Playstation 3--Akihabara--11-11-06--Long Narrative PART 1

***Before I get into this, I would like to take a moment to praise and thank Lisa for joining me in the authoring of this blog. You can see her entries with the tagline "posted by Risa Sensei" at the bottom.***

Our friend, Kessler, back in Jacksonville, desperately wanted to have a Playstation 3. As it turns out, the release date for the Japanese PS3 is a week before the US release, so if I could manage to get one here, Kessler would have it in his hands a few days before anyone in the U.S. So, last week, I took a recon trip to Tokyo on the Shinkansen (which incidentally, is *the way* to travel in Japan, and riding it makes me wonder why we haven't gotten with the program in the high speed train business in the U.S.). Here are a couple clips of the Shink (as we Gaijin call it) in action:


But I digress. Where was I, ah yes, the reconnaissance mission. I took the metro to Akihabara and found three possible places where I could pick up a PS3 on opening day. I asked everyone I could find who spoke English what the best strategy was, and they all said one of two things which I will paraphrase here:
1- I don't know, We have no information, etc.
2- Get ready to wait on line!

This trip was further clouded by the news that Sony was planning only to release 80,000 PS3s in Japan. Still, I decided that opening day for a game console as solid as this one seems to be would be an experience I shouldn't miss while I have the chance to see it in Japan. A week later, yesterday, I went back to Tokyo and checked into a ryokan in Asakusa. Ryokan are traditional Japanese hotels with a futon (pronounced "ff_tone," not "foo-tawn"--the underscore means that the sound is either diminished or absent) and tatami (no accent on the second syllable--so instead of "ta-taa-mee," it's "tata-mee") floors. I checked into the ryokan at about 4pm, and took a brief rest in the room. I had walked from Akihabara (Ah-K_ha-ba-ra") to Asakusa ("Ah-sah-k_sa")--about 40 minutes. Since the trains stop at midnight and don't start until 5am, My plan was to wake up at about 3 am and walk back to Akihabara so I could be at the front of the line. At about 5 pm, I decided to go grab a bite to eat. While I was out, I thought I would check by Yodobashi Akiba, the electronics store where I thought the chances were the best for getting a PS3, and see what was cooking there. I had checked a few of the fan-boy blogs and they said that the Japanese were not yet lining up in most places, and by the way they were written, the blogs seemed to suggest that this PS3 launch was no big deal for the Japanese. They were either mistaken, or intentionally misleading. When I exited the metro station in Akihabara outside Yodobashi Akiba, there was already a line of over 100 people at 6pm. The PS3 was slated for to begin selling at 7 am the next day, so I checked with the people waiting to make sure they were waiting for the PS3. Upon hearing confirmation of my fears, I uttered several expletives under my breath. The words of the hotel concierge echoed back to me, "If I wanted a PS3," he had said, "I would go to Akihabara tonight." Damn it! I rushed back down the stairs into the metro, flew over to the ticket kiosk and hopped back on a train to get to Asakusa. On my way back to the ryokan, I stopped at Family Mart and began to stock up on supplies, whisking them quickly off the shelves: pringles, 4 canned coffee drinks, 3 beers (by the way, there is no open container law here, and tall-boy cans are de riguer street gear for the partier), Pocky chocolate snacks (mmm), 3 onigiri (stuffed rice balls with a nori seaweed wrapper) a sushi bento, and a V8 for vitamins. I paid for the all-nighter supplies and ran back to the ryokan, where I snatched up my backpack, stuffed the supplies inside, filled up a water bottle, and ran back downstairs to check out. I wished I had stayed in Akihabara and seen the line developing so that I could've saved the 5000 Yen for the Ryokan. At any rate, it was nearing 6:30 by the time I raced out of the hotel back to Asakusa's Ginza Line Station. I hopped the Ginza line train. The two stops to Ueno station and subsequent transfer to the Hibiya line for Akihabara (another two stops) seemed to take forever. I stopped by the bathroom one last time before heading out into the Tokyo night to find the end of what I knew was going to be a long line. Check out Part 2 of the story HERE.