Akihabara

Akihabara's identity comes from a black market in radio parts that grew under the railway arches after 1945, supplied by students from the nearby technical college. That became a wholesale electronics district, then in the 1980s a personal computer district, then from the 1990s the centre of anime, manga, games and figure retail - and the earlier layers did not disappear. The Radio Centre under the tracks still sells resistors, switches and connectors from stalls a metre wide, while the buildings above sell figures floor by floor. Multi-storey secondhand shops carry doujinshi, retro games and hardware. Maid cafes, arcades and gachapon halls with hundreds of machines fill the side streets. The main street closes to traffic on Sunday afternoons. It is loud, dense and vertical - the interesting things are usually on the fourth floor of a building with no English sign.

History

The name is a shortening of Akibagahara, after Akiba, the fire-controlling deity of a shrine built when a fire swept the area in 1869; before that it lay near a gate of Edo, home to many craftsmen, tradesmen and lower-ranking samurai. Its nickname, Electric Town, came in the late 1940s, when it became a major market for household electronics (Wikipedia, Akihabara).

Highlights

• The Radio Centre - stalls under the tracks still selling components since the 1940s.
• Vertical retail - anime, figures and games sold floor by floor above the street.
• Secondhand depth - doujinshi, retro games and old hardware in multi-storey shops.
• Sunday pedestrian street - the main road closed to traffic on Sunday afternoons.

When to go

All year; Sunday afternoon for the closed street. Half a day.

What to expect

It is crowded, loud and relentlessly commercial. Maid cafes vary widely and some have aggressive pricing - check before entering. Street touting is common. Prices for collectibles are higher than online in many cases.

Nearby

Jimbocho's bookshops are south-west; Ueno is north.

Key facts