Go and read this post over at Colony Drop by Sean, and then read the comments.

I like Akihabara a lot. The first time I went there was back in the 1989 (I believe) when I came to Japan with my dad. I bought a portable CD player (a ridiculously impossible thing at the time) with the money I had been saving. I marveled at the computers in the shops. We had an Apple //e, I was just beginning to do some programming in Basic and Pascal at the time. The color MSX computers on display at the time were amazing. I had never known anything about Japan before my first trip there, and afterwards I was interested.

A few years (well, a decade and a bit) later when I finally moved out here in a professional capacity, and Akihabara has changed. I miss the focus on computers, and the whole area seems like a high commercialized anime marketplace now. I was into anime in high school and college, but it never really stuck with me. I have been reading and translating manga for many years, mostly because that is something I can do at my own pace and it is easy to work in translation in small chunks of free time, so I’m familiar with the culture. But it isn’t really anything that I am too interested in. As a professional programmer though, I miss the focus on more unique hardware and DIY computer projects. That still is there – and hey, stop by the Linux cafe next time you are in Akihabara – but that really seems like less of a focus now.

I also am big into Street Fighter, and really enjoyed when SF4 was on play test at the Hey! arcade there.

Anyway, the comment thread is really interesting. I haven’t ever met Max Hodges but know of him through the ex-pat blogosphere and like what he writes. I have no idea who this Sean guy is. I’ve seen Patrick Galbraith in Akihabara before, but I’m not really into the whole moe thing. Doesn’t mean I look down on it; I’m just not into it.

But wow, total ex-pat nerdfight.