Checked out of my hotel in Tokyo this morning, but left my luggage there for a bit. Wanted to hang out in Akiba for a little while and see what it was like on Sunday (what was it like? Crowded, and there were a few interesting people about), I got bored of people watching after a while, though, so mid-afternoon (after hanging out for a few hours) I hopped the train back to Uguisudani, grabbed my luggage, and lugged everything down here to Yokohama, where I checked in a bit early. The weather was nice for a while today (it was even almost sunny -- a bit on the hazy side, but generally not exactly cloudy) in Akihabara. The good weather seems to have fled now, though -- I was going to take some pictures of the Sakura by the river here, but I guess now not so much. Did take a number of pictures in Akihabara (including some of the sakura floating in the river from the bridge south of the main drag -- they were quite pretty).

Let's see... Some observations:

The Mega Mac is really something that I would have expected to have been invented in America, not Japan. In fact, I'm a little surprised it hasn't been brought to America yet (for the record, it's not too bad -- not exactly what you expect out of a Big Mac, though, the lettuce and sauce are wrong, and the hamburger itself is strangely spiced -- although the spices aren't a bad thing, I'd say. I'm not sure if I like McDonalds here better or worse than America, they're just different -- of course, I'm not the biggest fan of McD's in America, either. They're way down there on Doug's fast food hierarchy of ultimate justice. Both here and in Japan).

I swear that whoever made the songlist for this SoftBank kiosk near where I was sitting for a while stole it directly from my iPod. They never played anything that wasn't on my current random playlist (which is a fraction of my total library at 1GB or so). Including the Japanese Stuff. There was some Maroon 5, some Do As Infinity, other stuff I forget now. It was almost creepy.

There was this one of those street salesgirls (you know, the ones that stand on the sidewalk and give out flyers and things in Japan?) that everyone was taking a picture of. I'm not exactly sure why, she didn't seem particularly prettier than the others, nor did she have a particularly eye-catching outfit (she wasn't one of the ones dressed up like a maid or something, although maybe there's some anime character that dresses like that and I just didn't recognize it, but there were two or three others in the same outfit, too), nor was it just the otaku guys doing it -- I saw at least one woman take a picture, too. Basically, I just didn't get it.

Really warm today. Like, 70's -- according to the forecast, that shouldn't last. I'm just hoping for one more day of nice weather for picture takiing -- I'm perfectly happy going to Shimostuma in the rain. :)

Got accosted (so to speak) at the station in Yokohama by somebody who was apparently raising relief money for the earthquake last week. They seemed legit (earnest enough, and this is Japan, where I imagine that a scam would have gotten shut down pretty fast, though I don't really know for sure -- anyway, I just gave him 1000円, which is a lowish-end meal worth of money, anyway). Did the sort of usual (at this point) mixture of Japanese and English communication that I seem to do here around the, er, over-civilized parts of Japan, to the point where I don't quite remember which parts I said in Japanese, and which in English. Which is kind of weird to me at this point. He did the usual 上手ですね thing (which, of course, means my Japanese isn't very good, which I already knew). I suppose that it somehow still amuses me.

Anyway, gonna take it a bit easy tonight. Go find some food, maybe crash early. Might go to Shimotsuma tomorrow. Find the Jusco. Take pictures.

[see photos on flickr]