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

Find a Japanese handler

[ghostis]

My strategy was to spend the first day picking out stuff. Then next day my experienced Japanese friend graciously went around and haggled for what I wanted while wandered around being a tourist. My reasoning was that given the flexiblity of prices in Akihabra a native speaker with clear understanding of Japanese tones of voice and facial expressions could get better deals. All in all it worked pretty well!

-ghostis

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.

Learning to read "katakana" is worth it

[patbernier]

Lucky you! Akihabara is heaven on earth for true geeks! You shouldn't have any problems shopping over there, the prices are well indicated (but sometimes you can try to get better bargain... politely ask "what is the discount price"). But learning just a bit of Japanese can make quite a difference -- e.g. how to formally introduce yourself, and politely ask if they speak English....

But even if you don't want to learn any Japanese per se, I would recommend learning a bit of "katakana".

In Japanese, three sets of symbols/alphabets are used. "Kanjis" are the most complicated, with each symbol representing one or more meanings and having one or more possible pronunciations. The two others, "hiragana" and "katakana" (collectively known as "kana"), are more simple, and represent sounds/syllabs.

Katakana is almost always used to write foreign words, most of them English. This means that if you can read katakana characters, chances are that you will be able to guess the meaning. This is especially true for technical material.

The first time I went to Japan, I spent about twenty hours studying katakana before going, and didn't regret it. Not only did it help me in my Anime and computer shopping, but also in understanding a lot of restaurant menus -- especially fast food ^_^ I think it's definitely worth it.

For a quick learning experience, I recommend Anne Matsumoto Stewart's "All About Katakana", ISBN 4770016964. It's quite cheap, and fun to boot :) Your favorite online bookstore should be able to ship it within a day or so, it's usually in stock.

Now for the _real_ fun, also learn "hiragana" and practice by reading the name of the train stations ;->