Anyway, after an 80 minute train ride and a 20 second walk, we arrived at our hostel. I am writing from there now actually. It's a great little place with good facilities (including free internets! Yay!).
Moving on to more interesting things: we headed in to Akihabara as our first order of business. Also known as "Electric City", the area is a mecca for electronics, video games, random gadgets and a staggering array of Japanese fetish. Famous for its "maid cafes" and an amazing number of shops selling everything from high-end computers to metres upon metres of electrical wire, it truly was a sight to behold, even if it did scare us more than a little. We searched high and low for a Weeaboo Hat here (see other post for explanation), braving some pretty terrifying stores in order to search for the best Pikachu-inspired cap or cat-eared beanie with which to humiliate each other. We endured level upon level of one particularly confronting department store, with each level taking us further out of our comfort zone, the escalator acting like some kind of river into a heart of immense darkness. But good news! Instead of finding Mr. Kurtz at the top and having the horror of the world laid bare before our eyes, we found a video arcade with Street Fighter IV. It was the end of all our 100 yen coins, but it was worth it.
Having nerded it up in Akihabara (and having been thwarted in our attempts to find the cafe where you can play with kittens), we headed back to the hostel to regroup before heading out on a fresh expedition. Our destination: Shibuya, a trendy youth shopping district. We roamed the streets for a while, checking out shops where things were either ridiculously cheap or "this pair of pants costs half of all my travel money" expensive. It was hard not to feel overstimulated standing in the main intersection of the area as billboards and giant video screens and lights popped up around you. A lot of fun, especially in the early hours of night when people were still flooding in for shopping and dinner.
A few thoughts on everything so far: Tokyo is very clean for a city of its size. Western food is hard to come by if you're not willing to eat at Maccas. There is an awesome noodle shop on some street in some part of Akihabara and I forgot its name but if you're ever there you should check it out if you can find it (that's not very helpful, is it?). Despite Daniel bragging about his awesome camera, we have spotted no less than 3 tourists with bigger lenses than his. One was a woman, and he looked quite emasculated.
Anyway, that's all for today. The hostel just kicked the karaoke people out so all has gone silent, save for Daniel uploading his enormous photos.
-Nik
*That's not strictly true. One thing is worth bringing up: the movie we drew was, I kid you not, a film about the guy who invented the windshield wiper and his quest for recognition of his incredible smarts in designing a swishing piece of plastic. It was a real adventure piece. And in the magazine, they had the nerve to bill it as an "advance screening" like they were doing us a favour! Suffice it to say, it really stuck in my craw.
