The city's abuzz with the sounds of Christmas

More specifically, it was Jingle Bells over and over and over again. In the train stations, on the escalators, outside of small shops and inside department stores. Throughout our adventures in Akihabara and Shibuya Mark and my ears were harangued by familiar tunes of cheer but with indistinguishable lyrics. "No way, is that 12 Days of Christmas playing?" Mark stopped dead in his tracks just to make sure he wasn't hearing things. It was quite comical, trying to pair up the words we know to the words we were hearing. The crowds were dizzying-comparable to New York City with the hustle and bustle but without the move it or lose it aggression. So no matter what corner of the planet you live (granted I've never been in a Muslim country during Christmas) the holidays are the holidays are the holidays.

Here's a fun fact. According to the CIA World Fact Book, only .7% of the Japanese people are actually Christian (about 900,000 people give or take a few) so you'd think that festivities would be a little more subdued or at least a little more diverse with 84% claiming to be Shinto or Buddhist. To a degree, it's unfortunate. I guess if gift buying/giving is done in a way that shows appreciation and value for the human spirit it's not so bad. It's the buying for the sake of buying because it's that time of year again that drives me crazy. So the culture of consumerism hasn't suffocated just the United States. Japan's cities' billboards and newspaper ads show what is hip in the in crowd and given the young and trendy outfits we saw (yes rainbow bright standing next to the Mark City pic is a common style) it looks like many people try to be in that crowd. But with the Japanese economy in a recession and the commercialization of the holidays, I guess retailers are capitalizing on whatever pushes the products. And right now it happens to be jingle bells.

Apparently our first stop of the day is crazy with electronics whether it's the holidays or not. Even the exit sign from the train pointed to 'Electric Town'. Akihabara, bring it on. Block after block, high rise after high rise this area was a big kid's dream. This section of Tokyo is Best Buy, Lowes, and Home Depot on steroids. Every alleyway had a theme and every store was floor after floor of things to make your electric bill soar/sore. And if you didn't want to purchase a new state of the art computer, vacuum, rice cooker or camera, you could just wander around until you found the individual parts to put one together yourself.

We finished our day in Shibuya, the NYC could be if there were more horns, smog and people yelling, 'Yo, foggettaboutit!'. Mark had some ipod issues so we hit up the Apple store and came out with a brand new one. Ah, thank goodness the world is flat.