Akiba Thanksgiving

Ok, so today is thanksgiving in Japan, well on base anyway. Yay! So I get up have a light breakfast at the chow hall hop on my bicycle and ride to the train station and head down to Akihabara (Akiba). Akihabara also known as Akibahara Electric Town or simply Akiba is one of the main consumer electronics centers in Japan. You need a computer built or repaired? You can find what you need on the street there in these little stalls. How crowded some of the streets are reminded me of Harajuku except only about 5 streets were that packed (I went on Thursday) and instead of designer clothing it was hard drives and comic stuff. That’s another thing about Akiba, very VERY Otaku centric place. I walked into an Internet Café to see how they do It, all I see is a long empty hall way with a computer room at one end filled with the bluish white glow of computers, the acrid smell of old cigarette smoke, and the lights of a vending machine that promised ‘hot meals’. It was the same for a Pachinko parlor I stepped inside of except then you had billions of flashing lights and high pitched electronic music so loud that not even Rambo with a machine gun could be heard over the music. Anyway….i went there in search of Gundams for my girlfriend, couldn’t find any I felt like purchasing as they were either cheaper in the states or too big for me to carry on a bicycle with no backpack with me. So I got something else that I know she’ll like. Why does blue hair have to be such a staple of Anime?



Lunch was after a few hours of walking around, had a bowl of Sushi for about 1,000 yen. Was just a big bowl of rice, shrimp, egg, tuna, shrimp, salmon eggs, and other raw fish I can’t place. It was very good, cheap, and quite filling. It came with Miso soup and some type of egg stuff I couldn’t figure out what to do with. Tasted good, but I’ve made enough faux pas already, Hell one of the other patrons was laughing at me trying to pick up the salmon eggs with my chopsticks. I did it…but I guess the big American at the bar he was too small for was quite funny. Speaking of they tell us to not attract attention to ourselves….oops. I wore red, so there I am, big American wearing a red shirt, blue jeans, surrounded in a sea of Japanese businessmen all in suits. I I don’t mind attracting attention due to my size (It happens anyway), but I was very conscious of HW much I stood out today. May go to Roppongi next….or back to Harajuku, good food there, that or to Shibuya and try to find the Stormtrooper.