Akihabara is the Electronics and Manga capital of Tokyo.
It was one of the main reasons I wanted to come to Japan and every new years day the stores have these “mystery grab bags” where you pay for a bag of random products which could be much higher in value that the actual cost.
For example, 10,000 yen showbag could even have up to $300 worth of stuff!
Apparently, people have got consoles, blu-ray players and all sorts of goodies in these things, and we all thought $130 would be best spent to experience this.
Unfortunately I woke up feeling pretty sick, my stomach was not right and I had cold symptoms, a bit of a fever and diarrhea. For breakfast all I had was some orange juice and a mouth full of rice.
When we got to Akihabara, the place was huge and we had no guide and no place to really start, so we just wondered around looking at random stores.
Alot of places had huge queues at the doors and people were walking out with the brown paper bags (below), so we knew we were on the right track.
We took our time and looked a few different places, as we didn’t know which places were good or not. The other group decided to zoom through at a faster pace than us to find these bags, so we split up early on.
Along the way we saw lots of cool electronics, including this dual screen laptop!!
The two screens slide behind each other and then it folds down like a normal laptop - so cool! Unfortunately the prices were not that fantastic, so we really didn’t spend too much.
Most of the show bags were a mystery, but some were marked, like these. This gives you an idea of the prices values.
Rob and I decided we have to try one of these bags, so we went 50/50 in a 5000 Yen ($70) showbag. After purchasing we headed outside to open it only to find it was a showbag full of anime cartoon character figurines! After feeling incredibly ripped off and accepting the fact that us foreigners make mistakes like this, I decided that it was worth a shot at going back to this place and trying to get a refund. Surprisingly enough after explaining to the only English speaking staff member there that we wanted electronics, he managed to get us a refund - I was shocked, but very grateful. Goes to show how nice the Japanese can really be.
Anthony on the other hand had more success. The one thing he wouldn’t leave Japan without was a “Masterpiece Megatron” (or something like that?). But as this place has tons of cartoon stuff as well as electronics - demonstrated by our crappy show bag - he didn’t have too much trouble getting one.
He was a happy camper after that :)
We headed back home fairly earlier in the day, partially because I was feeling worse and worse, and as soon as we got back I went straight to bed.
I was wearing two tshirts, a jumper, gloves, beanie, was under sheet and blanket in a heated room, and was still cold!
While I slept, the rest of the group went to Roppongi where they got to go to a huge 6 storey groccery store and got some good prices on all sorts of things, including Rob’s neck warmer and Cadbury chocolate.
That night when they got back, we ended up watching a movie on Sarma’s laptop. I hadn’t eaten anything all day, so during the movie I forced my self to eat a piece of bread and had some more water, then went to bed.
One positive to having diarrhea in Japan (compared to Australia) is the bidet toilets - made it so much easier!