Achievement Unlocked: Akihabara

If you go to Akihabara looking for cheap electronics, you'll probably be disappointed since that's what it was like in the 80s - it's much cooler than that these days.

Observations:

Modern Japan is frequently 6 degrees of separation from a train station, historically, symbolically and economically.

Akihabara is a pretty good example of this - it was just the name of a local shrine until a train station was built there in 1888, after which Akihabara Station became a major freight hub. The freight hub morphed into a giant marketplace of traded goods and a bastion of consumer trading was born. In the post-WW2 shenanigans, it then morphed into a bastion of black market capitalism instead.

Legend has it, around this time a student sold a single handmade radio in Akihabara and made decent profit from it. Pretty soon everyone was also building and trading in electric home appliances. This drew the attention of the authorities who forced all the traders of "electric" goods to congregate to a particular part end of the Akihabara train station, that area became "Electric Town".

As household electrical appliances became increasingly mainstream and corporate in the 80s, Akihabara once again jumped on home computers as the big new thing.

Personal computers in the 80s wasn't yet dominated by a few large corporates. It was a was a multitude of small traders building custom computers out of their own workshops, often making their own software and hardware customisations. It had a much more artisan feel about it back then.

This is pretty much the Akihabara that existed when cyberpunk was born and one of the common tropes of the genre is for the main protagonists to do some haggling with a vendor over some questionable upgrades they need - it's basically modeled off Akihabara in the 80s.

But that was Akihabara in the 80s. While you can still get electronic goods in Akihabara, it's not "cheap" because hardware everywhere is already cheap - it's mainstream now.

What you *will* get in Akihabara however is a the widest collection of otaku on the planet - it's the rare and obscure pop culture referenced items and accessories, sometimes of questionable intellectual property rights...

e.g a tourist who goes to Akihabara thinking they will get a cheap digital camera will be disappointed with the price - and who buys digital cameras anymore anyway? What they will find however is a mobile phone case for the latest iPhone with a wide selection of 1960s era Astro Boy images to choose from.

The variety here is crazy, we only managed to really try out two of the most popular establishments, Mandarake, and, Radio Kaikan.

I should point out for readers from countries without pretty things, these are entire buildings, not a small store, not a single shop front. Akihabara is a *neighbourhood* full of places like these:

Mandarake: This place has a big reputation, but I must admit to not being enough of a super geek to really appreciate it. There is a massive collection of manga but it's all a bit waste on non Japanese speakers/readers. They also have a large "antique" selection, but you really have to be a member of the little old lady manga fans to appreciate this stuff (and there really are little old ladies in these stores).

Radio Kaikan: This is actually 10 floors of traders of various sizes, which I think actually gave them a more eclectic range than Mandarake. e.g. there was one shop that was really a store front for an online market place of sole traders (you could rent a box to sell the items you wanted to sell). Some were more traditional stores, a few took up the entire floor they were on.

While I was really tempted to start collecting the entire set of figurines from The Goonies and Firefly, I resisted.

The prices here for geek stuff is actually quite cheap. You are mostly paying for rarity, but a lot of the things you'd never find at home are here in plentiful supply so it can work out pretty good for people from countries without pretty things.

We barely scratched the surface in Akihabara and found all kinds of cool stuff. It's also the kind of place where stock would be constantly evolving and changing - i.e. if you were a regular you could probably make contacts to get the traders to keep an eye out for the stuff you really want.

Dangerous Kaiju Warning:

Akihabara can be a little overwhelming and/or stressful if you aren't a big fan of crowded places with lots of visual stimulus. If you are from a less busy part of the world, it's probably best if approached in measured doses at first. Probably stay in the train station area first and or ensure you have access to Google maps to help you escape.

Kaiju Collected:

A model of the Nautilis from the 1954 version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a selection of the rare-ish mini lego figures.

Didn't see the Konig Monster figure from Macross or the 18" Dark Horse Normandy SR2 :(Leia mais