Polygon Pitch: I research Sushi Restaurants in Sangenjaya and figure out how much you would have to eat to eat $1200 of sushi. Then I would eat that sushi. I would not enjoy it. I hate sushi.
As I had to take this very route described today I am mad because it would not infact be easy. More so travelling from Sangenjaya to the beach (Enoshima) is semi-complicated and requires between two and three trains. Enoshima also kicks ass and I should go next week to clear my head.
Now travelling from Sangen to Akiba has three distinct routes.
Sangen to Shibuya changing to the Yamanote to Akiba. This is probably the route in question but anyone that has even just played Persona 5 knows that transferring from the Den En Toshi Line to the Yamanote is hard. I help at least two groups of tourists a week with this. It requires leaving the gates and going up two confusing staircases and then turning left in a way that really makes no reasonable sense. Then leaving Akiba station would also be daunting and confusing but considering they end up at What seems to be Yodobashi Camera (on the 3rd floor near the air conditoners??) we will put that asside (for now).
Route two requires two transfers which would be doubly daunting for a hikkomori teenager with space issues. You can travel via the Hanzomon but would need to transfer to the Ginza line and then transfer again to the Hibiya to reach the subway exit at Akiba which has one exit and fairly easy to ride up and out into Yodobashi Camera.
Now speaking of the Ginza Line. In Persona 5 you transfer at Shibuya to the Ginza Line to go to aoyama-icchome to go to class. This is baffling. I understand the developers wanted to give the player a shock of being in the big city and not knowing how to navigate the train lines. And transfering from the Den-En-Toshi to the Ginza is an excellent way to convey that. Again seem my comment about helping tourists.
But!
The Den-En-Toshi connects directly to the Hanzomon line at Shibuya station. It is a continous line. More than that it goes directly to Aoyama-iichome. There is an English speaking hospital at Aoyama1 and an excellent Hawaiian Coffee place. Also a subway. Eat fresh.
Now route 3 which I took TODAY is the prefered and easiest way to get to Akiba but you do not even go to Akiba at all. You ride the den-en-toshi past Shibuya. The train line becomes the Hanzomon Line. The next stop from Shibuya, Omotesando, has a transfer TO THE GINZA LINE on the same platform. It requires getting off the train and getting on in a move that requires mere thirty seconds.
*- author’s note strangely most train route calculators will tell you to transfer to the Hanzomon or Ginza at Aoyamaiichome station which requires going up and down and up and down a flight of stairs in a station that is just a pile of crossing trainlines with a very real possibilty of not paying enough attention and ending up on the Toei Oedo Line a different company entirely.
Now from this transfer to the Ginza line you ride to Suehirocho and go out at exit 3 which puts you on the opposite end of the Akiba strip from Akiba Station. If you get saucy and take exit 4 you just need to do a 180 and go around the corner to get to FRIENDS the Select Button game store of choice.
But that is just the route she is taking. The bigger question is what game was she after. We have some metrics to work with in this. First we must break the fiction of Persona 5 by establishing that there is in fact a Don Quioxte, a Tsutaya, and a Bookoff in Sangenjaya. I mean there is also a Walmart* and a subway (eat fresh.)**
- translator’s note in 2008 after being rebuked from even opening a store in Japan, The Walmart Corporation just bought a chain of Japanese department stores and groceries. It is called Seiyu**. In the past 10 years they have made the instore bags say walmart, the store brand is great value, they look like a walmart, and the store credit card is Walmart.
** editor’s note the Subway closed recently along with 200 Subways nationwide. It was replaced with a Becker’s Burgers.
***- When Walmart bought Seiyu it also bought what Seiyu owned which was the fine home goods store of Muji. Yeah Walmart owns Muji. Get owned.
Futaba could not want for a “video game”. It is only reasonable she must have wanted a PC game. But with the rise of digital downloads it must be more than that. She specifically needed some kind of doujin game. Probably a touhou. She is underage at the time so her theoritical places in Akiba where she could buy this game are limited. But then again we do meet her in Yodobashi Camera so maybe she just wanted A Falcom game. But if that was the case…(continued in part 2)