Electronics paradise

After my laptop kindly broke down right after my arrival in Japan, I needed to do something asap. Running some checks on my laptop, I found out that the hard disk had become unreadable and after checking the error code on a couple of internet forums, I deemed it a waste of money to call HELL helpdesk. So off to Tokyo`s electronics town Akihabara.
Akihabara is known for two things: cheap electronic products and "Otakus" - freaks who are usually dig porn manga. Spending time in Akihabara soon results in a headache, it`s flashy with neon lights in every possible spot and loud to drive you crazy. In front of every store some guy is shouting out the latest offers on electronics, lcd screens showing commercials and then endless beeping, beeping, beeping from whatever appliances that are constantly running. Nothing for weak nerves, really.
I was originally looking for a netbook with English operating system, for obvious reasons. There are only a handfull of export oriented stores that do sell those. It turned out that the choice of models for the English language models is very limited, to about four, two of which were some Chinese brands I had never heard of in my life and would not consider buying. The prices were rather steep compared to the Japanese models and it turned out that it only included a trial version of Office for 60 days and the permanent version would cost quite a bit in addition. Nothing attractive at all. What was interesting was that the new target customer group are the Chinese. There was Chinese speaking staff in the stores and quite a few Chinese tourist groups shopping for electronics.
It turned out that the only place in Akihabara where I could get a cheaper, brand notebook was in some Indian guys` shop on a corner. Just that the models on offer were a couple of years old...
I finally went to the more quiet "Bic Camera" store in Shinjuku and ended up buying a Japanese language Acer netbook for a pretty decent price. They even found a shop assistant who was willing to try his best to consult me in English (it was more a J-inglish conversation).
I had some problems setting the thing up at home then and it would have taken me a while to translate all the kanji (Chinese characters), but what do I have Japanese collocators for? Tomoko and Jun were nice enough to do it for me and now all I have to struggle with are the Japanese language programms... It`s quite funny, not necessarily convenient, but ok for now. Please excuse me if all of a sudden a few Japanese characters appear in the text - it means I hit the wrong button :-)