Right after stepping off the train, I entered an electronic jungle. The shortest building in the area is 5 stories tall. Every building, and each story within the building, is a shop. I found shops selling a wide range of stuff: from Video games and anime books to computers and even soldering equipment.
One of the buildings that I wandered into happened to be a specialty shop for old-school video games, specifically Nintendo. I had a field day seeing all the Japanese games that I had only heard about as a child.
I even found life-sized version of some old friends:
After leaving that retro-game shop, the group and I headed into the five-story arcade. Yes, a five story building with just arcade games. It was incredible. On the first floor were "claw" games. The second had interactive games (like dance dance revolution and guitar-hero type games), and the other 3 floors were simple arcade games. However, the machines were not so simple. Since these are the newest and greatest games, they all require an HD screen to give the full and greatest experience; the Japanese love HD. Each arcade machine had a 32" flat-screen HD TV. Once again, incredible. In my picture you can see about 40 Japanese youngsters surrounding a few screens. It just so happens that the day we were visiting, the arcade was holding a video game tournament for a new game called "Gundam Wing." I watched for a few minutes, and saying that these kids are good at video games is a gross understatement.
Another new and exciting day in Japan...
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