All the nerds in the house say Nyeeeeeeeehhh!

Everyone that I've met over here has been a closet nerd in some way shape or form. Obsessive readers, book binders, mask collectors, internet bunnies, cosplayers, manga addicts, theatre fetishists, hippy human rights (currently not so) activists, comic book collectors: god bless us, but we're secretly one step away from putting on some broken Get Carter glasses and orthopedic shoes and developing acute sinus problems. And Japan really is the place to allow the nerd in you to run free. So, since arriving here in August, I have spent my time geeking out in Tokyo as often as I can, flitting between the likes of Akihabara (Tokyo's electronic city) and Harajuku Bridge. But today, on this chilly Monday evening, I have come to the conclusion that nerding is really, really bad for my health. Because i am a broken woman after this weekend. And it's all because of the Wii.

For those of you who have no idea what i'm on about, the Wii is Nintendo's new games console, the main selling point of which is that you can use the controller (or Wiimote) by moving it in order to play your games. So, if you're playing Wii Snooker, you hold the controller like an actual snooker cue and pot the ball like you would if you were playing real snooker (in my case, with immense difficulty...). Maybe i'm not explaining it so well, but it is a GENIUS idea. So this weekend saw the launch of the Wii in Japan, possibly the most games obsessed country in the world. And, true to form, amir decided that he wanted to buy one and check out the launch buzz around the place, so we decided to head to Tokyo to join the masses of gamers who were queuing up to get their hands on this marvel of modern technology.

The trip meant an early start, so we kipped for a few hours on Friday evening and got up at 1.30am to get the 3am train, coccooned in about 8 layers of clothing. The cycle to the train station was surreal as hell, because Numazu (the town i live in) was completely dead, apart from some crazy 80s saxophone and electric guitar version of Jingle Bells blasting eerily out of one of the shops near the station.

Tokyo was another story. Even though it was 5am, it was busy like rush hour. Salarymen in suits and insane teenage girls in shorts and knee boots journeyed to wherever the hell they were going, while i sat hating the world for making me be awake at this ungodly hour.

Needless to say i was angry at the world for being awake so early...

But nothing prepared us for the queues of THOUSANDS of people, waiting for the Wii at every electronics store in Shinjuku. We got to the massive Bic Camera in Shinjuku first at 5.40am. They weren't letting anyone else join the queue (later news reports informed us that they stopped letting people join that queue at ... wait for it... 5.40am, when the queue reached 4,000 people! Gutted!). Same at Yodobashi camera, same everywhere. The only place we came across that had a queue we could join was outside Sakuraya, and it was mental.

These poor souls were the ones standing behind us. The queue in front rounded three corners and went under a bridge.

The only ray of hope was the fact that the middle of the queue was comprised mostly of homeless people sleeping. In a nutshell, we stood for hours, watched the sun come up, saw a homeless guy drop his keks and take a dump on the street then sweep it up with a bockety sweeping brush that he was carrying around, and were finally politely told to fuck off by the Sakuraya people at 8.30 cos they were all sold out of Wiis. As we walked away we noticed that all the homeless people were still standing there, with tickets in their hands. BECAUSE SOME TOTAL BASTARDS HAD PAID THEM OFF TO STAND IN LINE FOR THEM WHILE THEY SAT IN STARBUCKS DRINKING FRAPPUCCINOS AND LAUGHING AT THE POOR FECKERS STANDING OUTSIDE. amir tells me that this happens at every launch, but it doesn't make me despise these particular fuckers any less.

Long story short, we put our names down in, and lost, a Wii lottery that was being held from 9-11am in Shinjuku, legged it to Akihabara where amir ended up third in line to the last 2 Wii's in all of Tokyo. or at least in that shop. By this point, we were experiencing a sensation close to jet-lag mixed with a hangover. So we (wii?) called it a day and accepted defeat. Later, when we got home, we learned that people had started queuing from Friday morning (and it didn't even go on sale till Saturday), so we were fecked from the start. Bollocks. Not a totally wasted trip though, because we went to the Dali exhibition for a few hours (i have a rant in me about that but it'll have to wait) and stumbled across an Irish pub called Lansdowne Road which we found open, empty and with all the lights turned off except for the bathroom.

Tempted to pour ourselves a pint and leave the money on the counter, but concerned that this pub had just fallen victim to a yakuza style slaying-fest with the dead owner hanging out the back with the beer kegs, we went upstairs to check next door when it would be open and were told that it was closed Saturdays. So i don't know for the life of me what the owner was thinkin leaving the place wide open. Only in Japan...