The Quest.

It began on Saturday night, just after I arrived in my Asakusa ryokan and noticed that my mobile phone was very low on power.
For that was when I realised that its AC power cord was back home in Brisbane, leaving me with the option of spending the next week in Japan with a telephone that has 18% of battery life, or getting a new AC adaptor.
It’s a Sony-built telephone, so getting a new adaptor for it in Japan ought to be a walk in the park, or at least easier than getting a new power cord for my Dell netbook computers, whose AC adaptors I also left behind in Brisbane.
That was what I thought, anyway.
First stop on the quest was Akihabara, a strange and noisy place where the electrical appliance shops are seven floors tall and where there are fetishistically-dressed meidos on almost every corner handing out pamphlets for the meido cafes at which they work.
If an AC adaptor could be got in Japan, it ought to be got in Akihabara.
And I did get one – a universal PC adaptor sold to me by a Bangladeshi called “Lotus” in a street-corner second-hand PC shop – within five minutes of stepping out of the station.
But one for the telephone proved to be a harder quest.
I tried the shop called “Onoden”, without luck, even though a beautiful young Japanese woman from Sydney who worked there tried her best to get me what I wanted.
So the beautiful young lass with the broad Sydney accent sent me up the road to a shop called “Akky II”, where a Frenchman working there tried his best, but with no success.
Then, in a roundabout fashion, Susan at the little Casio shop just down the road from the KFC underneath the trainline sent me to a department store called Yodobashi Camera.
No luck there, either in the AV department or in the mobile phone department – and it wasn’t for the want of trying on the part of the shop assistants who had to cope with my miserable Japanese.
Now I’m in Ginza, typing these words at a café table a few floors up in the Sony building.
The mobile phone is a Sony mobile phone. Surely, I thought, I should be able to get an adaptor for my phone from Sony, of all places.
Umm. No.
The Sony building is a Ginza landmark. It is also a showplace for Sony’s products, from pocket-sized PCs to full-wall television sets. In a way, it is a department store and it shares one definite thing in common with almost all Japanese department stores: an information desk near the entrance with a very helpful person there to help you to the best of their ability.
And the woman at the entrance to the Sony building almost went above and beyond the call of duty to get me a new power cord.
But it was all to no avail. After 20 minutes of trying, and phoning what seemed to be every department of the 10-floor Sony building except for the restaurants, she apologised that she couldn’t get me what I wanted.
It turns out that all of Japan’s mobile phone providers have their own, unique style of socket for their phones, and that the socket on my Sony W-760i is not compatable with any of the Japanese plugs.
“Maybe at the airport, someone can help you” was one apologetic suggestion I got in Akihabara.
Maybe, but I don’t like my chances…
But at least I won’t run out of power for my computers now.
I hope.