City Spotlight: Akihabara (part 1)

Akihabara ('Akiba' for short) is an area of Tokyo which is a nerd mecca. If you have any interest in electronics, video games, anime, manga or collectable figurines, I recommend checking it out. If you don't, then there isn't really that much for you here. If you want an area with some geeky stuff but a variety of other stores and entertainment, try Ikebukuro instead.

In line with geek interests, Akiba's shops lean very much toward cute or sexy female characters, and also giant robots like Gundam. Akiba also caters to fans of real people, especially cute young girl groups such as AKB48, but most of what you see are anime, manga or game characters. As you might expect, this is an area that attracts a lot more guys than girls.

For me personally, the things I especially like doing at Akiba are: getting kebabs from the kebab men outside the station, looking at figurines, looking at the wacky gifts and souvenirs, going in the retro video game stores, and having a coffee at Starbucks or Excelsior.

You can also buy anime or game music, specialised electronic parts, computers and computer equipment - there are a couple of big-name generic electronics 'department stores' as well as lots of smaller shops.

Location

Akihabara is in Tokyo; it's north of Tokyo station, not far from Ueno. It's on the JR Yamanote, Keihin-Tohoku and Sobu lines, as well as Tokyo Metro's Hibiya line and the Tsukuba Express.

Akiba's main street

If you take the Electric Town exit, you'll come to a main street lined with gingko trees. This has some of the major electronics stores as well as other geeky shops. There's also a cluster of shops immediately around the station. If you cross the main road you'll find another cluster of streets with other electronics and hobby shops.

If you take the opposite Showa-dori exit, there's a big Yodobashi Camera store.

Peculiarities

One specialty of Akihabara is the 'maid cafes'. These are cafes where the waitresses are dressed as cute maids, and act a little cutesy... well, that's it, really. Some of them are really just like normal cafes, but the waitresses wear French maid's costumes. I visited a maid cafe in Akihabara once; there was nothing untoward about it, and it had a mixture of male and female guests. Others, I have heard, may involve more interactivity or quirks like maids playing children's games with the customers or giving massages or something.

Ad for a maid cafe. You can often see maid girls on the street trying to attract customers.

Another feature of Akiba is that it has quite a few weird and wacky gift and souvenir shops. There are some souvenirs and snacks you can't readily find in 'ordinary' Japanese souvenir shops. You can buy canned oden. (Why would you want any oden at all?) You can get cookies with maids on them. You can buy snacks with the Prime Minister on them. You can buy cans of bread with anime characters on them. (Yes, canned bread. Yes, it really does sound disgusting, doesn't it?)

I will continue with more geekiness in the next post. ^_^