so this is Akihabara
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
After a bit of a slow start, I went back to Kawasaki's city center and returned my keyboard. Anyone who's been through this in the country knows that this is not like returning something in the west, where it's almost difficult to not get a refund or an exchange. Sure enough, I had to demonstrate that the product was still well packed, and that it didn't match the box, and that they didn't have an equal English product, and so on. But, I ultimately succeeded.
So I put on my N95 mask and went to Akihabara, where there is what is likely the world's largest electronics store. It's was Mari's recommendation (and reminder). To get there, I had to catch a certain train. But this is where the dead battery in my "pocket Wifi" caused problems. Without data access on my phone I wasn't certain which train to use. I had my work phone, and iPhone, and tried that. But the map application is so poor on that thing that I wound up missing the express train that I should easily have caught. The map app just took forever and wouldn't give me any options. I wound up boarding another because the phone was wrong about the departure times, and I would up paying ¥530 because it was a special/luxury inter-city train. The work iPhone is in every respect superior to my Android phone, but Apple's apps are way off the pace at this point.
At the Akihabara shop, I found an entire isle of keyboard products. There were keyboards for every conceivable platform, not just PC's and tablets and phones but also specialty things like the PS/4. Then I noticed a stack of "PS/2" keyboards and thought .. "that must mean Playstation/2, surely not the old PS/2 standard from the late 80's!" But yes, they were real PS/2 keyboards. How I could have forgotten Yodobashi Akiba, I don't know. I found an el-cheapo English-language keyboard for ¥1500 ($20, compared to $200) and a USB hub and that was over with. I'll replace the keyboard with one I'm bringing from Canada (if that trip happens).
Afterward I went for a walk through the old electronics town part of Akihabara. I discovered that there are now Turkish kebab stalls all over the place, so I had a nice Japanese-style beef shwarma bento and hit the train back for the south end of town.
Boarding the Yamanote line, I was bound for Shibuya, the large station in the inner city's south-west from which I could board the line to my part of town. On the way, I realized that I would pass through the neighborhood of Gotanda, where I first lived upon arrival in Tokyo in 2005. And that reminded me that I'd been meaning to see if my old barber shop was still there. So I exited the train and walked about a bit lost but found the shop. And there was Takahashi-san, my old barber! He remembered me, and I set an appointment for next Saturday.
Then I walked to nearby Osaki, near our place in Kita-Shinagawa. I knew of a good grocery store there that had a certain type of brown rice flaked cereal. Or so I thought: when I finally found it (it is incredible to me that Japanese retail so often gives zero consideration to the use of signage and building design to draw people in, it was really tough to find the supermarket!) the name of the place had changed and it had been redesigned and "up-scaled". They no longer carried the "Co-op" product line I was looking for, so I was SOL.
But it was a fine walk along the river with the cherry trees blossoming and ideal weather.
I got back to my neighborhood, bought a bag or two of brown rice and a few tins, and marched up the hill to my apartment.