Cell Phones, Electronics, Video Games, and Manga Cafes

Since I have been in Tokyo I have noticed that people seem to be alone a lot. At the cafe, everyone was sitting at their 2 person tables eating all alone. Even on the subway, everyone seems to be on it alone and noone seems to be talking to friends, coworkers, or anyone else. It's sort of strange. At best, I hope that they are being social on their cell phones since everyone has their cell phones out as well.

The cell phones here are pretty neat. Aside from a few iPhones that I have seen, the most popular device seems to be this very large flip phone with fairly large screens. I am pretty sure that people watch a lot of movies on their cell phones because they spend a lot of time staring at them without pushing any buttons, but I can't be too sure. The electronics stores have about 1 million different types of cell phones. In the US, we value consolidation of electronics choices, whereas in Japan, I think that they value the multitude of options. I also saw Android in various forms here, which shows that Android is alive and well.

Tonight, I went to Akihabara, which is famous for its electronics stores and it's manga maid cafes. Also, the video game buildings put anything that we have in the US to shame. There are some serious video games and some serious video gamers here. There was a 5 story building I went through with different kinds of video games on each floor. One of the interesting ones was a game with a table on it and controls on the side. It was like Fifa soccer but suped up to a brand new level. You have player cards that you put down on the table for each of position on the soccer field and then you can control the players individually from the side controls.... at least that's how I think it worked. I think it also may have been networkable so you could play other people in the room. Another game was a rythm game that people lined up for out the door of the place. It was not just your regular rock band, but something totally crazy fast. And the people playing it were really good.

The next thing that was more weird than interesting were these maid cafes. They seem to be shady cafes, but are really just gimmicky places where the waitresses dress up as silly anime inspired characters. That's about all I could glean out of the situation after being there for all of 5 minutes. Really, it didn't seem like anything interesting was going on and it was really hard to figure out what the point was without knowing Japanese.

Later, I went to dinner with someone from the office whom I had been palling around with that evening and headed home. The jet lag is getting better though, and I am not as tired in the evenings any more.