Japan: Akihabara

While in Japan, we were taken to Ginza. This district has a lot of high-end stores and a huge Nissan building showing off newer models of various car series. In Ginze we visited a small cafe where we were ordered chocolate filled pancakes, strawberry shortcake, and other popular Japanese sweets.

During free-time in Ginza, me and some of the girls in my group went to Akihabara. We were able to explore the busy city and play some video games. These video games were mostly based on popular anime including Initial D, Kingdom Hearts, and many others. They had small machines where one would insert 100-500 yen and receive a keychain. These machines are similar to the one in America that disperse candy for a small amount of cash.

In Akihabara, there were many interesting stores. We peeked in one store that was selling video games for notably lower prices. They had games for Nintendo, PS3, and other game consoles. There was another store in Akihabara that offered a variety of inexpensive souvenirs. They offered katanas and shurikens for great prices. Other items such as the lucky cat, maneki-neko, were found. They had other figurines like little geisha dolls, hello-kitty plushies, and elegant dolls in kimonos. The store offered small but beautiful tapestries. Some of them had pictures of Mt. Fuji but none could capture the mysterious beauty offered by the actual mountain.

Another place in Akihabara offered prize games using the claw. There were several of these tricky games that offered “kawai” plush keychains. Some offered cute pompompurrin towels or giant fluffy bunny pillows. These addicting games had a lot of players, however, the games with no rewards seemed to be much more popular. This place also had various floors. The higher up one went in the floors, the more complex the games became. The top floor had more loud and aggressive fighting games. In comparison, the lower floors had more adventurous games. The order in the game complexity was extremely interesting. Also, the higher the floor, the darker the lighting and the more serious the colors from the games were. The tops floor glowed of red where as the lower floors had more blue, cool colors and rainbow colors.

Of all the places we visited, I enjoyed exploring Akihabara the best. I look forward to visiting here in the future.