guapacha.com » tokyo

‘Celebs’ at the New Otani

guapacha — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 08:29:33 +0000

Last night there were signs up at the hotel alerting us to the fact that several Major League Baseball stars were staying at the hotel and we were not to bother them, or be asked to leave. No problem there, I wouldn’t recognise one if he hit me with his bat and even if I did, last thing I care about is an autograph.

And I forgot to blog it before, but Condi Rice was in our hotel when she visited Japan last week. Quite the high scale place I’ve been staying in.

PS3 on Display

guapacha — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 01:53:22 +0000

The Sony building we work in has a ground floor lounge displaying all the Playstation products and is open to the public from 10 to 7 every day. When we go to lunch there is usually a group of people sat playing on the PSPs or PS2′s. But over the weekend they installed 4 PS3 kiosks. Each kiosk has a a PS3, controller and shiny new High Def Bravia screen. Slick setup. Yesterday we watched someone playing GT4 and I had a go on some tennis game, making Tim Henman cry like a baby when I out served him.

Yeah, I work for Sony but the PS3 is a sweet device. If you like games, its a must-buy. If, of course, you can get one. Sony has promised to do the best they can to get me one before Christmas. Yeah, I’ll accept bids.

We tried to take a picture of the lounge but two security guards came out from nowhere and made it clear we were not to. Spoilsports.

More Tokyo Sight Seeting

guapacha — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 10:10:14 +0000

We all worked Saturday so that we wouldn’t have to work Sunday. I actually probably won’t have to work Tuesday either but we’ll see. I may have to hang around the office just in case something turns up that they need me to do. When I left the office Saturday evening they had turned the downstairs reception into a big PS3 play area, it looked sweet.

So, my final day of sight-seeing and I got up late and made my plan. First, I would go to Asakusa to see the Sensoji Temple, the oldest such building in Tokyo dating back to 628. From there I would go to Akihabara, the electronics capitol of Tokyo where lots of small (and not so small) vendors hawk the latest gadgets. After that, a long subway ride to Harajuku, famous for the Tokyo youth to prance around in freakish fashions.

I’ve uploaded some pictures to two new flickr sets: Asakusa set, and Akihabara set, and added some new ones in the regular Tokyo set that don’t belong in either. If you want to read more, click on the link….

Asakusa is at the end of the Ginza line so it took a while to get out there. I chose an exit from the subway at random and was dumped out straight facing the Asahi brewery across the river. It is somewhat famous for the object on the roof, I don’t know what the object is – a hop? A carrot?? I was heading for the shrine with my usual lack of direction when I stumbled upon Nakamise. I hadn’t noticed this in the guidebook but its a huge indoor market selling everything from tourist crap to highclass clothing and gifts. It was totally packed with people but I was able to pick out some gifts for the family. I even found something for our dogs. At the end of the market was the Shrine, another impressive monument with many very cool stone buddahs and landscaping.

After that it was a couple of trains to Akihabara. It reminds me of Oxford Circus in London, except with higher quality items and more noise. Every store has someone outside (often a girl in a maid outfit) shouting at you to come in and look, or handing you a leaflet. If you go inside a store there is more loud shouting which almost drowns out the high energy music. The prices didn’t look that good to me on the high end goods, cheaper to buy a PSP in San Diego for instance, but I am sure some items were a good deal or only available in Japan right now. I was feeling hungry and stumbled upon a KFC so took a late lunch with some chicken and fries. Yummy.

It amazes me how healthy most Japanese people look and yet almost all of them smoke. Sitting in the KFC, everyone around me was smoking, a couple of them lighting up one after another. They may be considerate with cell phone noise but they don’t care about giving a guy cancer when he’s trying to lick his fingers clean.

I wandered around some more and was just trying to work out how to get to Harajuku when I realised I should have bought one more gift. The market was so good I decided to go back and look for something. After I found what I was looking for I had had enough for the day and just came back to the hotel. The Harajuku boys and girls can evade my camera today. And to be quite honest I’ve gotten bored of taking pictures of girls in shorts and high boots. Yeah, I am definitely not feeling myself!

On the train back to the hotel I was sat opposite three school age girls all dressed in what I would call a maid outfit, but not a french maid, more the old fashioned long skirt and thick petticoat kind, and a couple had bonnets on. They all had small suitcases so they must have been to something. They would have made a great picture and I thought about asking them. I’ve read that most of the time Japanese children are very happy to have their picture taken but I stuck to my usual reserve and kept the camera in my pocket.

It was a decent day out but I am down to just 1100 Yen (about $100) in cash. Most Japanese ATMs dont take non-Japanese cards and for some reason the machine here in the hotel is closed from Saturday lunchtime to Monday morning so I have been stuck with the cash I had on hand. So unless I grab a drink in the hotel and charge it, or buy a couple of tinnies from the off licence near by I am stuck with a dull night ahead of me.

Tokyo Cell Phones

guapacha — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 13:36:39 +0000

Just like the USA, cell phones are everywhere. Its rare you see anyone without one in their hand, if not talking then usually playing a game. The phones I see everywhere have a much squarer-look to them, not the rounded flip-top design popular in the US. But the biggest difference is that, in the 10 days I’ve now been here, I am yet to here one cell phone ring. I asked Aki last night and he said that it is polite to have the ringer turned off. Too bad we can’t have that in the US, save us from hearing the latest Britney tune butchered by tinny ringer going off all the freaking time.

At Work

guapacha — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 04:16:33 +0000

I don’t really understand why but it seems there are requests for me to appear in some of the pictures. I was going to say that here is proof that I am working in Tokyo but let’s face it this could be a meeting room anywhere. So, trust me when I say this is at SCEI, Tokyo, Japan.

Outside our ‘office’ is a large cubicle area, almost every desk has a test PS3 unit and there are numerous large LCD TVs, monitors around. Everytime I walk out to the toilet I see people playing various games; there are some great looking titles for the PS3. I know its expensive, and will probably be harder than a TMX Elmo to get hold of, but if you like games I think it will definitely be worth it.

No word yet on whether we will be working at the weekend but, if not, we might try and get out to Fuji Lakes and see the mountain. If we do, I’ll try to get someone to include me in at least a couple of the pictures.