Cool. It’s always fun to see someone’s first experience in Akiba. To add a bit of detail, the major street in the area (Chuo Dori) mostly is mainstream tech stores and shops targeted toward tourists these days, but there still are parts and tech gear in the smaller streets to the west of Akihabara and Suehirocho stations. Instead of McDonald’s, also to the west of the station, there is a very good Japanese pork cutlet restaurant called Maguro that you might enjoy more, too. 
1 Like
You’re probably thinking of Akihabara Radio Kaikan, which sold parts for decades but closed in 2013. It reopened selling anime and the like, but it is not what it used to be for sure.
This is a reasonably fair criticism of Akiba. As tech itself has become more mainstream, lots of shops are more targeted more toward mainstream duty free shoppers and tourists who want to gawk at geek culture, but there still is plenty of real geekdom in the smaller streets. Huaqiangbei in Shenzhen is more straight up computer parts and gear, etc.
2 Likes
I love the capsule culture in Japan. I think the closest we in America ever got to that was the “Homies” figures from the 90s.
That might be it. I remember recognizing the name when I saw an article about it closing.
I liked that part of Akihabara much more than the vast pornography stores and maid cafes. At least Shinjuku is honest about what they’re offering. No half measures.
Yeah, I guess what I mean by geek culture is actual electronics and computers. Anime and maid cafes are secondary at best.
2 Likes
Akihabara did feel a bit more genuine in those days. Indeed, the Kabukicho portion of Shinjuku has long been more straightforward about its offerings, as well. Although, in the cleanup toward the Olympics it is becoming a bit more tourist targeted with “Godzilla Road” and the like, but there’s still plenty of genuine underbelly!
That’s my impression of all of Japan. Everything is individually wrapped in plastic.
1 Like
Yes I agree, after making Shenzhen a several times a year habit Akihabara was a disappointment, almost all the component sellers have long been squeezed out by the manga, maid cafes, etc
Mind you with its recent redevelopment I suspect Huaquanbei may be heading in a similiar sort of consumer electronics led change
Did you really just reference Piers Anthony’s Xanth books? noice
I visited the Akihabara 20+ years ago. Awesome. Would visit again.
2 Likes
and M.U.S.C.L.E. before that!
There’s a tiny section adjacent to the station that is still that but most of that is gone. Used to be there was a second floor to that complex which was more interesting in that much of the stuff seemed to have come from industrial control boards, boats or who knows what. All gone now.
You are probably thinking of Super Potato.
To be clear most of that is junk shops. What you get is sold “as is”.
Back round the turn of the century was a great time for the area. Every big company that did a hardware refresh, their gear turned up in Akihabara. This was before anyone here learned about disk wiping. Buddy of mine bought a few Fujitsu branded SPARC 5s which turned out to have been network management machines for one of the major telcos. Yes the root password was root. We had a few good laughs over learning their network topology from the files we found then blanked everything out.
For a while the whole area was flooded with SGI boxes of different sizes from the little purple mushroom type O2 up to the “half a commercial refrigerator” sized Indigos. They were all so cheap but I had no more space at home so never ended up buying one.
These days I try to avoid the area as much as possible except once a month when the local boardgames meet up is there. Fortunately I can park my scooter right next to that building and not have to deal with the Sunday tourist crowds.
1 Like
Indeed. The stores selling new hardware tend to be on the main streets, but the back streets are where you still can find fun stuff. The “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” cliché applies for sure. It was many years ago at this point, but picked up an old NeXTstation that way. No data though, the previous owner had wisely removed the hard drive entirely!
There was one place in the basement of a building right off the main street that had a NeXT Cube with Japanese keyboard and manuals but they wanted more than I could afford to spend at the time.
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
