Electric Town

Akihabara

Or plan today was to find a nice park, buy some beer and just take it easy and enjoy the surroundings. But the weather was horrible, so the plans changed.

We did our laundry, and while waiting watched Heroes. Excellent series, will have to see more of it. On WY's suggestion we then went to Electric Town in Akihabara.

We were expecting something enormous and really cool, but it wasn't really big and much of it was actually vacuum cleaners, iPod accessories, simple pocket calculators and fax machines. The Japanese electronics market is really fascinating. It's a mix of state-of-the-art gadgets and leftovers from the 80's that people still buy for some reason. Some cool stuff, though: The PS3 costs much less here than in Sweden, and it's available off the shelf. And the sound equipment was impressive, but neither of us needs an upgrade right now, and you can't really bring it on the plane.

I wound up buying some small things I've been putting off for a while – a USB hub and an SDHC (etc.) card reader. We also found a Bollywood corner, where I finally bought my first ever Bollywood movie! I went with Kal Ho Naa Ho, because I really like the most famous song from it, Mahi Ve. Couldn't find it in Sweden before (I've been looking), but here it was available for 1000 yen (€6).

We went home after a few hours and just hung around in the hostel, watching some more of Heroes and surfing.

Tomorrow after checking in at our next hostel we'll split up: Erik will go to Iwama to see a famous aikidō dōjō and I will go to the airport to meet WY.