We spent the morning in the Akihabara district. If you don't know Tokyo, this is an area of the city famous for its electronics shops. Stores range from typical You tourist, Duty Free tourist traps to general consumer electronics stores. Under the tracks is a collection of little stalls (maybe 2m by 4m) where all sorts of parts, gadgets, and miscellanous paraphernalia can be bought basically at cost.

We didn't buy a single thing.

Now, we were both shocked. We're both gadget hounds, we both drool at the site of a Fry's. When we were in Hongkong earlier this year we probably dropped US$500 or so on miscellaneous gadgets. I don't know if it's an effect of globalization, China, or just a general slowdown in innovation, but we saw nothing that made us drop our jaws and drool gotta have that!

There's a couple things I may return to get, but mostly because of the cost difference between here and the U.S. I don't necessarily need them (ok, the Bluetooth Stereo headset from Logicool (aka LogicTech) would be nice, but not necessary, and I'm not even certain my computers support the headset profile. And now that I've found it's available at Amazon there is no reason to buy it here.) The other item I found here was a four port DVI/USB KVM. It's also available in the US but for maybe US$300 more than I could get it for here.

We returned to the hotel mid-afternoon and ended up crashing for the remainder of the afternoon. Between the jetlag and the unceasing rain there was little motivation to wander outside. The good news though is that the rain appeared to break early in the evening.

We ate dinner at Kozue (also: 1, 2, 3). I had a set menu consisting of some sashimi and rolls, beef shabu-shabu, and noodles. Lisa had grilled mackeral and pickled vegetables (and complained that I'd chosen the better meal). Having eaten at Masa earlier this year we managed to gulp down the prices at Kozue with minimal discomfort (I've decided that I will divide all prices in Yen by 1000 instead of 100 to get to a quick and dirty conversion. It's totally, totally wrong but much more palatable).

Today we don't have anything specific planned, the rest of the group arrives late afternoon and we have to shift hotels. If the weather stays clear we may take on some of the parks and temples (though a visit by us to Yakusuni Shrine is unlikely). Laundry. Laundry might be a big thing today (having run through everything I'd packed because of the rain and my intense desire to not sit around in wet clothes).