At the Heart of It

Ok, so today we're going to go somewhere good.

It's in Ginza, the poshest part of Tokyo:


　 But its on the other end of Ginza, so we need to walk past...

A giant woman stuck inside a box:


　 A massive Chanel store with teams of bowing women sales assistants.


　 A big "Bvlgari" (is it me, or has anyone else spotted the typo?)


Audi trying to sell cars into the Japnese market (good luck - so far I haven't seen a single non-Japanese car anywhere):　


　 Alfred:


And a gold-plated Cartier store:


　 Ok, we're nearly there. Just wait at the junction while checking out the dog in the pram:


　 Here we are - the Sony building !

If Ginza is the heart of Tokyo, then surely the Sony showroom is the very pulsating heart of Japan.


　 Now, with three floors of showroom, you are almost guaranteed something good.

When I was here some four years ago, the Playstation Portable (PSP) had just been released (months ahead of America, with Europeans just left to drool from afar). They had several rooms where you could play on one.

This time there seems to be a lot of slightly wider, slightly more energy efficient TVs (including one which displays of how many Watts its doing relative to a non energy efficient model - turns out that the colour of the picture displayed significantly affects the power use).

There also were several rooms of incrementally better cameras, recording equipment, music players.

Robodog (or whatever his name was) was a notable absentee.

However, there was a Rolly, which is a dancing audio egg. Difficult to explain - just look at the link to the youtube video.

Also, a mobile-phone sized picture-perfect tv and radio:



　 $380. Local Japanese say this is "ordinary" (boring).

So, how about a Bravia (TV), which you can put in the shower?

　 Unfortunately, this isn't cutting-edge (anymore) either:

　 They also had this:
　



A shaker table with two video cameras on it. One of them is the latest anti-shaking camera. On the split-screen, you can see the difference, but I was kind of left wondering how much I need it. Still, if it catches on, it will absolutely kill the market for tripods.

However, in terms of genuine slap-in-the-face/stop-and-gawp factor, there really only was one condenter:

Does this look like a flat tv to you?


　
How about now?

If it wasn't for the fact that they are $2,000 apiece, I would seriously consider buying one, at least to shave with. However, it seems that you need the hands of a museam curator, or an average Japanese electronics fan, in order to not break it by the time you take it out of the box.