Sunday, October 25, 2009

Japan Trip:Blog 6

Last night we headed to the Tokyo Electronics area known as the Akihabara district. This was eye opening.

The area is very crowded...kind like Las Vegas. I thought computers/electronics would be cheaper in Tokyo. Nope. Same prices for most things. There were several used laptops for sale. They all seemed really sketchy and over priced.

Windows 7 was everywhere. It seems Microsoft is pushing the product more there than in the United States. The prices for Windows 7 seemed a bit lower than the prices in the United States.

While walking around we came upon a casino. I walked in and only saw men. Kelli waited outside. It was very loud with techno music blaring for the speakers. Heavy smoke all around. I didn't gamble as the machines (a video/non slot) were confusing. They were putting in little silver marbles.

We walked quite a bit. The stores were amazing. There were a few huge complexes 5+ stories high full of teens/20 somethings. Very smokey. They had various types of games/activities from high tech huge arcade games to photo booths on one floor for girls only.

Windows 7 was being pushed hard all around the area.

After about an hour we are dinner at McDonalds. I had a Teryaki Burger that was interesting to say the least. When I think burger I think beef. This thing had sausage on it. Yeah. Odd. McDonalds has smoking sections in every location. The smoke seems into the non-smoking section. Yeah.

The subway system is very confusing. It puts NY/Chicago to shame. There are so many different lines operated by entirely different companies. Most have English and Japanese maps/announcements. The map shows one line, the blue line, going from stop 1 thru 20. It lies. It all depends on what train arrives at the stop when you get on. The first time we went one stop then had to transfer. The next time we rode all the way to our next transfer. If we didn't have a guidebook we would be screwed.

On the way back last night we made it to our stop fine. We were tired. We rode the escalator up to the street (the subways are much further underground than in the United States....several flights of escalators) and turned left. We thought we were walking in the right direction. After about 10 minutes we realized we made a mistake. There are two exits at our stop. We exited the wrong one. It was late. We were exhausted.

Tired right now. I'll write about today (Monday) later. Long day.

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