Akihabara by Day

Once again I’m in Tokyo for two whole weeks of geekiness. This time K as decided to tag along and we’re enjoying the sunshine, gadgets and everything else Japanese.

Arriving at 10:15 after around 14 hours of travelling, our first stop was the hotel where – true to form – I found I had left my laptop charger at home. A quick trip into Akihaara (pic, right) and I found a old guy in a back alley selling all manner of charger-related goodies. We threw a few cables together and were back on track.

We spend a couple of hours wandering around various Anime, Computer and Game stores and found an awesome networked Mecha-combat game in a Sega Arcade building. Each player had their own pod with a wraparound display and played in a 16-player deathmatch.

I took a brief (16-second) video showing the game play. The player (who you can see in the bottom left) sits inside the pod controlling the action with a couple of joysticks and an array of buttons. It looks pretty damned good.

It’s a shame we’ll never see anything like this in the UK, since the investment required will be far too high when you think about how the UKs arcades tend to end up full of chavs and all the machines covered in cigarette burns. By contrast, Akihabara’s arcades are clean and tidy, with staff distributing hand wipes and keeping the machines clean.

The lack of sleep caught up with us so we returned to the hotel where we had a beer and promptly fell asleep. More news tomorrow, possibly.