pdscomp's Journal: Saturday 17 January 2004 6:48 PM JST

I've posted some Ginza Apple Store pictures! It's really an amazing building... 5 floors of nothing but Apple goodness! I've also posted some other pictures.

Yesterday I spent most of the day relaxing in the area of the Yoyogi National Olympics Memorial. I think my feet needed a day off. They were much happier today. Sang, Liz and I decided to pursue different interests today, so I've spent the day venturing alone. It's amazing how far a guidebook and a little bit of japanese knowledge will get you.

Oh, and did I mention it was SNOWING today? Not enough to get in the way of things, but it was a nice change of scenery. You might be able to see it in some of the pictures.

I ate lunch at a restaurant where you put money into a machine and punch in what you want to order and it prints you out an order ticket, which you hand to the server. She then brings out whatever you ordered when it's ready. The food was really good too, and not that expensive. I had beef kalby with rice and a greens salad, some soup and a cup of tea for only 550 yen.

This was while I was venturing through Kanda. Kanda is a very interesting place. The book I had recommended it for purchasing printed literature saying there were a lot of bookstores. As you may know, I am on a quest to obtain all the Ah! My Goddess manga I can find. However, the Viz prints from the US are flipped to be read left to right, and cost almost $20 a volume. Skanky... The bright side is that there is a bilingual version available in Japan with both Japanese and English text, costing only 850 yen per volume. I have only been able to find volumes 3-5 so far, but I know the rest must be out there. Sadly, I only found one bookstore in Kanda, and they had very little selection. There were however many gambling places (pachinko and slots). One of the highlights was a McDonalds that had an experimental McBB Phone, which allows you to make free calls to anywhere in the world for up to 3 minutes per call using Yahoo!'s internet phone service. Very handy thing, considering I just found out that using my parents' AT&T calling card internationally costs over $10 a minute! Eep... I put in an order for an e-phone card that has pretty good rates, just have to wait for them to e-mail me the pin.

I found one other neat thing in Kanda... A small we-sell-everything type store... With Hikaru No Go! themed Gobans for $20! I bought one. I couldn't help it! Only thing is, it's a bit on the bulky side. It'll be fun trying to get it home =-D. Oh well, so worth it.

My next stop was the Yurakucho station. The guide I had recommended it for it's many department stores and other shopping places. Ginza is also known for it's electronics stores. After wandering through floors and floors of overpriced department store cruft, I went to the famous Sony building. For those not familiar with it, the Sony building is a towering 8-story hulk that has rooms and rooms full of-you guessed it-Sony products! One of the coolest things there is a new video game for PS2 where you connect a camera to the PS2 and play the game using body movement based on a picture of you superimposed on the screen. You use your hands to punch boards, attack pirates and grab things. There was also the PSX... Sony's new PVR/PS2/DVD Burner thing. Apparently it's selling like hotcakes over here regardless of it's $970 price tag. Might we expect a US release by summertime?

After stumbling out of the Sony building, I managed to find a Citibank, which is one of the few banking chains over here that will let you perform banking transactions to the US. I took out some extra spending money and enough to pay Liz back for the remainder of the airline tickets since she is running low on spendable cash.

After wandering randomly for about 45 minutes, I 'accidentally' came across the Apple Store again, which is where I've been for the past two hours. The people are really friendly here... It was very crowded when I got here so I sat in the corner with my laptop. After about 30 minutes, one of the ladies came over and offered me a chair to sit in. Judging from how full the store is right now... Apple definietly has a very promising future in Japan.

I should get going soon, the Memorial grounds close their gates at 10 PM and I should get back there with plenty of time to spare! Until next time.