If you ever visit the Tokyo area, you’ll find many things to do: go shopping for fresh fish at the Tsukiji fish market, ride a “water taxi” boat designed by the creator of Space Battleship Yamato, catch a day of sumo wrestling if there’s a tournament on while you’re here, or take a day trip to Kamakura to see the beautiful temples and the Kamakura Daibutsu, the second largest statue of Buddha in Japan. Increasingly Akihabara has become a big attraction for tourists, and you know the train has arrived there because all the foreigners will suddenly get off. Originally a mild-mannered corner of Tokyo, it became a black market for electronics due to its closeness to Japan’s first school of electrical engineering in neighboring Kanda, and as Japan’s electronics industry took off in the 1970s, Akiba became the best place to find everything from PCs to amateur radios to vacuum tubes. Shops selling used Super Famicom games became popular in the 80s, and when 2D moe boom arrived a decade later, Akiba became forever associated with anime, doujinshi and eroge. Now if you go to Akihabara you’ll see a large number of foreigners with cameras snapping pictures of whatever the latest variation of “Akiba maid” happens to be — currently the trend is towards sengoku maids who dress in armor reminiscent of the “Warring States” period of Japanese history while they hand out tissues and ask you to visit their maid cafe.
Visiting shops in Akihabara is tons of fun.
