Tokyo pt 3: Akiba!

After ramen, we headed back to the ticket gates of Ueno station.

ラーメン後、パット君と僕は上野駅から次の所まで行った。

...With a brief stop over at the weirdo 'hip' mannequins at the Ueno Station Hard Rock Cafe (not nearly as good as the Fukuoka Hard Rock Cafe...) -

Yes, that is a pierced tongue... 

上野駅のハードロークカフェ前のマンネキンが変体です。。。舌ピアスも有る！

Everywhere in Tokyo right now there are TONS of cops everywhere (a relatively rare site in Japan actually)... there's a G8 Summit in Hokkaido next week so they're doing a show of force to any would by protestors or terrorists...　今東京に警察一杯が有る！G8サッミト為に。。。

In the stations they have cops on little pedestals.  In addition to their holstered guns, they all have at least a short billy club in their hand at all time,  some of them have longer wooden bokken (木剣)  type things...

The interesting thing about the warning poster on the right (aside from the fact that they tell everyone what cities they are (and aren't) doing added security in)... is the 'don't touch/smell/move' rules... this is directly related to the 1995 Tokyo Metro Sarin Gas Attacks... where many of the fatalities were station attendants who moved the poison bags.

Next stop:  Akihabara (秋葉原 aka Akiba) -- it was once the electronics center of Tokyo... now its morphed into the  center for manga, anime and their related subcultures... 

次所は秋葉でした。電車男最近見たから、もう一度行きたかった。

I think that shorter red building might have been the one in the Densha Otoko TV show?

In front of most electronic stores they have promotions for cell phone plans...  many include deals on new phones or other free gifts... but this is a first for me!

Since this is the center for anime geeks, here the free gifts are anime related!  The helmet of 'Char Aznable' from Gundam to go with your Sharp 913SH mobile phone!   The helmet is the cradle for charging and the phone itself has some logos, themes and sound files from Gundam built-in.  Pretty nerdy. :-P

and for the girls,  you can see in there's a Hello Kitty related mobile phone bundle in the red box too.

オタクの品ですね。。。ガンダムの携帯！(キーティちゃんも有る！）

We popped into some of the stores to check out the random anime/game stuff,  this place had a lot of cool random merchandise and apparel:

For the Mario fans with the more mature sense of humor...  (Scottie, I'm talking about you).

...only problem was - it cost about US$40!

スーパーマリオのシャツです。意味分かる？一寸嫌らしいですけど、面白英語！

Also had some interesting stickers related to Japanese society... i'm not sure what 'Tama' means, but I immediately understood the 'NEET' one -  'N.E.E.T.' stands for "Not currently engaged in Employment, Education or Training" - In Japan there are a growing number of these unworking young people who are leaching off their parents... many are either socially withdrawn from society and/or are super geeky otaku types...　

NEETSのスティーカーも有る。。。

Another interesting Current events related photo:

Many of you know that vending machines are ubiquitous around Japan... and you can buy almost anything from a machine if you look hard enough.  That includes cigarettes (these kinds of vending machines were banned in the US a long time ago because of fear of kids using them). 

In Japan they're implementing an ID card system, called ' TASPO',  so the Tobacco companies set up this tent to check IDs and give out the passes (of course civil libertarians may look at this as a way to force smokers to register with the government...  but ...). :-P

If it makes fewer Japanese people smoke, its probably a good thing...  one funny/suspicious feature is that it also works as an E-money card, a la Suica or HK's Octopus card, you can charge the card with credit and use it to pay for future purchases... but in this case it only works with cigarette vending machines! 

We also stopped by the back side of the station to see if any of those strange anime bands were playing( as seen in this entertaining blog from last November), but since it was a friday afternoon,  there weren't any... doh　　ヨドバシイカメラ前で面白アニメバンドを見つけていましたけど、居なかった。早過ぎ？残念！

(just Yodobashi, the largest electronics store in all of Japan...)

btw - here's another random McDonalds photo:

Thats the non- bacon and egg version of the Mega-Mac!

メガですけど、タマゴメガマックの法がメガ。