Day 13 - 09/01/1998: Clearing a Path: When I woke up in the morning I opened the blinds and there was a beautiful clear blue sky. The snow cover was still on the ground it was about 30 cm thick.
We decided that we would explore Tokyo using the JR Yamanote Loop line1. The first place that we went to on the loop was Akihabara (other wise known as "Electric City"). When we arrived there it was still quiet and they were cleaning the snow from the streets (see the above photo).
Akihabara is like Heaven for gadget geeks2. It is chock-a-block full of electronic shops all with all of latest gadgets on display. This was the first time that I went to Akihabara and at that time the prices seemed a lot cheaper than Australia. In my most recent trip to Japan (2005), in Akihabara most things seemed expensive, it was much cheaper to go to one of the electrical discounters out in the suburbs of Tokyo or surrounding prefectures. Even then it seems that the price of electronics/electrical goods are now comparable in Australia.
I spent a bit of time going from shop to shop looking at Nintendo games. The strange thing was I could not find any of the car race, platform, martial arts, or shoot-em-up games that I might possibly be able to play even with Japanese text. All I could find was strategy, RPG, educational, and puzzle type games which require a lot of Japanese language reading to play them. The only thing I eventually bought was a power adapter for my Walkman at a shop that sold foreign spec gear, this was about half of the price than it is in Australia.
