Akihabara is one of Tokyo’s craziest and most unique neighbourhoods, and the city’s main hub for anime, manga, gaming and otaku culture. Trot Op! took to the legendary streets of Electric Town and worked himself through every game center, maid café and otaku store to list Akiba’s twelve best sights. You’re welcome.
Look for images of Tokyo online, and chances are the neon-lit streets of Akihabara will pop up as one of the first results. This is no coincidence. It’s one of the single most iconic and recognisable places in the capital, and the area where I personally spent the most time – apart from Asakusa where my hotel was. Akihabara – often abbreviated to Akiba – is the ultimate poster child for every excess that makes modern Japanese pop culture both incredibly popular and somewhat bizarre. It’s a paradise for weebs and otaku (anime nerds) and an absolute assault on the senses. The buildings are covered under a layer of colourful billboards; dozens of anime shops the size of apartment blocks are filled to the brim with merchandise; countless arcades full of gachapon machines spew out strange souvenirs for a few hundred yen and all over the streets, girls dressed like sexy French maids hand out flyers to lure you into one of numerous themed bars. No one in Akihabara is physically able to get bored.
“Located around Akihabara Station in central Tokyo, Akihabara is bursting with electronics shops, arcades, maid cafés and pop culture stores.”
Present-day Akihabara is actually a surprisingly recent phenomenon. The first seeds were planted when a black market popped up in the area after WWII, full of stalls selling clandestine electronics. Due to Japan’s lightning speed industrialisation in the fifties and sixties, these small businesses were gradually pushed out in favour of larger retailers, offering Japanese televisions, fridges and sound systems. The nickname Electric Town originated somewhere around this time, as Akiba grew into Japan’s main technology hub. When the PC and the first gaming consoles emerged in the early eighties, the neighbourhood evolved yet again, as it turned itself into the place to be for everything related to hardware, software and games.
It was only in the late nineties when Akihabara’s focus shifted to anime and manga, as the area began to identify more and more with the growing otaku subculture. The first maid cafés didn’t even open their doors until the early 2000s. The bustling Akihabara as a manga Mecca is therefore younger than I am, but the original electronic stores still have their place here as well. Over the decades, the district’s different identities and subcultures blended into an all-in-one package, for all fans of modern Japan to lose themselves in. The following twelve tips will help you on your way.
Before you dive into Akihabara: is this your first trip to Tokyo? You might want to read my Complete Tokyo Neighbourhood Guide first. In it, I go over every important area, its biggest sights & activities, its hidden gems and its most convenient hotels. Absolutely essential reading, no doubt about that. 😉
1. Electric Town: exploring Akihabara’s back streets
Leave Akihabara Station through the Electric Town exit and you’ll instantly be catapulted into a whole new world. Dozens of illuminated billboards compete for your attention; numerous speakers blare out J-pop tunes and the street scene in front of you is a pandemonium of people and colours. Take a deep breath and start by following your nose. Walk around aimlessly for a couple of hours and enter every store that piques your interest.
The main boulevard running parallel to the station offers the most impressive visuals, but you’ll make the best deals in the little backstreets. These are loaded with smaller shops and restaurants. If you’re interested in anime figurines (or hentai ones: you know who you are), Pokémon cards or retro games, this is often where you’ll find them first. Near the station opposite Radio Kaikan for example, is a long corridor full of tiny shops selling second-hand action figures for almost no money.
It’s only after sunset when Akihabara truly comes to life, but if if you want to have the main street to yourself (and a few thousand other pedestrians), you better come and take a look on Sunday afternoon as well. This is when they close down the main boulevard to all traffic – even to those annoying Mario karts – which means you can freely walk the roadway.
2. Maid cafés in Akihabara: the full kawaii experience
Anyone passing the rows of mini-skirted cosplay girls recruiting customers on the street at night, might start getting the wrong idea. To make sure everything going on in the maid cafés can see the light of day, I decided to – purely for science and out of the goodness of my heart – sacrifice myself and book a table at Maidreamin.
It turned out to be a hilarious and somewhat awkward experience. The maid bars are the final form of Japanese kawaii culture, where everything should and will be as cute as humanly possible. Upon entering, you’ll be assigned a girl who will enthusiastically take care of your every whim as long as you ask politely by saying meow meow and making a little heart with your hands first (this is not a joke). Mine proceeded to draw an adorable ketchup kitten on my curry omelette, and then presented me with an ice cream dessert that looked as if a few Teletubbies had just drowned in it. Throughout the whole ordeal, the girls perform perfectly choreographed, cute little dances. No raunchy strip shows, but some strange parody of what you expect from a Saturday morning kid show. Next to me, a fifty year old Japanese business man was having the time of his life, but I honestly didn’t always know how to compose myself.
Maidreamin is the largest and most famous chain of maid cafés – and has an earworm theme song that will be stuck in your head for a week – but there are maid bars in all shapes and sizes. There’s one where everyone is dressed as a (sexy) North Korean soldier, one where everyone is a (sexy) angel or devil, one where all the maids are (sexily) chubby, one where everyone is a (sexy) drag queen and even one where all the girls are bodybuilders who’ll (sexily but also quite hard) slap you in the face for a small fee. There’s a maid bar in Tokyo to everyone’s taste. Don’t be shy and just book a table.
PS: looking for a more thematic tour through Electric Town? Book a maid in full cosplay to guide you around: you’ll even get some food out of it. Go on, you know you want to.
3. Akihabara Radio Kaikan: an anime & otaku landmark
Radio Kaikan, with its striking yellow façade, is one of the most recognisable buildings in Akihabara. Originally built in the fifties as one of the many electronics outlets, its focus gradually shifted towards anime and otaku culture. The old building was demolished due to structural problems in 2011, and the current ten-storey complex rose up in its place a few years later.
These days it turned into somewhat of a geek sanctuary. Dozens of shops found a home here, filled with figurines from every major anime series, endless shelves full of manga comics, countless trading cards and a whole bunch of other gadgets. Some places sell stuff you wouldn’t exactly want to leave on your TV-cabinet when you’re having your mom over: statuettes of half naked ladies dragging around bosoms the size of unmilked udders; cartoon calendars full of school girls in various states of excitement and the well known pillows shaped like yearning kawaii women for you to shed some tears on when you’re facing another lonely night. Pretty weird, but there’s a market for it somewhere. One Japanese guy actually married a pillow like this some years ago. I know Tinder can be tedious sometimes, but damn: that’s rough.
PS: there’s another tour guiding you through the Electric Town shops that starts in front of Radio Kaikan. This one is very convenient when you’re looking for specific and hard to find mangas or figurines. The offer in Akihabara is – and this shouldn’t come as a surprise – quite overwhelming for someone who doesn’t know where to go.
4. Mandarake Akihabara: second-and anime & manga
A little further from the train station lies another walhalla for geeks of all kinds: the largest Mandarake store in Japan. Mandarake is a Japanese second-hand chain store specialised in anime, manga, toys and games. The Akihabara store has eight floors arranged by theme. The collection is similar to Radio Kaikan’s, but is a bit more aimed at serious collectors.
They have more than just Japanese stuff by the way. I spotted several toys I used to own as a kid, including a couple of 40 year old GI-Joe action figures still in the original packaging (the price was correspondingly expensive). Looking for old games or consoles? You’ll find them here as well. Please take note most games are only available in their Japanese version, so any old Famicon cartridges you buy here won’t work on your SNES back home. Another great chain store for anime lovers is AmiAmi. They have a huge store in Electric Town as well.
5. Super Potato: retro gaming in Akihabara
The very best location for retro gamers in Akihabara, is not Mandarake but Superpotato. This is a shop with a wonderfully random name, hidden in an inconspicuous building in one of the back streets – you’ll have to venture through a dark little corridor to get there. You’ll recognize the building by the big Pacman and Mario on the facade, and inside you’ll find the largest collection of old games you’ll ever see in your life – it honestly got me a tad emotional.
Everything is on display here, from Atari, NES and SNES (Famicon and Super Famicon in Japan), Gameboy and Megadrive to the N64, Sega Saturn and the first Playstations. Even obscure consoles like the Neo Geo no one even wanted to buy back in the day can still be found here. I even spotted some old gadgets like the Nintendo Virtual Boy (a commercially poisonous early attempt at VR) and R.O.B. The Robot (a barely functional Nintendo “robot” I only knew from this old AVGN episode).
On the third floor things get even better. Here you’ll find several original arcade cabinets to play classics like Street Fighter II, Bomberman and Final Fight on for a measly 100 yen coin. Ah, to get blasted back to the early nineties for even just an hour: lots of people would pay good money for it these days.
Tip: are you really into retro gaming and do you like tinkering with electronics? Allow me to suggest a completely unique workshop you can book in Akihabara. With the help of a professional, you’ll get to take apart an original Gameboy, to then use all sorts of colourful covers and buttons to pimp it up into a collectors item you can screw back together and take home with you. It’s not cheap, but you’ll hardly find a more unique souvenir and at least you can pop it out for some good old Tetris on the flight home.
6. M’s Akihabara: Japan’s most famous adult store
*Haha: I made so many pictures that were not suitable for publication
“Forbidden” shelves in Radio Kaikan not naughty enough for you? Go to M’s instead. This is probably the biggest sex shop on the planet, and has seven floors stacked with everything your sick mind could possibly come up with. The most vanilla stuff is on the ground floor, most likely to keep people from running straight back out in panic. Here you’ll find your standard vibrators (big fan of the purple eggplant on the picture above) and lubricants.
The higher up the stairs you go, the more you’ll venture into diehard fetish territory. Some of it – pun very much intended – is kind of hard to swallow. Looking for a silicone version of your favourite porn star’s private parts? Look no further. Aching for some nipple clamps, strap-ons or BDSM costumes? They have them by the dozen. Always wanted a meter long, tree trunk dildo you could batter down a castle gate with? Just take two: they’re there anyway.
The top floor showcases an extensive collection of cosplay costumes, half of them schoolgirl uniforms you’d most likely not be allowed to wear in the Jesuit college I had to attend back in the day. If you have a kink, they’ll have something for you here. And if they don’t, please just report yourself to the authorities before something bad happens.
7. Gachapon machines in Akihabara
Something completely different Akihabara is known for, are the huge arcades and game centers full of the shiny crane machines you know from the carnival back home. Getting a decent item out of them requires a certain amount of skill and luck, so chances are you’ll spend half your daily budget trying, just to still end up empty handed.
The endless rows of gachapon machines are a safer bet. These are vending machines full of tiny capsule balls containing small accessories like toys and keychains. The name is an onomatopoeia of “gacha” (the sound of the crank turning) and “pon” (the sound of the capsule dropping) and they’re extremely popular in Japan. There are hundreds of thousands of these things all over the country and there’s a billion-dollar industry behind them.
The range of items is enormous and ideal if you’re looking to score a few unique souvenirs for just a couple of hundred yen. My personal loot: a little orange sausage dog, a hat for my friend’s cat, a turd-shaped keychain and some figurines from obscure games I never expected someone to actually make merchandise for. Money well spent I say.
8. Akihabara’s weird vending machines
Even more widespread than the capsule toys, are the countless vending machines selling drinks and snacks on almost every street corner in Japan. There are over five million of them in the country. This means there’s one vending machine for every 23 Japanese people, and yet they continue to somehow be profitable. This has a whole number of reasons and I’ll mention a two of them. Japan is – much more than Europe – still a very cash based society, which means most people walk around with pockets full of change. Furthermore, lots of folks in the big cities live in tiny apartments, many of them with little room for a fridge. In that case a cold drink on the go is often quite welcome.
There’s a very unique collection of these vending machines hidden somewhere in Akihabara. You’ll find them under “weird vending machines” on Google maps, and that name very much fits the bill. Under an abandoned looking shelter across the bridge to Electric Town, you’ll see a dozen dilapidated vending machines cramped together. Strangely someone is still restocking them occasionally, but no one knows who. There’s a popcorn machine that doesn’t work, another is selling chicken yakitori in a can (stays edible for over five years), one is full of plastic beetles in a jar and another only has weird little cardboard boxes in it with a bunch of political rants written all over them (no idea what’s inside).
The amount of coins you’ll have to put in to receive one of these items is just as strange. The yakitori for example, will cost you about double of what you’d pay for one in 7-Eleven (and that one will not be from 2020). So keep your money in your pocket but go and have a look anyway. It’s a pretty cool and creepy spot.
9. Manseibashi: shops and cafés under the train tracks
Not everything in Akihabara revolves around anime and otaku culture. On the other side of the water is an old train bridge, and in recent years a number of shops and restaurants opened up in its vaults. The whole thing is called Manseibashi and its red brick façade and minimalist interior make for a pleasant contrast to Electric Town just a hundred meters away. Here you can visit some pop-ups and design stores, but there’s a microbrewery, a wine shop and several restaurants (more stylish than the ones on the other side) to enjoy as well. Perfect for anyone in need of a break from the circus across the water. When the weather is pleasant, you can even have lunch on a terrace on the waterside. Seated outdoor dining is somewhat of a rarity in Tokyo for some reason, so you might as well enjoy it.
10. Koishikawa Korakuen & Tokyo Dome (Near Akihabara)
The following two sights are not in Akihabara, but are close enough to combine with a visit to Electric Town in a one day itinerary. Koishika wa Korakuen is one of the oldest and most beautiful Japanese gardens in Tokyo and a perfect refuge for those who want to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city for a while. Here you’ll walk past centuries-old trees held up by ropes, expansive ponds reflecting the autumn colours, stone paths running through the water and the odd food stall here and there.
The park is right next to the Tokyo Dome. This is the largest indoor stadium in Japan, where a lot of events and concerts are held. When I was having lunch on a bench, it was hosting a baseball game. The thunderous cheers could be heard from all over the park. Around Tokyo Dome lies Tokyo Dome City: an amusement park full of attractions, where you can ride a roller coaster straight through the front of a mall. Didn’t get to do it myself, but it looks cool.
11. Jimbocho Book Town: Tokyo’s second-hand books paradise
Just a few stops from Akihabara Station – north of the Imperial Palace – Jimbocho Book Town is yet another unique little part of Tokyo. More than two hundred second-hand bookstores are concentrated here in just a handful of streets. This makes for some very photogenic spots, because many of the stores are literally stuffed with old books from floor to ceiling and even outside you’ll see whole alleys full of them. Most shops sell Japanese literature exclusively (everything from Penny Dreadfuls and old manuscripts to erotic magazines from long forgotten days), but there are some English books to be found here and there. Once you’ve found your loot, you can immediately start reading in one of the many curry restaurants the area is also known for. Bon appetit.
12. Nakano Broadway: otaku shopping beyond Akihabara
Are you a rabid anime fan but is Electric Town a bit too much for you? Head to Nakano Broadway in West Tokyo instead. This is a somewhat old-fashioned looking mall where the top floors are completely filled with otaku shops since the early eighties (so about twenty years before they had them in Akihabara). Shops here are generally smaller and a bit less over the top, and focus more on selling second-hand items and valuable editions (there’s a large Mandarake store here too).
The ground floor is mainly where you’ll find your regular stores, but there are a few discoveries to be made here as well. There’s a vending machine selling all sorts of insect snacks for example (anyone up for tarantula?), and at Daily Chico you can buy the largest cone of soft serve ice cream you’ll ever see (I managed to finish mine but only just). According to legend, there’s a gachapon machine selling worn panties hidden somewhere in the complex, but I (fortunately) didn’t come across it.
The alleys around Nakano Broadway are worth some time as well: they’re narrow and a bit dingy, with power cables running from building to building like vines, but there are plenty of cosy bars and restaurants to enjoy for those willing to explore.
Practical travel tips for Akihabara: where to stay, getting around & tours
**There are a couple of affiliate links to interesting activities or hotels in this article. These were personally selected to make sure they actually add value. If you’re already planning to book a tour or hotel in Tokyo, consider doing so via one of my links. Doesn’t cost you an extra dime and I’ll get a small compensation for my efforts. Thank you in advance.**
Where to stay in Akihabara
If you’re into anime, gaming and pop culture, Akihabara is an excellent base for exploring Tokyo. Akihabara Station is a major transfer hub, with JR lines connecting you directly to Ueno, Tokyo Station, Asakusa, Shinjuku and Shibuya. Staying within walking distance of the station will save you quite some time and money. Akihabara offers a wide range of budget and mid-range options. Those who can afford luxury hotels usually prefer staying somewhere else – ah well: more fun for the rest of us.
–Cocts Akihabara: hip and well furnished hostel a couple of minutes on foot from Electric Town. You can book both private rooms and (capsule) dorm beds. Staff is very friendly.
–Dormy Inn Akihabara: cosy hotel somewhere in between Electric Town and Ueno Park. There’s a very nice onsen on the rooftop, which is perfect for some well-deserved soaking after a long day of sightseeing.
–Super Hotel Akihabara-Suehirocho: affordable, clean and efficient Japanese business hotel with great transport connections.
–Akihabara Washington Hotel: very popular mid-range hotel right next to Akihabara Station. Compact but comfortable rooms, excellent location and consistently good reviews.
–Nogha Hotel Akihabara: beautiful hotel just a couple of meters from Electric Town’s main boulevard (and thus close to the train station as well). The rooms are wonderfully furnished and it comes with its own restaurant/bar. Very stylish, but obviously in a (much) higher price range.
If you’re on a tight budget, try looking just north toward Ueno or east toward Asakusa: both are only one or two stops away and often slightly cheaper.
Getting around Akihabara and Tokyo
-Akihabara Station is served by multiple JR lines and the Tokyo Metro, making it easy to reach almost any part of the city.
-Buy a Suica Card (or Welcome Suica for tourists) as soon as you arrive. You can use it on all trains, subways and buses, and even to pay in convenience stores and vending machines.
-Japan is still surprisingly cash-focused, so either pay with your Suica Card or prepare to carry around a pocket full of coins.
-For navigation, mobile data is essential. Google Maps in Japan is incredibly accurate and will tell you which train to take, which carriage is best for transfers and which station exit gets you closest to your destination.
I always use Airalo for eSIMs. Install it before departure, activate it after landing and you’re good to go.
Trains beyond Tokyo: JR Pass or not?
If you’re planning to explore a whole bunch of other cities in Japan, you might consider a Japan Rail Pass, but only if you’re travelling long distances multiple times. If you’re doing just three or four cities, buying individual tickets is usually cheaper. You’ll have to do the math to see what’s best for you.
If you prefer everything organised for you, Japan Experience offers wonderful and tailor-made itineraries covering Tokyo and the rest of the country.
Practical essentials
-Cash: 7-Eleven ATMs accept foreign cards and are everywhere.
-Visas: EU citizens can enter Japan visa-free for up to 90 days.
-Money: the yen is historically low these days, making Japan better value than it has been in years.
Ready for more Tokyo? Read my articles on Odaiba, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ginza, Harajuku, Asakusa, Ueno and Marunouchi next.
Looking for another Asian Trip? Read my blog posts on Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore and Hanoi. Would you rather go to Texas? Read my posts on Dallas, Austin and San Antonio.
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