Friday, penultimate day of our wonderful stay in Japan. We had a whirlwind tour of Kyoto, and it's time to take the shinkansen (bullet train) back to Tokyo. No morning is complete in Japan (at least for us) without raiding the nearest 7-11 for a reasonably priced meal. As long as we only buy things we'd never see back home, I think we are still travelling 'properly'. This here is a pancake sandwich, with matcha something something and butter inside. If you can find this in North America, you go to MUCH more interesting convenience stores than I do.
We shuffle on get into our formation. It's just a line, but it's gone by many names. When the kids were smaller, we called sandwich, because we got an adult leading and an adult at the back, so we ensure we know where we are going, more or less, and that we don't lose any kids. But now as we are older I came up with a much more Middle Aged Dad Nomenclature, the 4 by 1 tactical formation. That is totally a normal phrase.
Anyhow, we get through the train system, and get just a little lost trying to get to the shinkansen; not lost enough to be super worried, but lost enough that at one point everyone had to be very quiet and patient while my partner got her bearings. If we can't be helpful we can at least not be a nuisance. Not
incredibly inspiring as far as mottos go, but we still got the 4 by 1 tactical formation going for us, so.
Get on the bullet train, most notable thing ,the ekiben. Which I think is like, 'train meal'. A bento box you buy at the station before you leave. It was super great and my wife just went on and on about it. For me, if a meal has meat, thumbs up. We would make the most polarizing food critic power couple of all time if such a thing exists.
We gotta pack everything we hoped to get in now, tomorrow is travel back home day and nothing suuper fun except maybe flying through the air at hundreds of miles an hour is gonna happen then, so pack it in. We must, for teen reasons, go back to Akihabra. The land of electronics and anime and manga and vaguely unsettling billboards and cringe inducing maid cafes. It's got everything a bully in a 80's coming of age movie would think a nerd would need.
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| Unsettling |
It also has keyboards.
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| Every single person in this photo? Fellow nerd. |
So while the kids are off getting things, I think my son needs to get a model from an artist who inspired an indie FPS extraction shooter he's really into. Being a nerd I understood almost all of that sentence and I am very proud of him. Would be difficult to put a brave face on it if he went to Akihabra and declared "BUT WHERE'S MADDEN 25 merch!?". And of course my daughter is into even more niche things which is even cooler because you do you, like finding merch for a tower defense game out of Korea that she really likes but has no merch, and even in Akihabra. There were like two items of merch out of the sixty quintillion bits and bobs of fan merch but she paid the high price because there are like 4 fans out there and the company has to pay for the production cost somehow. But I digress.
While the kids are doing THAT and my wife goes about at the most normalish shops she can find, I decide to visit the Key Board SHOP. Specifically Yusha Kobo Keyboard Specialty Shop. I have a nerdy keyboard that gets me weird looks and probably silently ostracized by all sorts of people but could I have an even NERDIER keyboard? I've resisted the lures of Akihabra up til now, but maybe today I will let myself fall to the siren call of consumer electronics.
But this requires going off the beaten track of Akihabra. Away from the main stream nerds (we'll pretend that's a thing). Into the quieter, vaguely industrial, vaguely a place where, say commercial shipping insurance underwriters do their training, or the the number three regional printer cartridge refiller makes it home.
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First up, gotta get a drink. The most important thing about eating or drinking, is do NOT do it while walking, it's considered rude. So when you get a drink from a vending machine, you either put it in your bag or drink it all there. I pick a suitably puzzling drink, and drink it in the quiet alleys where I'm sure is THE hotspot for folks who need ball bearing lubricant for tractors rated from sealevel up to 1000m.
If you look for it, there is always nature about, which is a relief, even for me, one who hisses shies away from direct sunlight. Need some chill vibes sometimes.
A few more turns, and I'm there, the spot for keyboards. Where I won't be given blank looks when talking about split keyboard design, isolinear key layout, or asking if this is a Cherry MX Brown or Red switch powering this badboy?
But when I get in there, I'm just so nervous, this place isn't used to tourists, and I don't want to offend speaking English very slowly when I'm sure they have better things to do, like adding rubberized o-rings to their low profile keycaps in order to reduce bottoming out noise (I did not make any of this up).
 | | So cool, am I right? |
|  | | How is this a NICHE hobby!? |
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Feast your eyes on those badboys. In the end, the fact I have a perfectly rad keyboard at home, and the general anxiety of worrying how much English they speak, how much Japanese I definitely do not speak, and the simple fact that I think most of these keyboards required 'light' soldering, led me to just have a long look, then high tail it out of there.
Then it's back Akihabra, and the massive edifice that is Electronics within the electronics mecca, Yodobashi Akiba.
But the real reason I'm there is eat in the mall foodcourt, which I've heard so much about. I know, first convenience stores, now mall foodcourts, I really put the "risk" in tourist. Ok, that joke seemed better in my head but it's out there now.
This foodcourt is more like a "floor with lots of restaurants in it". And has that iconic molded plastic food display that is so much part and parcel of the food culture in Japan.
We walk around a few times, really trying to get the best option. but I think in the end we are just hungry and worn out, and luck on a lovely spot with tempura and soba noodles.
Then it's time to exit through the gift shop, in this case, the gift shop being a multi-billion dollar electronics behemoth. This place sells all the things you could ever want that runs on electricity, and more besides.
We make it back to our place, and it's time for another night of karaoke because we are in Tokyo and you gotta have a night of karaoke when you in Tokyo, you just gotta.
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