Saturday, September 15, 2001. 6:00 pm. Downtown Tokyo.
Mike and I are back in the office, probably for the last time this trip. After a short morning meeting with a customer and lunch with the local office president, we spent the afternoon in “Electric City”. This part of Tokyo is the heart of personal electronics shopping. Neon markets selling air conditioners, digital cameras, razor-thin cell phones and other gadgets.
Mike spent most of his time looking for electronics deals, mostly accessories for his Sony camera. I was purchasing trinkets for friends back home. For the two children of my friend Cat, tiny battery-powered likenesses of Pokemon characters. For my Wondergeek trio of friends, some Gundam Wing cards.
The anime stores are plentiful in Electric City. Of course, they’re not organized in English. This makes my search harder. I navigate the titles by the character’s faces. I see the familiar characters of Cowboy Bebop and Gundam, along with thousands of others I have never seen before. Anime is huge here. Even the best American anime fan is never exposed to the full set of Japanese titles.
I find my friends’ Gundam cards, along with a Trigun item for myself. It took me over 30 minutes to find Vash the Stampede in the store. I guess my favorite character is nothing but a footnote in the annals of anime. After an accidental pass through the hentai section, I make my way back to the streets.
I was looking for something I saw on Tuesday afternoon, a tiny digital camera on a key chain. I would expect this 5,000 yen camera is a cheap device with marginal picture quality, but it seems like an interesting novelty. But all the electronics stores start to look the same, and I can’t remember what store I saw it in. Our guides from the office have gone home for the evening, leaving little hope of finding my digital trinket.
I need to stop in one of the shops by the hotel. I hope I have time to get a Tokyo Giants hat for a friend back home. I guess an American baseball fan can appreciate a Japanese baseball souvenir. Mike and I grab our bags and head back into the busy streets. After a quick stop at the hotel, we’re off to Ginza for one last dinner in Japan.
I hail a cab under the artificial light of “Electric City”, thousands of neon signs pulsing rhythmically in the early dusk. Twenty-two hours from now, I’m on a plane back to Georgia. Twenty-two hours from now, my journey to Japan nears the end. I will return to my community, return to my wife, return to my life in America. It will not be the same as it was before, not as assuring or predictable. But it is my home, and it’s where I want to be.
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