maps and mazes
took a solo adventure today that i was not originally planning to take.
originally, my plan was to do precisely nothing today, in preparation for the extremely exhausting day i will have tomorrow in nagano. but since i found out my camera lens was dirty, that was just the excuse i needed to go visit map camera in shinkuku once again. i love this store, and now had a realistic reason to visit. so of course, i did. i needed a camera lens cleaning kit, and i need to have it before i go see the monkeys in nagano tomorrow. i would be so angry if i got home from that trip to a bunch of dirty lens photos. i am not kidding when i say the monkeys in nagano are like 50% of the reason I am even in japan right now in the first place.
i knew id be wanting to nerd out at the fancy camera stuff (and lets be real, probably end up buying something), so i went alone today. i cant imagine standing around at the camera store would be fun for my mom.
first stop, map camera in shinjuku!
i believe i mentioned this last year, but shinjuku station is truly a staggering thing to behold. Someone made a 3d map of it here. built in 1885, it serves an estimated 3.6 million train passengers per day, and is 182,000 square meters. thats 0.7 square miles for the freedom lovers out there. this train station is so big that there are 53 train platforms and over 200 exits. it is registered in the guiness book of world records as the busiest train station in the world. japan holds the top 8 places in this ranking. in 2024, it served 1,163,700,000 people. obviously there will be a lot of repeats in there, i am not saying 14% of the human population was in shinjuku in 2024. but anyway, the scale of this place is unimaginable.
i went to map camera, bought the cleaning kit i needed, and also bought a new lens. i sold them my 40mm lens and bought a 35mm. i dont think anyone reading this really cares about the technical breakdown of camera stuff, but this lens i bought is very nice.
while i was waiting for them to finish inspecting the lens i was selling them, i sat outside and took photos of pigeons that started to gather around me. i suspect pigeons can identify foreigners, because they did not gather around anyone else. i had 4 pigeons land and start pacing around me within moments of sitting down, but no one else in the area did. maybe the pigeons have learned that foreigners are more likely to eat while walking (considered rude here) and leave crumbs?
shinjuku is ready to play grand theft auto 7 on the playstation 12. i don’t know what this building is, but it looks a lot like a ps5.
lens in hand and mission accomplished, i had one other task i wanted to accomplish while in tokyo, and this seemed to be the best time for it. I wanted to visit a famous used video games and consoles store called super potato in akihabara. they have everything you can imagine in the world of retro games. new unopened boxes of the original pokemon games, used and new versions of every console ever made, its crazy. you want a brand new in box super nintendo? a lightly used sega dreamcast? an unopened copy of pokemon green? this is the place to go. the store is 5 floors of tightly packed game merch. they asked me to put my camera away when i went in. i imagine people just window shopping taking pictures slows down traffic significantly and they dont like it.
anyway, the reason i wanted to come here is something i have wanted for like 15 years, a gameboy micro. it is a very small version of the gameboy advance. it came out in 2005, 2 years after the gameboy advance sp that i and everyone i know had. i think the faceplates are interchangeable and there were a few different kinds you could get.
i never had one, but i didnt want one at the time. now it seems awesome and i have wanted to get my hands on one forever. over the years i have on multiple occasions looked them up, told myself “aint no way im paying $300 for that” and given up. but i figured while im here, i will go to super potato and if they have one and its $300, fine sure i’ll do it.
so i arrive in akihabara and am immediately overwhelmed. this place is absolutely nuts! its just nothing but nerd stores. they got anime merchandise, cosplay, pokemon cards (including one store that only sells psa 10 pokemon cards. i think no one reading this knows what that means, but trust me thats cool as heck), electronics, tools, vtuber merch, video game merch, its insane. every nerd in the country can find whatever they are into in this one subsection of tokyo.
i made my way over to super potato and weaved through the tiny aisles until i found what i was looking for… sort of.
they have one gameboy micro in stock. but its brand new in box, and its a special limited edition one. so of course, its ¥327,800. thats $2,171. i want one, but not that badly. unless the box secretly also contains like, $1700, i’m good on this one.
i think i will not ever get my hands on one of these. the price is only going to go up, and i am not a collector, i would use it.
at least i checked the place out!
day complete, i headed back to home base to rest until the big day tomorrow.
note: the blog post for tomorrow may be a bit late, because i bet i will have 300+ photos to edit.
じゃあまたね!
