While walking randomly in a Chinatown-like area of Kobe affectionally called Nanking-machi, I got a little lost (among the easiest things to do in Japan, along with buying the wrong train ticket, having high school girls giggle at your presence, and hitting your head on signs in rail stations) and found Motoko Five, allegedly a shopping street but actually the ugliest row of junk shops and porno sellers I've ever seen.

This particular part of the street was organized flea-market style, with the old, raspy-voiced proprietor dumping various crap all over the place and then sitting down to read horse racing newspapers. It was at this place that I found a boxed Disk System with a couple of loose disks. After getting the old man's attention (he made it quite clear that I was highly inconveniencing his horse betting skills by actually trying to buy something) I bought the set for 1000 yen, and only then did I realize that I had no place at all to put it. Right. In the meantime I just carried it around in the plastic bag the guy unhelpfully provided me.

Walking down the row of shops revealed more of the same - this place is like Akihabara on downers; shops and stalls sell everything from archaic electronics to fine porcelain to animal porno videos (the latter of which my friends made fun of me for the rest of the trip about). After I bought the first Disk System I saw, I found no less than four more systems in the shops, in various states of looseness and completeness. But the highlight of the trip was yet to come...