A Gaijin in the Akihabara?

cayle clark asks: "In April I will be on a tour that spends 5 days in Tokyo, and on one of these days I hope to break away from the planned cultural events for a visit to the Akihabara, the world-famous electronics market district, partly just to gawk, partly in hope of finding a deal on a really whizzy mini-notebook or handheld pc. But... can a gaijin ^? who doesn't speak or read Japanese get around in this place? Would anyone who's been there comment on prices, selection, or experience with the many duty-free shops?"

Comments

Hello

[r.suzuka]

I am currently a student in Tokyo and I may be able to assist you.

I am afraid I cannot recommend specific shops since school duties have prevented me from frequenting "Electrical Town" perhaps as much as I would like. However I do not think that you will have any difficulties either navigating the district or the individual shops.

All shops will have prices clearly posted so if you are familiar with a certain piece of electronic equipment, you will be able to identify it as well as the price. If you wish, you can attempt to bargain with the vendors; it would no doubt help to have a Japanese speaking freind or colleague with you, but many vendors will speak enough English to permit basic bargaining.

May I refer you to the following link: http://www.akiba.or.jp/index_e.html. This is an official page with much information in English about Akihabara.

Good luck, and I hope you enjoy your visit to Tokyo.

R. Suzuka

Well, not Tokyo, but Osaka...

[gnovos]

I used to live in Osaka for a few years, and they have a similar area in Nipponbashi, and I had no trouble finding my way around and buying what I needed, and I don't speak Japanese very well at all. As long as you can make intelligent gestures and understand, say, japanese numbers for prices, then you'll be fine. Suprising to me, many of the things I bought had a set of English instructions and the buttons were often written in English, so it was pretty easy to use. One interesteding thing to note, most Japanese computers will have nearly double the memory and HD space than you are used to (supposedly becuase the 2-byte characters require more space to do the same thing that "our" 1-byte characters), so it will look very expensive... But if you look close at the specs, some of it is actually VERY reasonable.