More from the techno-capital

I went five minutes overtime writing my blog entry yesterday. On my way out of the internet caffe the woman behind the till gave me a look that was cold enough to freeze the blood. She charged me another fifty pence and glared until I was out of sight. Punctuality really is very important here!

I was planning to head to the imperial palace today and see the home of the oldest reigning dynasty in the world. However, my parents are funding a small internet device (parents, I love you y'know!), so I find myself in the Shibuya apple store again, asking if Ipod touches will work with ISP cables. To my bitter disappointment, the answer is no. Neither do most blackberries so I'm off to Akihabara once more to see if I can find a specialist one (or a cheap laptop) that I can use in the dorm.

After my last blog post I looked around a few more Akihabara game shops and headed back home. On the way to the station I went past a park famous for being a "costume player" area. For reasons beyond my comprehension "cosplay" (or what I've taken to calling "codsplay"due to the way the people pronounce it) is a really big thing in Japan. Hundreds of people dress up as their favorite TV characters and parade around for hours on end, showing off their costume, socializing and "strutting their stuff".

Apparently on Sundays the park is full or all sorts of interesting apparel, but yesterday the only codsplayers were one lonely looking girl in a skimpy nurse uniform and a two wizards handing out promotional tissues.

On my way back to Shakuji I took a quick peek at one of Ikebukoro's many department schools and noticed a middle aged salary man sitting with his eyes closed in one of the shop's massage chairs. It was free and I had time to kill, so I sat down in the chair next to his and pressed the on switch.

The chair made a loud bleeping noise, then suddenly grabbed me with big leather grips and pulled me in. It systematically pummeled every part of my body for fifteen whole minutes while I tried not to yell. Claws from within latched onto my spine, tweaked my buttocks, squeezed my feet, tickled my neck and pushed and pulled everything they could get at. How the guy sitting next to me managed to keep his eyes shut throughout the experience is beyond me, but when my fifteen minutes were up he was still there, peacefully snoozing while his seat bashed him as hard as it could on the back of the head.

Now, off to find an ISP compatible miniature internet device. There must be one somewhere... this is Japan after all!