I went to Akihabara for the first time the other day. In case you're not familiar with the place, it's Tokyo's electronics district. If you wanna buy something that computes, renders, clips, reproduces, or takes AA batteries, you'll find it in Akihabara. If you're a gaget fiend or a toy junky, you'll probably feel completely at home there.

And it maybe had the most lopsided male-female ratio of any public place I've seen in Japan, and that includes the men's side of the public spa I went to. The streets were crammed with guys. The youngest I saw looked to be about 10, and the oldest had to be in his 70's. And most of them had exactly the same look: an untucked, button down shirt with the top two buttons undone over a colored t-shirt, worn-looking cotton pants, sneakers and a backpack. The exceptions were rare. The occasional salaryman on a lunch break or junior high student playing hooky were the only ones I saw to break the dress code.

Beyond the visual oddity of seeing so many people dressed the same way, there was a strange atmosphere in most of the shops. And by "atmosphere" I mean "like, you know, the gases you breathe and stuff." Most stores were stuffy, too warm, and smelled like a mix of tobacco smoke and musty air. Like an attic with inadequate ventilation. Or someone's basement room that they don't leave for stretches of days at a time. It smelled a little like a Fry's electronics store, and a little like one of those older comic book shops. There was a funk of air that had been through too many sets of mouths and lungs, and of shirts that had been worn without washing a little too often. Not a smell of sweat or dirt, but of something like human physical inactivity in a small, enclosed space.

Needless to say, it was neither a healthy nor a comforting smell.

That aside, there was a lot of really cool stuff there, and before I left I was able to buy a bunch of cool plastic robots and stuff that'll be perfect for my tiny, one window apartment that I rarely leave on my days off.

What?