Akihabara
Every time I go to Akihabara I get the sensation that I am going off to some alternate universe that is one part psychedelic trip through Lucy’s sky of diamonds, one part Dali’s surrealistic view in The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, and one part Baum’s Oz. In fact, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find that there is a Princess Ozma ruling over this distant kingdom where seemingly every thing is possible, everything is within grasp, and yet too bright to be completely real.
The Akihabara train station has recently been renovated so that it now possesses a false whiteness – a bit of sterileness before entering the rainbow. This offers its own contrast to the lights, billboards, and brightly colored buildings that line the streets of Tokyo’s Electric City. I preferred the grunge of the old station as coming out of the turnstiles used to have the effect of walking out of a black and white world into a techno-colored dreamland.
If you are looking for something that needs to be plugged in or runs on batteries, you will find it here. If you are looking for something that is a part of something that needs to be plugged in or runs on batteries, you will find it here. If you are looking for something that is an accessory to something that needs to be plugged in or runs on batteries, you can find it here. If you are looking for something that is remotely related to something that needs to be plugged in or runs on batteries you will find it here. And then there is the constant discovery of things you didn’t know existed, didn’t know you needed, didn’t know you wanted (that are plugged in or run on batteries). Ah Akihabara…you have it all!
Each block offers a different collection of tall buildings selling basically the same things; and the wide selection of things that aren’t the same. The brightly colored buildings, the neon, the posters, the hawkers barking specials, the costumes, the sheer electricity and vibrancy of it all. Each floor offering something new: vacuums, dishwashers, cameras, TVs, cell phones, massage chairs, big screen TVs, stereo equipment, really big TV screens, DVD and CD players, computers, really really really big plasma and LCD TV screens. Oh be still my racing heart. If you can’t find what you are looking for in the main stores, there are always the stalls that fill the ground level and alleys ways of the block immediately across from the station. Chips and wires and transistors fill every corner like fruit flies swarming over fresh fruit.
Akihabara has its own subculture and here the lines between anime and real life blur. You can go into video shops, but one should proceed cautiously as it is possible to go too deep or too high and get lost and see things one might not really need to see. On the streets you can find the AU (one of the major cell phone companies) girls dressed in matching orange and white leather jackets and mini skirts and white three inched heeled riding boots. On the next corner you can find ladies dressed in Victorian style maid outfits handing out flyers to their maid cafes. And on the next block, the gothic rock groupies hand out flyers to their next event. And on the next corner the DoCoMo (another major brand of cell phones) girls with their matching blue and white mini skirts and go-go boots handing out balloons to the kids.
This particular visit was to search for a cell phone that met our daughter’s s chool’s suggested recommendations (to be read “mandatory”). Yes, a cell phone is mandatory for first graders here. Generally Akihabara doesn’t seem to kick into full gear until the middle of the afternoon. But on this morning we where there early, and seemingly so was a good part of Tokyo. In addition to the usual sights and sounds, a four block walk revealed just how smoothly all of this visual stimuli intertwines. So smooth that one must actually stop and think about things in its parts to see the juxtaposition of things that oddly, in real time and in this area seem to blend so effortlessly as to appear normal.
Hang a quick right out of the east exit of the station, past the titillatingly dressed freaks-of-the-week who are handing out pamphlets and small tissue packets. And there, if you look up, before you reach the street where a mob waits for the walk sign, you can see a four-story poster of Cameron Diaz in an add for Softbank (one of the major cell phone companies) cell phones. Nothing personal against Cameron, but the next time someone offers her three million dollars for a three-hour picture shoot, she might want to either put a clause in the contract that under no circumstances should her nose be blown up to the size of a minivan. I mean that thing is big enough already. And again, I don’t mean to be mean, but maybe she and should really consider seeing Jennifer Aniston’s nose job doctor…of course the two of them could swap scorned and abandoned women stories while they are at it.
It being early, a three block long queue of chain smoking losers await the opening of a seven-story pachinko parlor. Across the street, in matching blue and white outfits are the DoCoMo girls handing out packets of tissues and balloons. Across the narrow lane is a solitary girl dressed in a Victorian style maid outfit handing out flyers to the Maid café just down the lane.
The foot traffic on the sidewalk is moving slowly because the pedestrians are looking at the matsuri marching down the street. A matsuri is when an area has a festival to celebrate the local community. This is when grown men decide to wear mawashi (cotton belt that is wrapped so as to only barely cover up ones privates), happi coats (short light cotton jacket that are generally worn with a sash) not long enough to cover up the embarrassment that is the mawashi, and hachimaki (Japanese headbands). They then carry the local shrine around the neighborhood, chanting, and stopping every so many blocks to knock off a case of beer or two. I think my wife summed up this ritual best up when she said, “No one looks good in a tighty whitey wedgie.” Leave it to a lawyer to sum things up so succinctly.
On the next block, past the chain smoking pachinko players, the Victorian maid and the too early to be buzzed happi coated wedgies was a twelve person taiko drum corps performing…yep, just another morning in Akihabara.
Written June 15, 2007Buy Skype Credit now to make cheap calls internationally
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Comments
OY…the whole phone selection thing should be its own tale! Short version: we had to go Akihabara because the first phone was NOT on their list of “recommended” phones. I was furious, but we decided not to fight that battle. Ticking me off more was the letter than came home six months later saying that they had changed their mind, saw the wisdom in the first phone we had purchased, and would now allow it. Too bad, we already took that one back, and I am not going to shorten my two year contract with the stupid one on your no longer valid “recommended” list. (Can you tell I still have issues about this?)
Pictures? Do you mean a picture of her phone? Or pictures of Akihabara? I didn’t have my camera with me that morning. And Akihabara is like the French Quarter in New Orleans. You can take a picture, but you need to be there to experience the energy and vibe that is the air. The
“alternate universe that is one part psychedelic trip through Lucy’s sky of diamonds, one part Dali’s surrealistic view in The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, and one part Baum’s Oz” seems to be the best chance of catching that energy, short of you clicking on my Travelocity ad, booking a flight, and putting Akihabara on your itinerary. You are always welcome!
And did we pick out a first-grade-appropriate cell-phone? How about a picture!?!?!