COME IN TOKYO
AKIHABARA
I want a digital camera so Sayoko and I
head for Akihabara Electric Town, exiting into the monosodium
heartbeat for Japans discount technological society, where
walking under pure blue skies among 95% geeks, nerds
crowding into yellow blue white facades with synthetic
music pounding everywhere fluorescent buzz beep bright virtuosity pouring
from screens speakers downloaders uptakers, and even if it
takes two tankers a day to keep this circus humming its still
fun to get what you want when you want it.
Following several false starts we angle across
to SOFMAPs main store where an unpushy young clerk
shows us the latest snappers Sony Fuji Panasonic Canon and because
I dont speak Nihongo or work technology Sayoko
negotiates that I need one to do the Kamakura Buddha zoom shot
and please 3 million pixels which Ken advised me
plus some of this a little of that we should be OK, he says
with this Olympus medium priced spread.
The soul only wants to be happy otherwise why would so many
young lonely men be walking together and no good looking women
except my wife. I like one with heft you can
see through not those tinny little boxes resembling spooky
medical devices so the Olympus it is, but before, we need
more megabytes its always something.
We buy the bytes from another guy who only speaks technology
then gives pathetic directions to the service center out the door
and to the left but we follow his and end up going god knows where.
Anyway we find Building 13 where we are ticket 8 and after
us a foreigner comes in with his Japanese wife tall thin with
long white hair straggling under a pork pie hat which makes me
think hes also a heavy drinker.
So we turn over our laptop to the sprightly young lady
requiring 20 minutes and adjourn to the FRESHBURGER for
cheeseburgers with onion rings and after the gizmos installed, we head
for the station with guys with big boxes and big smiles,
convinced, hey technologys not so bad, the citys not so bad,
life is good.
