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from the tim rogers archive: 03082003
Today, Chris Kohler and I met at the Electric City exit of Akihabara. It was not too cold. As always, white men were around looking at MiniDisc players with too much excitement. Chris Kohler was looking for something -- I think a Sega Saturn memory card? -- with not too much excitement at all.
In our search, we went to FURENZU, a little family-owned shop at the end of Akihabara's "Strip." It was near the Suehirocho Subway Station -- that's on the Ginza Line -- and above a Segafredo (no relation to Sega) franchise Italian restaurant. While the rest of Akihabara grows and festers and pulsates neon, FURENZU -- katakana for "Friends" -- doesn't even have a sign outside. To find it, you either have to be lucky or have been led there by Chris Kohler. This accounts, perhaps, for their lonely business.
The shop itself is situated on the second floor of a walk-up building. The carpet is a few millimeters thin. On the floor to your right as you enter is a stack of 300-yen PC Engines. There's a Castlevania soundtrack on the stereo. The married owners behind the counter greet you with an "Irasshaimase," a bow, and silence. The wife is putting price stickers on HuCards, and the husband is clicking at his computer.
FURENZU is one of those stores you can find only in Akihabara -- only here is the videogame market traffic busy enough to endow such a tiny, unknown shop with so damned many used games and game systems.
They didn't have what Chris Kohler wanted. When asked, the husband seemed to think quite deeply before he declared they didn't have it.
Kohler and I headed back into Akihabara proper. In a twelve-story shop with floors as wide as my bedroom in America, Kohler bought a vintage Donkey Kong Game & Watch as I ogled a copy of Dungeons and Dragons Collection for Saturn. It was 7800 yen. I've been homeless for, what, three weeks now? Where am I going to find the money for this game? Even then, what the hell am I going to do with it? Look at it?
Kohler said something about wanting to go to AsoBitCity, so I took him on the whirlwind tour. It was only when we reached the fourth floor and pounded the hell out of a couple of electronic drums that I realized I had my digital camera on me. It was only when we reached the floor with model guns that I decided to make a little video. Note Kohler's profane surprise upon learning that the camera actually records sound. Oops!
Kohler wouldn't stop telling me about DenDen Town. He kept comparing DenDen Town -- Osaka's Akihabara -- to Akihabara. I didn't really catch most of the comparisons. It's okay, though -- if I'd been to DenDen Town, I'd be comparing it to Akihabara, too. I know this without ever having gone there. I know this because me and Kohler bought capsule toys at AsoBitCity.
Kohler said something about how DenDen Town had some "Capsule Tower" or something -- full of capsule toys -- when I told him that AsoBitCity's selection was purportedly the largest in Akihabara.
Regardless of this Kansai vs. Kanto battle, much fun was had with the buying of capsule toys. Or, well, much fun was had at the end of the day, when we watched the videos. At the time we made the videos, it was no laughing matter.
See, we were trying to get a plush capsule toy of Hikaru, lead character from the Shonen Jump manga Hikaru no Go. We could not do this. Not with a million tries. The anger just about erupted from our pores and melted the police officers casing the vestibule.
Witness my take.
Then witness Kohler's.
And then witness the smoothest Super Mario statue the world has ever known.
Smooth.
On the way out, we marveled at another statue. It was a Steel Battalion statue. Ahh, yes. A little trick camerawork for you.
Chris Kohler, in being a selfish bastard, then denied my invitation to dine at Tenya, Japan's favorite fast food tempura joint. (For you hungry first-time Akihabara shoppers, the Tenya on the main strip is low-class. I wouldn't touch it with a fourteen-and-a-half-foot saibashi, these days. After that incident where they ran out of rice just before preparing my meal -- hell. Luckily, Akihabara has two Tenyas -- including one just a little out of the way, behind the Electric Ghetto near the Electric City exit of Akihabara Station. Begin: the tempura hunt!)
(author's note (06072003): The best Tenya I've found is in Harajuku. Yes, that Harajuku. And yes, this Harajuku, land of loose socks. Just to engulf you in the loose-sockedness, here's a seven-second video clip of the loose-sockiest place on earth.
I sat and watched Kohler eat his damned curry. He compared it to Osaka curry. Son of a bitch.
I took a picture of the waitress. It's not a bad shot.
For some reason I can't explain, Kohler and I then took a train to Shibuya, and saw nothing. He wanted to buy a magazine from Tower Records. The magazine had his name in it. He hadn't found it the day before, in Shinjuku. Ahh, Shinjuku.
When he'd found what he wanted, we hopped another train up to Ikebukuro, here we spent the remainder of our evening.
There, under the watchful eye of a Sega game center near the famed Sunshine City shopping complex, we shot world-exclusive insert credit video interviews with Sonic the Hedgehog.
I wasn't able to get much out of the Blue Bastard.
Neither was Kohler.
Our disappointment was soon alleviated, as we found what appeared to be an arcade token. It was not an arcade token. In our anger, we damned several things to hell.
Then we called a friend of mine, and tried to have dinner. Ah, we went to Shinjuku, and ate at Tenya. Chris Kohler was outnumbered. One of us drank a beer. I don't remember which one. It wasn't me, I'm sure.
Since I cannot show any photographic evidence of the three of us at Tenya, I'll show evidence of me alone at Tenya. First person to guess the background music . . . has obviously been reading my livejournal.
It's Kisu-shite hoshii, by The Blue Hearts. Just as I finished eating and took off my headphones to go to the bathroom, I became aware of the music. Astute readers and possessors of broadband internet connections will also notice that this is the very same background music in another of these video clips.
author's note (06072003)): It's also -- I shit you not -- playing as I type this right now. It just totally came up at random on my Winamp playlist. Intriguing.
Since I can't show you any photographic evidence that the friend Chris Kohler and I met does exist -- why not accept evidence that I do have some friends?
And with one of those friends' help, the three of us recorded a little video that was supposed to represent the whole of the game Xenogears. I'm not sure of how well we captured it.
Yes, my hair are in pigtails. Yes, that's Kohler on the tin whistle. Yes, that's my friend's back at the beginning of the video. Yes, that's all improvised.
Kohler was pleased with the video. It was then that he told me we should show it to the guys at Penny Arcade.
author's note (06072003): Kohler also said he could totally get insert credit some Penny Arcade Linkage thanks to the video clips we'd filmed over the course of the day. At the time, I took him for a quarter of a lying bastard. Months later, at E3, as part of our GET KOJIMA project, we actually came across Gabe and Tycho. At the time, our own Brandon Sheffield didn't understand the scientific significance of the project. And that's alright. Maybe now that he's gotten back from his own trip to Japan, he understands?
(edit: 03102003
Just two nights after this fated encounter, Kohler and I and some other Fulbright guy met in Ikebukuro. Late, late that night, we witnessed a taxicab back into a metal pole, shattering its taillight. The driver got out and inspected the damage, then got back into his vehicle, then sped away. Kohler and dude and I inspected the debris. Three triangular pieces of taillight lay on the ground.
We each took one.
A pact was formed.
The Fellowship of the Taillight Triforce.
We liked to pretend it was a Triforce, see.)
It was nice to spend some time in the warm lobby of Kohler's ryokan. Eventually, however, I was kicked out onto the street. I saw my friend to the station. We got on adjacent trains, and I waved to her as we both rode in the directions of our own differing levels of home.
**
Her home was in Seijogakuenmae, in Setagaya. They have a ROM HOUSE there, too.
I once asked her about her ROM HOUSE. I asked her if she ever shopped there. She said she used to. I then asked her why she doesn't anymore. She made a face like she was making something up.
"My brother had an incident there," she said.
"Oh yeah? What happened?"
She looked down, and then up.
"They hurt his pride."
I had to try to not laugh out my nose.
"Oh yeah?"
"No," she said. "Not really."
I knew it was a joke. Still, it moved me. She wouldn't have joked about it if that sort of thing didn't happen at some points or some others, right?
When my friend introduced to me the idea of a videogame-buying experience hurting someone's pride, I felt like I came a little closer to understanding Akihabarology.
When the little independent import shop in Indianapolis, Indiana hurt my pride one day in April 2003, I came even closer to understanding it all. The hurting of the pride made me long for the smell of the long, noble, Electric Ghetto, with the Turkish meat I'd never eat and the expensive games it will take me much hard work to afford. I thought of the basements of pornography beneath the large LAOX stores, sometimes as long and wide as entire Sofmaps. When I bought Goemon Kira-kira dochuu: DANCER ni natta riyuu! from FURENZU, and the wife wrapped it with a plastic bag the size of an evenlope, a paper bag the size of a smaller envelope, and a square of yellow tape, I thought about those porn basements: they show the same double-bagging care to each and every purchased rectangle of pornography. At the time I bought the eight-hundred-yen Super Famicom cartridge of my dreams -- on my last day in tokyo -- I thought the wrapping process a little silly. I wondered why I couldn't ever talk to my game store owners in Tokyo. I remembered my time employed part-time at a GameStop in Bloomington, Indiana: I was hired just to talk to people. I began to feel a little bit of pride toward my game-buying. It makes me long for Akihabara's tight capitalism.
And now I know how that pride can be hurt. How, of course, is far beyond the scope of this essay. To find out how my videogame-pride was hurt, and far away from Akihabara, stay tuned to a certain feature.
June 7th, 2003: My twenty-fourth birthday. I'm not in Tokyo at the moment. With all hope, I should be, soon.
Thank you for reading.
--tim rogers has a not-so-funny story to tell you
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