Don Quixote? Really?

Still recovering from yesterday’s marathon walk, we decided today we’d take it easy.  We only had one destination in mind, which actually turned out to be two by the time we were finished, but that can wait.

After a long lazy morning, we set out on the Yamanote line for Akihabara.  The land of Manga, Anime, Electronics, and Maid Cafes.  Really we just wanted to go there and see what all the hubbub was about.  Not having an interest in any of the above, but just, again, to go and say, “Yeah, we did that.”

Actually it was kind of a let down.  The area was a teenage boy’s dreamland, to be sure, with toy stores, dvd galleries, various electronics outlets… Matter of fact the entire constituency we saw proved to be mostly young males and foreign tourists.  Hm.

Onoden (オノデン)

We wandered down the main drag, and back up again, snapping plenty of photos at all of the fun.  Actually we stopped by one of the souvenir shops, since we still had to get some more chochkies for various people.  So having done that, we went back the way we came, our big “Duty Free” sack proclaiming our tourist status even louder than before, (like it wasn’t obvious anyway.)

In my younger days I probably would have enjoyed this area a little more, and probably brought back a few souvenirs from the many toy and comic stores.  Now, though, I guess I’ve moved on.  I never really “got” the whole manga and anime thing.  I mean I enjoy Miyazaki’s stuff well enough, but not to the level of “fanboy”, and well, cartoon images of short-skirted blushing schoolgirls is taking it a bit too far for me…

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