![[Photo (retouched): Market entrance]](pht_tokyo_akihabara.jpg)
How could I have overlooked that entrance?
Thu Apr 13 2000 (ctd)
My travel guide, when it talked about the Akihabara electronics district, only talked about the big department stores. I didn't want to see those. I wanted to see the flea market I'd seen during my last visit, the little stands crowded in an area underneath the elevated tracks. I exited the station, walked a little ways, looking around.
I came to an area where I could see under the tracks. There were columns holding the tracks up, and those columns were spaced just right for setting up little stands amongst. There was a chainlink fence around the area, and a sign saying something about repairs. Oh no. They'd shut down the bazaar. I'd been so looking forward to it.
I started to stumble back towards the train station when I noticed that a little hole-in-the-wall place selling gizmos wasn't filling up its hole in the wall. In fact, it was up against the side of a hole in the wall, and one could walk through that hole into an area underneath the tracks. It was, of course, an entrance into the very market I was looking for.
How could I have overlooked that entrance?
I'd walked past the place without noticing it before, but now I was checking out fiber strands, capacitors, LEDs, jacks for plugging in CPUs, mobile phone straps, cable adaptors, palmtop computers, soldering irons, cable, chips, wire of all colors and gauges, digital cameras, resistors sold individually or in little packs, things I couldn't name, multimeters, switches, telephones, calculators, wire ties, ... I was in heaven.
I needed a souvenir. I picked out a big red button at a stand. Now would come the tough part: the conversation. I wasn't sure I was up to it.
I spoke through a curtain of cables on display, hanging from the low ceiling, hoping that some shopkeeper was behind them somewhere. I asked, "Kono botan, wa, ikura desuka?" ("How much for this here button?") A voice came back: "Suitchi?" Oh, right. In the world of electronics, buttons are "switches." I'd spent hours of my life debouncing "switches," not "buttons." It was all coming back now.
"Hai, kono suitchi wa, ikura desuka?" ("Yeah, how much for the switch?") The voice came again, said something that I didn't understand at all. It wasn't numbers. What was he saying? What was I thinking, trying to hold a conversation about electronics in Japanese? He said it again: "Momantai?" This sounded more like something from a kung-fu movie than any Japanese I knew. He pressed the button, so that I could see that it came back after being pressed; again, he said "Momantai?" Oh: "momentary". He was telling me that this was a momentary switch, making sure I knew that it wouldn't stay down when pressed. I grinned, and said, "Ii desu." ("It's good.") And so I got my souvenir.
Actually, the last time I'd been there, I'd got a plug-in card for my Canon WordTank dictionary gadget. But the WordTank's screen had long since given up the ghost, so I was glad to get something that looked a bit more durable.
I caught a train to Tokyo, and stepped off the train onto the platform, knew I wanted to change trains to catch the Rapid Chuo-Sobu back to Asagaya, and there on the other side of the platform was a train in what was the familiar shade of orange, the orange that I recognized.
Except that this was some special train, a train that didn't stop in Asagaya at all, nor in many other places. I wasn't the only one fooled. As the train barreled its way out into the boonies, some school girls were talking amongst themselves, sure that it would not stop at their station, which was rapidly approaching. Then, as we hurtled through a station, all their heads turned to watch it flash by and recede. One of them fluttered her hands, "Aah, aah, sayo-nara." At the next opportunity, I hopped off of that super-duper express and caught a local train back to Asagaya, feeling a bit fluttery myself.
There was a fruit smoothie place under Asagaya station. The internet makes some things easy for English speakers: I didn't have to phonetically decode the place's name because they posted the URL of their web site: www.green-place.co.jp. They advertised something with many fruits. I tried to order and there ensued a long, wrangling conversation; finally, the poor shopgirl explained to me that it didn't come with all those fruits--I had to choose one kind. The sign was just explaining what choices were available.
It was a good smoothie, though. I was glad for the vitamin C, figuring it would be good for my cold. Then I realized that I wasn't snuffling, that my nose wasn't running, and that it had been many hours since I'd had a decongestant.
I was cured. It was early yet. I could go back to my room. I could call up Jimmy. He would probably be busy trying to get ready for his party the next night, but maybe I could hang out, do something useful for the setting up, and get caught up on old times. I drained the last of my smoothie and started to walk off, realized I still had the glass in my hand, walked back and returned it. It occurred to me that I was tired.
I headed back to my room. I had printed out some information at work, including Jimmy's mobile phone number. I sat and stared at the hotel phone for a while. There was a card on it, a card telling me what digit to dial to make an inside-the-hotel call and what digit to dial for an outside-the-hotel call. It was kind of hard to figure out which was which, but I thought I had it.
I dialed a digit, dialed Jimmy's number, and heard ringing--success! Then the ringing stopped, and there was silence. Just silence. Maybe I was supposed to say something? "Moshi--" I started, and then gasped as a modem (or fax or something) started shrieking at me. I hung up the phone.
That hadn't gone very well. There were a few possible cases to consider. I had messed up with the hotel phone, and should try a pay phone. Maybe I'd reached Jimmy's voice mail and was supposed to type in my phone number instead of talking. Maybe I had the wrong number and should try calling my co-workers. It's very easy for me to write about these possibilities now, but at the time they came rather slowly. Figuring out possible hypotheses, testing them, and figuring out what to do about them--it was all pretty bewildering.
It was still pretty early in the afternoon. I figured I could grant myself a two hour nap. I'd be able to muddle my way through the phone thing more easily after a little rest.
Fri Apr 14 2000
I woke up at 3:00 A.M.
Things weren't going according to my plans. I spent some time on self-pity. Normally, I think of self-pity as a waste of time, but there wasn't really much else to do at 3AM. I certainly wasn't going to try calling Jimmy at such an hour. I give up, I thought.
I tried eating the grapefruit-sized mikan. It was grapefruit-flavored, it was horrid (if you didn't like grapefruit (which I didn't)), it was nothing like what I remembered. I tossed it out. I give up, I thought. (Later on, I would find some little citrus-y things that were like the fruit I remembered. They were labelled "dekopon". They were like tangerines. They were yummy.)
The laundry which I'd washed days ago was still damp. I give up, I thought. I went back to bed. 12 hours of sleep was good, surely more would be better.
I catnapped for a while, then got up and went out and caught the train to Shinjuku. I started walking South, stopped in an Art Coffee for a morning set. Mmm: boiled egg, plenty of protein with none of that fishy taste so prevalent in fish. I walked through Yoyogi Park, which I'd been in before. There's a famous shrine there, Meiji-Jingu. I'd probably seen it before, but couldn't remember anything about it. I decided not to go back. After all, why bother going back to a not-so-memorable temple? When I'd visited the park before, I'd enjoyed seeing the bands performing under a sort of overpass, but I'd read that this had been discontinued (and even if it had still been permitted, it had been a weekend thing, and this was not a weekend). Anyhow, it was pleasant to walk through the park, tall trees overhead, wide crunchy gravel path underfoot, sound of wind blowing over the trees.
Emerging from the trees back out onto the street, I realized that the wind wasn't so pleasant when there weren't a bunch of trees to break it up, so instead of walking to Ebisu station, I caught a train, and it wasn't far from the Ebisu station to the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, though I was windblown plenty along the way.
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