Headed down to Akihabara last night, Tokyo’s electric city. It’s probably the only place in Tokyo, or the entire world, for that matter, where you can have the opportunity to win what appears to be a catholic schoolgirl uniform from a claw machine.

niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice.
I was actually surprised to find a number of bands busking in the streets outside of the subway station here. All the blogs and guides that I’ve read points these things towards other places like Shibuya and Shinjuku. But right outside of the JR station here, I was fortunate to find three of ‘em, each within several yards of eachother.

What you’ll often see is artists promoting their own albums, even though they’ve already been signed. And you can buy their albums right there.

These two were literally 15 feet away from the other girl. They took forever to get ready so I got bored and moved on to the next group, 10 feet away. These guys I liked.

They’re a group called Myst, and they remind me a lot of Eric Clapton, but with a traditional Japanese musical influence. Their combination of fast-paced acoustics with old school drum and cymbal beats make for an interesting sound. I bought two of their albums, and I would defintiely recommend checking them out if you get the chance.

So the following afternoon I went back to Harajuku to check out a bridge called Jingo-bashii. Apparently a bunch of cosplay people like to hang out there on the weekends. Here are some pics:

oh, white people…

Anyway, afterward, I headed to Shibuya to watch the season finale of the Office, which was long overdue, but unfortunately inevitable because I don’t get NBC in japan…

And I must say, sitting in an otaku cafe in Japan watching the greatest hour of television ever made with a box of vending machine yakisoba… hands down, the greatest experience of my life.

And for those of you who saw the episode, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

// tim