buildings themselves are actually very small in terms of area, so they make up for it with a crapload of depth. We went up and down a lot of stairs and elevators today. And, at various levels of height, there was hidden treasure to be found. Some of the gems of Akihabara:

Gamers. This is the famed Akihabara anime, games, and manga store immortalized in Di Gi Charat, and Dejiko is here on every available surface. Now I've been here and they have my money.

Mos Burger. This seems to be a Japanese burger chain, not unlike our earthly McDonald's. But, they serve something here called a rice burger, where instead of a bun, the meat is sandwiched between two patties formed out of rice. It's a unique experience.

Half-Life 2: Survivor. I didn't even know they HAD a version of Half-Life 2 for arcades. Did you? Why did nobody tell me about this? You fuckers.

By now, perhaps you're wondering where the pictures are to go with the story. Yeah. This is about where things go wrong. Once we'd had all the Akihabara our wallets could handle, we headed back to Tokyo station to catch the shinkansen back to Osaka. Somewhere along the lines, though, we were misled about the last available train. Yeah--we're stuck in Tokyo. We can't get back to the hotel tonight.

Don't anyone panic or worry about us. If we were in dire straits, I wouldn't have wasted your time with the description of our day, I would have written the panicworthy part first. Rest assured, this is at most an inconvenience. Thanks to a helpful gent who spoke English and our invaluable guidebooks, we have located what is known here as a Manga Cafe. Twenty bucks for eight hours, and we get private booths to read manga, cruise the net (as I am doing now), and watch anime. There's even free sodas, and sleeping here is practically expected. My chair reclines pretty much horizontally, for god's sake. This is cheaper than a capsule hotel.

Tomorrow morning, we will finally make our escape from the baffling streets of Tokyo, and catch the shinkansen into Kyoto for some sightseeing on our way back into Osaka. We'll have pictures and more stories then.

This has been a strange, strange day, with an adventurous and somewhat worrying-but-okay end. If this is the worst thing that happens during our time here, then hey.

...wow, what the hell is going on over on David's TV?