Net Results: "David, mom says we have to leave now," whines the pre-teen American boy at his brother. "Now!" he adds loudly, when the younger boy grunts and slumps further into a white leather sofa.

If you were in that sofa, you probably wouldn't be moving either, because in front of you would sit resplendent the reward for climbing the winding staircase up five floors of Tokyo's Sony building: the mama-san of all home entertainment centres.

The widescreen, high-definition, flat monitor the size of a wardrobe turned sideways is showing a dreamy but startlingly crisp underwater scene. The surround sound stereo system plays ambient music and the combination is utterly mesmerising.

However, you'd probably only consider going down a floor to buy it in the convenient Sony shop if you are a man of a certain age, moneyed and addicted to serious boy toys like, oh, Maseratis and personal helicopters. The system's bells and whistles would cost the average Irish worker a year's salary.

Everything in this system is either very small or very thin, good looking and cleverly compact, and so ferociously tempting that I'd challenge anyone not to spend at least one ridiculous moment calculating a potential repayment plan.

Elsewhere in the world, Apple's specially designed Apple stores offer the premier showcase for a blend of electronics and brand, but here, in the most sophisticated electronics and dedicated brand market in the universe, the Sony Building seriously out-Apples Apple.

Being a high-rise, it is much bigger than any Apple store and is a corporate headquarters as well. But there's more. As the glass doors whisk open to the cool white interior, the smartly uniformed doorman inside greets every visitor individually.

Once in, and having decided not to visit the cafés and restaurants or the curious Sony shoes, bags and clothing shop on the top floor (who'd have thought?), the visitor can start the slow climb towards that entertainment system, through floors full of displays of every Sony product (including a Sony-equipped BMW).

Uniformed young women hover discreetly in the background, ready to help or show off a feature, proffer a product brochure or adjust a headset - but never annoy or try to sell. Add in the time you are likely to spend ogling the Japanese mobiles and playing with Sony's two robot dog models and no gadget geek is likely to emerge for at least two hours. And that's assuming you don't vanish into the "all PlayStation, all the time on giant screens, any game you want" sixth floor - and that's if you also make it past the duty-free section and don't need an extra 30 minutes to dither over which little handheld camcorder you'd prefer to bring back as a high-end souvenir.

The Sony building in the upmarket Ginza district is not, however, the typical electronics shopping experience in Tokyo. Usually, people flock to the less salubrious Akihabara district and an area known as Electric Town, which is more the Blade Runner version of gadget-buying.

Well "people" don't flock - by contrast with the fairly even gender balance among browsers at the Sony building, Akihabara is nearly all youngish men. Women roaming these electronics shops are as rare as men at the "Venus Fort" shopping mall .

But there is something vaguely sleazy about the Akihabara district with its flashing neon lights, blasting music, barkers trying to lure you in through open doorways, and open-mouthed men drooling over the goods on offer. Where once Electric Town was THE place for electronics in Japan, now formerly sleazy areas of Tokyo like Roppongi and Ikebukero are all going mainstream and filling up with huge department stores and stylish malls, and taking a good slice of the electronics market, especially among Japanese buyers.

To compensate, Electric Town has leavened its electronics offerings with places to view pornography or the animated films the Japanese call anime and manga - often combining the two for the subcategory of pornographic manga - but that really only adds to the atmosphere. Many of these gadget emporiums have five or six floors bursting with stacks of software, mobile phones and music players on one floor, PCs on another.

And there's not just a few models, but dozens and dozens of them, many of the coolest models only available in Japan. Nearby, there are endless racks of accessories.Want a web camera for your PC that looks like a little seated man with a giant eyeball-camera for his head? Got it. A USB-powered tiny fan on a bendable stalk, to cool you as you Google? Yep, got that too. A robot, or an armchair that will give a full body massage? No problem.

If your energy flags, the dedicated electronics shopper can always dive into one of the countless ramen shops for a bowl of noodles (noisy slurping a cultural must).

Even in a steady rain, which means you must keep dodging the salarymen (Japanese corporate businessmen) riding cycles on the pavement holding open umbrellas aloft, Electric Town is a blast, full of noise, light, crowds and energy.

As the slogan reads under the giant sign for a multifloored tech emporium simply called the Computer, "Live a happy life for you!"

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