Tokyo - Day 15

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Today we had the big city experience!

Tokyo is in one word - MAD! With 35 million people living here it was always going to be busy, but the infrastructure required to get that many people transported around the place makes it busy at all times of day, be it on the streets mid morning or on a tube ride at 9.30 in the evening!

We visited Akihabara, which is known as 'Electric Town', here you will find street after street of electrical stores that all make Comet & Curry's look like Mr. Smith's Electricals on the High Street of your local market town. The biggest of these in the area was Yodabashi, a seven storey electrical hypermarket, each floor the size of the average Tesco supermarket. They sell everything from air conditioning to the obligatory Japanese toilet seats, which are plugged into the mains, so as to provide a heated seat, music to cover your bodily noises and a water spray to wash either your whole backside or concentrated areas!

Moving on from Akihabara we had a walk down Omotesando-dori, the fashion street of Tokyo, with the likes of Tag Heuer, Louis Vuitton, Jimmy Shoo and Dior. It was very exclusive, very expensive and on the whole did not have anything either of us would buy given the money - still it was an interesting experience, seeing the worship of consumerism in its highest form.

Other than those two main excursions, we had a fairly quiet day - together with thousands of others. The sight at Shibuya Station at 6.50pm on a Friday evening was something else. When the pedestrian lights went green, no word of a lie, the criss-cross of crossings were filled with thousands of pedestrians. An entire population of workers on their way home filled the streets. We will hope to get a picture tomorrow if we can, tonight we were without the camera, as we were by then on the hunt for dinner.

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Photos

Electric Town
One of the shops in Akihabara, Tokyo

More shops in Akihabara
Electric Town lives up to its name

Sega's little shop in Tokyo
Thought Sega only did games, well there's enough to fill this entire building!

Yodabashi Electical Store
It is huge, with seven floors the size of your local supermarket!

When you don't have much room...
Parking Japanese style. Your car is on a carousel and is delivered back to you!

Didn't believe me?
Well here is the guy's car being delivered back to him on the ground floor!

Comments

[Sam]

blogging off for now...
Thanks for keeping me in touch. I'm on leave next week and so will be even more remote than you guys.. Mongolia? Siberia??? Nope - Fradley Junction! They don't have wi-fi there... so see you on your return. Safe home! xxx

[Dorothea]

St1ll qu1et here 1n Turkey - Dalyan 1s just a l1ttle v1llage compared to Tokyo. Been do1ng Turk1sh cook1ng, but now we have to go and pack boo hoo as we fly back ton1ght. PS Al your standards of proof read1ng are sl1pp1ng - too many hot baths rott1ng the bra1n?