So, of course, on our first full day back in Tokyo, we headed out to AKIHABARA - also known as “electric town.”  Crammed with electronics, computers, anime, manga, video games, DVDs, video game arcades, pachinko parlors (well, pachinko seems to be everywhere), maid cafes (no we haven’t been to one of these), it’s heaven for us geeks.

We went Sunday afternoon; usually the main street on Sunday afternoons is closed off to traffic, allowing people dressed up in “cos-play” to sing, perform, pose for photos etc. etc..  We weren’t really sure why, but nothing seemed to be happening this afternoon, and traffic continued as usual.  So instead we browsed the stores and stopped for a lunch of Japanese curry.

One of the many things I love about hanging around in Tokyo is that you never know what you might run into, as things just seem to happen, everywhere, all the time!  This afternoon, as we approached the plaza in front of the train station to continue on to our next destination, we suddenly noticed there were a whole bunch of rather official-looking people - Secret Service-like in fact - descending into the plaza, to the point where there were more of them than anyone else.  It seemed like something interesting was about to happen, so we camped ourselves in front a small stage that was being set up, pulled out our iPod Touch dictionary (if you have one of these, the gogoNAVI Japanese-English dictionary is a must!  For $4.99 -- last time I checked on sale for $2.99 -- it’s the BEST electronic diciontary for beginners I’ve found -- much more useful than the $200 electronic dictionary we bought a couple years ago.  You can search in English, hiragana, and even by Kanji - http://www.gogonavi.net/english.html). . .and looked up the kanji on the sign in front of the stage: 

自民党              ”じみんとう”         Liberal Democratic Party

And before we knew it, about an hour and a half later, we had nearly front row seats to a speech given by Japan’s recently chosen Prime Minister Taro Aso. 

Apparently the new Prime Minister is a self-proclaimed “otaku,” (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=otaku) which explains his appearance in Akihabara.