It's hard to explain...

Winter vacation has ended and the first thing I can think of is when my next day off is...I guess I am a lazy bastard. :)

Feeling adventurous today, I ventured into Den-Den Town in nearby Ebisucho. Den-Den Town? That sounds whack you say, but there's a perfectly good explanation. In Japanese, Denki means electricity and subsequently this place mainly sells electronics and everything related to it. Tokyo has a similar neighbourhood called Akihabara where they have the newest and most interesting stuff. Since Osaka is like Tokyo's little bro playing catch-up, it birthed Den-Den Town. If anything, it's nerd nirvana.


Two stops and a transfer later, I was wandering about Den-Den Town taking in the sights and everything that it had to offer. To give you a better idea of the area, it's one very long main street with covered sidewalks and a ton of stores lining it. There's much more in the alleys, but I wasn't feeling *that* adventurous.





The first store that caught my eye coming out of the station was this toy store caled Super Position. Yeah. Super Position. If there's one thing I've learned being here for 2 months now is that the English makes no frickin' sense. Val and I have a theory that they just randomly pick words they think sound cool and mash em together. Two other memorable names I've seen (for clothing stores no less) are Ice Plate and Cinderella Chance. Engrish at its finest. :D

Anyhow, in Japan theres a ton of these capsule toy machines like the crappy ones you find in the grocery store in Canada except most people here are collectors and these plastic things are of significantly better quality. The toys you get are a part of a set and in an effort to help facilitate the set completing, stores like Super Position are all over Den-Den Town. Inside the store is walls upon walls of little bags filled with these toys. The price per bag can range from $3-$50 depending on rarity I assume. Here's a better look...



Here's a capsule bank in front of the store.


The whole store looks just like this. (Apologies for the sideways-ness. No photo editing program yet. :( )


Here's a close-up! Weird stuff in them bags.

After that, I continued down the street which was game store after stereo store after computer store. The other kind of store of note that I saw was the old school used game stores. I've never seen anything like this in my life. Since space is at a premium on this little island nation, a lot of these stores are narrow and have multiple floors. Same as the toy stores, it was racks of old Japanese games and systems. Yesteryear's museum of sorts I suppose. Here's some pics I managed to sneak (normally stores don't like it when you take pictures for some odd reason). Seeing this retro game store made me wonder why we don't have anything like this in Canada. Ever since Val's NES died I've been looking for a replacementand If I lived in Japan it'd be super easy. Canada...not so much. :(


Holy. Crap.

They're all individually bagged and hung up. I have no idea how anyone finds anything around this place. It's like the library from hell.

Hope that wasn't too nerdy for y'all!