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Tokyo's Geek Ghetto
anaesthetica writes "The Washington Post is running a story on Tokyo's "Geek Ghetto" which has arisen in the city's electronics retail district, "Electric Town." From the article: "We have been discriminated against for being different, but now we have come together and turned this neighborhood into a place of our own.... In Akihabara, we don't need to be ashamed of who we are and what we like.... We can feel comfortable because here, we outnumber everyone else." There are concerns, however, that the total immersion in escapist culture may be causing social problems, including a growing number of shut-ins." I've gone to Tokyo 3x and visited Akihabara all three times. Highly recommended for anime fans and techies.
The persecuted generally manage to find each other. When they do, it's amazing what they can do. Even more so when they are otaku, which they appear to be calling themselves now. And if you've never felt persecuted at least once in your life, you are no geek.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
In the states, we geeks are confined to our parents' basements
i present for your enjoyment, the Akihabara home page, plus an intriguing article entitled: Akihabara becomes geek sex paradise. :-)))
I recently visited Tokyo, went to Akihabara.. and subsequently visited Singapore.
I noticed that everything in Akihabara is very expensive. Buying the same stuff in Singapore is a LOT (I mean 30 - 40%) cheaper...
But, one thing I agree.. you can get some really cool stuff in Akihabara...that you cannot find in Singapore, but for regular buys, I would avoid Akihabara.
My 2c
Tokyo has been destroyed so many times in anime that it makes me wonder if akihabara should relocate to some other city.
Who is John Galt?
This gettho will die out in... like... one generation ;)
since when do shut-ins cause social problems? other than those rare occasions when they do come out and have forgotten to bathe? Now they are gonna need shut-ins support groups to help them deal with being social problems. I wonder if they would have to meet at large dressing rooms where they could each have their own small closed room.
visit me at www.longdead.net
is it a joke? don't be too generalized.
if you go to Shinjuku or Shibuya in Tokyo, you would find that most people in the street are not geek!
people in Akihabara (aka: Akiba) are so different to other district.
My favorite memory of strolling through akihabara was going through a maze of electronics vendor stalls and coming across a guy selling nothing but big red buttons. If you stick to the normal shops, its pretty much many many people selling the exact same stuff. If you explore a little, you'll start finding the more offbeat tinkerer type stuff.
I ate my sig.
Quality Hosting e3 Servers
I visited Tokyo and Akihabara in 1993. I have to say that it was one of the coolest places I have ever seen. Shops oozing with electronics and games. I went for two reasons: Laserdiscs and Super Famicom games. Games were often marked down to 15-40% of retail a few months after release. I was used to a trickle of Anime in the USA on Laserdisc, but in Akihabara, there were stores that only carried anime on laserdisc, isles full. It was pretty amazing.
I have a friend in Japan right now, but he won't go there because he says it's too nerdy. I don't know if it got worse in 12 years, or I got better.
So since when did Anime and comics become synonymous with the word 'geek'? Aren't we a little more diverse then the article states?
I play with Linux, computers and build things, but I have never really liked Anime, and I got over my comics phase when I was a teenager. In my spare time I sometimes play with the computers, but I also enjoy GETTING AWAY from the computer and play my son, go bicyling, play in the garden, etc.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
I got to a * Institute of Technology, and it sounds about like this, other then the fact that we lack stores. Anime obsessed people, game obsessed people, social misfits, a good number of shut ins.... Yeah.... Sounds familiar.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
My favorite memory of strolling through akihabara was going through a maze of electronics vendor stalls and coming across a guy selling nothing but big red buttons.
Most likely that's one of the small electronic shops under the station. That's one of the most Blade Runner-esque spots I've ever seen. Many shops there are a 1x1 meter square with a hole on the midle barely wide enough for the guy to stand on it, with all kind of components surrounding the guy.
Shameless plug:
Akihabara photos on my site.
More Akihabara photos.
And more.
And yes, I'm living in Tokyo.
My site
Japanese culture is much less anti-intellectual and anti-geek than North American/UK/Australian culture. So it is not just akihabara that is geek friendly. And girls might at least glance in your general direction even if you are invisible elsewhere. Not that they like geeks or anything. But I think they have a somewhat higher geek tolerance level. A great reason to learn Japanese!
However, if you are non-Asian you will still be regarded as a bit of a monkey on display at the zoo. People may avoid sitting next to you on trains unless it is totally packed and you may be followed around while in some small shops with suspicious owners, as if waiting for you to pocket a few items and then make a run for it. So there is a bit of racism over there, but they are generally a nice group of folks.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
We have an intruder on /.
Fake geek sighted.
He exercises, reproduces, touches non-processed plant material, shows signs of growing up.
He even LEAVES HIS COMPUTER ALONE! (Poor thing. Probably crashes in lonliness.)
Quick, somone hijack the space laser and fill his house with popcorn before he infects us.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
As something of a geek (I guess not as much of one as I used to be, but still somewhat of one), I wonder about a few things after reading the article:
(a) "We can feel comfortable because here, we outnumber everyone else"
As someone who has been a member of both predominantly geek- and non-geek social groups at one point, I've always wondered greatly why geeks, who always complain about being tortured and abused by non-geeks, turn around and do it amongst their own geek groups? "We outnumber everyone else" is hardly the way geeks should be fighting back against the non-geeks they claim abuse them so much, and if ya ask me, I'd tell you they were acting just like the non-geeks to one another. Just goes to show you that social structures work the same, geek or not.
(b) "Here, the waitresses' uniforms are inspired by the French maid-meets-Pokemon outfits of adult manga. At other cafes, waitresses greet patrons at the door with a curtsy and the words "Welcome home, master.""
So most of the 10% females left in this area have resorted to saying "welcome home master"? I feel kinda awkward saying this, but any self-respecting (woman-loving?) geek should be trying to get the hell OUT of there as soon as possible, not try to rush into this place.
(c) "Nerd subgroups include not only people obsessed with cartoons and computer games, but also pop idols such as Morning Daughter, a music group marketed to kids that has become so popular among otaku that men sometimes attend its concerts wearing kimonos covered in glossy pictures of young band members.
That, along with the child pornography aspect of some adult manga, has led to allegations that some nerds are pedophiles."
This has been a very long-standing problem in Japanese culture in general (five minutes of Google should net you more than enough information), so trying to stick this behavior to just the nerds specifically discussed here is misguided, to say the least.
I hear that Lambda Lambda Lambda is looking at houses in the area.
As an IT professional - this is the LAST place I want to go on vacation.
A nice beach - cold beer - girls - bikinis!
The purpose of a vacation is to ESCAPE - the last thing I want to see is technology and be surrounded by GEEKS.
(no offense guys)
[Connection closed by foreign host]
I've never felt persecuted for being a geek... on the contrary, I'm usually surprised when people are awed at what they consider completely inaccessible, but what I consider fairly basic. I've been called a "Web God" for nothing more than nicely formatting an HTML table with CSS. Being a geek sucks when you're 12, but not when you're an adult.
I'm a big fan of the dark underbellies of society, but I'd go there because I want to lookit all the pretty lights, not because I don't feel welcome anywhere else...
Embrace your geekdom!
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
It's called a Star Trek convention in the U.S.
a polar bear is a rectangular bear after a coordinate change.
I'm always cautious whenever I go into a neighbourhood with an Electronic Boutique, Best Buy, or other computer stores. There's usually two or three geeks hanging out in the alley. You know the ones: pale-skinned nerds with Vendorwear t-shirts from 1999, utility belts with PDAs, pagers, and cell phones. I always try to avoid these alleys, for fear that I will be beset with geeky talk about overclocking, case modifications, or World Of Warcraft debates.
Geek Of The Day, "A geeky place for geeky faces."
So, you haven't been to Seattle?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I live in Manhattan and you can just run down to chinatown if you want that..
There are entire malls dedicated to electronics and comics and figures..
There is one "underground" one also that has all the latest games in Japanese as well, with individual sellers able to go in and set up a booth.
The Japan society has huge anime and game conventions and there is a separate annual manga/anime convention in NY as well as Anime movie festival... SF is close, but not quite like it is here...
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
I saw this program more than 2 years back. It deals in detail with the phenomenon- hikikimori, mentioned briefly in the washpost article. Japan: The Missing Million. Here's the program transcript. It apparently is a big problem in Japan.
I was just there with my wife a little over a week ago and it was pretty much geek central. =) Our friends there told us there's a new word floating around the area for the Otaku-types that frequent the place, perhaps a little more derogatory: akibake
1-way ticket to tokyo(expedia.com) - $700
new laptop - $2500
Finding home at last.. - Priceless
--cros13
In the US we call this the classic popular vs. geek syndrome. It's very similar, the only problem in Japan is that by this an other articles I've read it's worse. In the US, we at least pay lip service to the idea of individuality. We also have tons of people who are terribly protective of our right (perceived or otherwise) to own our own copies of music and TV and do what we want to our own bodies.
However, in Japan, my perception as a Gaijin is that Japan's social structure is far far more rigid. You fly this way, or else face social rejection!
Why do geeks in the US withdraw into themselves? Because society shuns them! Why to geeks in Japan withdraw into their houses? Because society shuns them!
My point? Well the article misses the problem because it suffers from the US perception of geeks as weird and shunned. The problem is not the geek, it's the people who shun them. Maybe society needs to be more accepting of these peoples behaviors and appearances add not judge them on actions that do not hurt other people. Otherwise it's society itself that's to blame for people who cannot interact with the rest of society.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
In Wired's premier issue they had an article on Otaku (circa 1993). It sounds like what was said then is still true today:
Otaku are considered flunkies and not highly regarded by society at large, etc. I liked one quote: "Socially inept, but often brilliant"
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
and the girls are complaining that they can't get a decent date cos the guys are all social zeros.
:). Actually the real reason has little to do with social skills. Good looking geeks don't have too much trouble getting dates. But then they usually have pretty good social skills too.
But they are social zeros because they can't get a date
Unfortunately, at least in the US, being a geek is kind of synonymous with being ugly. We are expected to be ugly. Some of us even became geeks mostly because we were ugly. A super good looking geek is kind of a brain twister for most girls. I have met a few in my life and, yes, they all had really hot girlfriends. I don't think those girls thought of them as geeks, although they actually were.
I just figure I wouldn't have as much time to pursue my geeky interests if I had a girlfriend. Haha! More time to work on my latest game or assembly app or Lightwave model of the perfect female face...
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Two questions, really. Is Tokyo's Akihabara as geeky as Singapore's Sim Lim Square? More importantly, I suppose, is it safer for my wallet? Sim Lim Square, at the corner of Bencoolen St. and Rochor Canal Rd., just next door to the Little India district, is seven floors of IT hagglers' paradise.
Link, Link, Search.
It must be Windows. It needs half a gig of RAM and a hardware-accelerated graphics card just to run Solitaire.
Otaku behavior is also being blamed, along with social disillusionment following Japan's protracted recession, for the increasing numbers of Japanese youth who have no apparent career ambitions. Instead, many are choosing to work part time -- or not at all -- so they can spend most of their time pursuing their hobbies.
Why is it bad to do the things that we like instead of working day in and day out at the factory/office/etc? I am moving towards this myself, as I plan to leave the big city life behind and move to a small town where there is more time to do the things I like. Sure I won't make as much money, but the commute to work will be a _lot_ shorter, the houses and land are cheaper, and the pace is a lot easier. I'd rather spend my time enjoying life than doing the Monday to Friday grind for someone else.
http://bike.stu.ph/rides - free GPS routes available for Garmin, Magellan, GPX and Google Earth
Tetsu Ishihara, 34, a computer programmer whose three-room apartment in west Tokyo is filled from floor to ceiling with comic books, does not want to be associated with such charges. Ishihara maintains a growing collection of 130 life-size pillows of female anime characters -- both purchased and self-designed. His favorite is Mio-chan, a female character from a love-simulation computer game in which a high school boy builds up the courage to ask a girl for a first date.
"There are some people who do lose their grip on reality, but that is not me -- or most of us," said Ishihara, a chubby man with glasses who this year started dating a woman steadily for the first time.
What exactly constitutes loosing grip on reality, brother?
True enough, not all geeks are techies and not all techies are geeks. It is possible to be a geek without being a computer geek.
Most techies are good with computers and science and go out to make a pile of cash. Those are not geeks.
...says "I'm huge in Japan"
.. Akihabara is just a commercial district full of very similar types of shops:- PC's, phones and technology.
... say 100 - 150 retail establishments who all sell PC related stuff.
..... several dozen retail establishments selling ....
.... never mind, consult an economics proffessor)
There is otherwise nothing special about the place, and (trust me, I live in Tokyo) _geeks_ _dont_ live there.
Nobody lives there, it's a retail district in central Tokyo for heavens sake! Does anyone you know live on Times Square? Maybe a few wankers do, but who was the last bum-in-raincoat you knew who could afford the rent?
Give me a break.
Let me give you a quick tour of the neighbourhood (if you're planning the visit soon - or even if you're not)
Akihabara is a couple of blocks near Akihabara Japan Rail station (from which it gets its name - funny that), within which there are
[There are also a much smaller number of stores - say 3 or 4 - who sell electronics to hobbyists in its 1970's form: chips, soldering irons, 2 guys in a garage. Be very, very afraid America. The Japanese are still coming after you - when I say chips I don't mean 74xxxx TTL, I mean Xilinx FPGA's. Over the counter. With a guy behind the counter who knows what they are, and can help you get started. Like the old days. Get scared, you should be.]
But that's another story.
Akihabara? A couple of streets with 20 different versions of PC World, a couple of Wal Marts and some local Radio Shack variants (apart from those sinister hobbyist shops that spawn the evil Asians who will, *will* eat your lunch t/row)
Nothin'. Nobody lives there. The article is totally overblown.
I mean, I only go there once a month; and look at me - I'm a total sucker for this kind of stuff ("girls? what are girls?")
Let me take you over the river, 300 meters away. "Music town" (my term, I invented it, I claim copyright): Ochanamizu.
A similar district. A couple of streets with a lot of retail establishments all selling the same product lines.
In this case, musical instruments (and related paraphenalia).
You can walk there from "Electic Town". It will take about 10 minutes.
Or you could take the subway. If you can stand the 2 changes you have to make because the Tokyo metro for this *particular* change is so damn inconvenient.
That will take you about an hour. Better walk.
There you will find
All exactly the same range of products at exactly the same price....
(It's the natural result of a free market you see. If everyone
Forget it, don't get envious. You can find the same stuff in your home town (or online).
And probably at better prices (I bought my iPod overseas - Australia actually, it was cheaper there)
I mean really wanting women to dress up in anime costumes? Give me a break. This is not remotely healthy.
Here in the USA, we have restaurants where women are paid to dress up in tiny orange shorts, white tank tops, sneakers and pantyhose. A while back there were clubs with women in satin bustiers, hose, high heels and rabbit ears that catered to the wealthiest businessmen. The servers in many casinos wear skin-tastic outfits that aren't remotely grounded in typical dress standards.
The shut-in part is certainly an unhealthy lifestyle, but there's nothing particularly odd about enjoying waitresses in 'fetish' costumes, particularly when common denominator is lots of exposed skin.
You don't have to leave to the US to get that whole monkey in the zoo effect though. I was visiting a friend in Nashville, TN and we went to the mall. Now I'm white, he was from Taiwan and we went another friend of his who was African-America (very dark-skinned as well). People stared at _ME_ the whole time. I'd never seen anything like it. Apparently they couldn't believe a white guy was hanging out with non-whites. My friends both said they were used to it and just ignored it, but it was an eye-opener to me. Racism is alive and well in the US.
People may avoid sitting next to you on trains unless it is totally packed See now that's one of your Gaijin Powers (tm)! Even during rush hour there'll be more space around you than anyone who isn't foreign.I think part of the problem is they expect Americans to be rude (sadly we have this reputation just about world-wide). If you're polite and friendly they won't have any problems with you. I don't know why you'd be rude and hateful to someone when you're in a foreign country but apparently a lot of people are.
Oh yes, it's funny that in only two weeks I got used to doing the little bow while thanking people. It felt strange to not have people do that when I got back to the US for a while. :)
"Flamebait", huh?
If the truth hurts, whose fault is that?
I've dated some really hot ladies and one of the topics that always seems to come up is the "what do you do" etc and I'm quite open that I'm a geek. It's fun to see their odd reaction but it never seems to put them off. They just see it as quirky and cool. So it's not something to hide :)
Wandering around Akihabara at random, I went into what I thought was a comic shop. Which it was... but a very specialised comic shop. It was devoted to fan-produced manga based on videogame characters.
Pornographic fan-produced manga based on videogame characters. A whole shop of it.
Now if that's not an extremely specialised geek market, I don't know what is!
What really struck me about the place was that even however many years ago it was, they were selling hardware that's still barely reached Western markets - and at sale prices! Saw my first ever HDTV in Akihabara, and nobody seemed interested in it but me...
You must think in Russian.
In America, geeks achieve because everybody who's popular is too busy with recreation to get anything done.
This is so true. I used to have this good looking friend. After knowing him for a while I realized he was really smart. Way more intelligent than me. He spent most of his free time socializing with friends and he either had a girlfriend or was kind of looking for one. So between that and school or work, that took up all of his time. To me, it seems like he wasted all that brain power of his. But he was living his life the way he wanted. From my perspective he has 'achieved' nothing in his life, (except maybe for an attractive wife).
It's not that American geeks are smarter than normal people. They just have more free time.
This is an aspect of the whole nature vs. nurture thing. Being a geek has absolutely nothing to do with being intelligent. That is, being born intelligent. Geeks will often know more than non-geeks in their fields of interest, but that's just knowledge not real intelligence.
With a fixed number of waking hours in our lives, the fewer number of hours spent on socializing whether with friends or MOTOS, the more hours there are for accomplishing 'things', finishing projects, whatever you want to call it. Life really is like a zero sum game. The more time you spend hanging out with friends at the pub or smooching with your girlfriend at the park the less time you have for writing programs or working on important 'stuff'.
This is really one of the biggest differences between us and other mammals. If we are lucky enough to be born with some intelligence, we can achieve something tangible in our lives, something more than just making more humans who will also achieve nothing. While it is not likely that any program that you write will be around after you die or that that OLED display you invent will still be used in 30 years or that that game art you worked so hard on will ever be seen in 20 years, you will still have contributed more, been more a part of history than guys with girlfriends and social lives. If that's any consolation. And those few with REALLY big brains can do stuff like invent calculus or the transistor, after which you will always be a significant part of history. (Or you could just crash a plane into a skyscraper...)
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Face it, if you like to masturbate to hentai wearing a furry sea otter costume then you're going to be ostracized.
I was on a flight recently where I was unfortunately in the middle seat. There was a nice-looking gal to my right who I managed to strike up a conversation with. I have enough charisma where this is not unusual, BUT... All was well until the guy to my left whipped out a laptop and started playing some game. I asked him about it and next thing I knew, we were discussing World of Warcraft (I currently have a lvl53 character in that game).
The woman to my right never spoke to me again for the rest of the flight.
So I didn't get laid, but I did get tips on completing my last 2 quests in Zul'Farrak, in particular, that one where about 100 NPC's storm the stairs and you have to defend the high ground. Fun stuff for a party with people who don't bail early...
It is for this reason that I feel I have to maintain "secret likes", which often includes anything IT or game-related, to the point where I find it difficult to even describe my job as it's pretty geeky and I'd rather just say I'm a "consultant". Unfortunately, to my horror I recently discovered that if I google my full name (which is uncommon), it becomes far too obvious what my really geeky likes are, despite my efforts to remove all traces of my full name from Internet sites. See, the gals I date are usually cute and best described as "geek-compatible", not "geeky"...
This is the part I found interesting. --Minus the sensationalist hype.
Should we really be surprised to see this kind of behavior pattern in a society which rigorously punishes people for trying to be unique individuals, for having the gall to actually try to maintain any kind of self-love and respect?
Men are expected to stand out, to express themselves in order to gain power in this world, so of course they are going to have problems when they are forced to grow up under the confines of a no-win situation. I'm not surprised at all that so many of them give up and opt out. Relationships require self-confidence and a wide variety of dynamic social skills which are certainly not taught by punishing people for stepping out of line to experiment with their lives when they are kids.
The retreat into fantasy of a million working-age males isn't their fault. It's the fault of a seriously messed up society.
"The nail which stands up will be hammered down."
Ugh. There are many types of population control and herding in effect in the world, but this particular one really steams me.
-FL
You'd be surprised how many "ugly"-looking men are attractive enough to women who can hold their own in the dating marketplace.
So good looks aren't everything; there are also basic social skills, not talking in a monotone, making eye contact, basic personal hygiene, and being able to hold a conversation about things outside of one's narrow field of specialisation (be it microprogramming, football, the history of punk rock or whatever). And, of course, the skills that come from repeated social interaction with people who don't necessarily share one's interests shouldn't be ignored.
Apparently you are the "live to work" type, while your friend is more in the "work to live" camp.
As the famous philosopher Torquato Tasso said "Any time not spent on love is wasted." Sometimes those personal projects we like to think are important are really just an excuse to avoid social interaction. (trust me, I've wasted more than enough time in this manner)
Okay, everybody pitch in $10 to fund my new restauraunt: "Otaku Here". It'll be a men's lounge where all the female servers are dressed in the most skimpy of Anime costumes. Send checks to...
Ya know, this would really work!
re: North American/UK/Australian culture The term you are looking for is 'Anglosphere'. This also includes the culture of New Zealand, which you left out. / irate Kiwi
Do not measure the meaningfulness of a person's life by how much they achieve, but by how happy they are with their life. If you can sit around in the bottom of a ditch covered in shit and truthfully say that you have nothing to regret and would not have it any other way and are happy, then your life is far more meaningful than someone who is rich, has a handsome spouse, and all of the modern conveniences, and is miserable with them.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
On your second point, I have to disagree. I've spent quite a bit of time in Japan - I'm white, and I have a fro, to boot. If anything, I get more attention, more people talking to me on the train, have more fun in clubs, because I'm non-asian. You wouldn't believe how many Japanese women are interested in talking to you because you *don't talk down to them*.
And sometimes those personal relationships people think are important are really just an excuse to avoid doing anything useful or interesting with life.
How much of a geek do you have to be to feel like a misfit in a country where 9 out of 10 people on the train are playing a game or texting on their cell phone, or reading an anime comic book? I mean come on.. Japan is a country full of geeks, at least in our perception of a geek in western society. They focus on the strangest part of other cultures when incorporating them into society.
IE, in the US, if you have a Kanji shirt or tattoo, it's meaning is somewhat important. You probably wouldn't want to say "I sleep with my sister," for example.
In Japan, it doesn't matter what your shirt says, as long as it's in English. The meaning is almost irrelevant (if there is any meaning).
And food..
In the US, pizza can have a variety of toppings, but when it comes down to it, there's bread, tomato sauce, and cheese.
In Japan, squid-ink is a popular substitute for tomato sauce. Sometimes you can't even get tomato sauce. I'm sorry, but that's not pizza.
But it's a society where everyone is expected to behave and live in a certain way, so there's not a lot of room for individualism, which can ironically, I suppose, lead to feelings of isolation and not belonging, since nobody knows the "real you." But that happens everywhere.
Most people carry their own towel for washing/wiping their hands. You can find napkins, but they're generally very small, and waxed.. for reasons nobody yet understands.
But I digress.. at any rate, I've been to Akhiabara a few times, and it's not all that spectacular. Tokyo is divided into districts, and each district generally serves a purpose. It's an interesting way of arranging a city.. clubs are in Roppongi, electronics are in Akhiabara, clothing stores are somewhere else.. There's a little mixing, but generally, that's how it is. It makes it less convenient to shop for different types of things in one trip, but more convenient to find the exact item you want. (Although, when you do come across a department store, there tends to be LOTS of space devoted to electronics.. Almost every department store I saw had mini Crusoe powered laptops, for example. What's "geek," in the US is much more mainstream there, hence the first sentence of my post).
Honestly though, the prices aren't much better than the states for computer equipment, possibly worse if you're converting from US$. Aibo's are still 5 grand (or however much they cost nowadays), and the fastest P4 is still going to set you back close to a grand. (Although cell phones are generally significantly cheaper). You're also not going to see some advanced PC technology you've never heard of, like USB3.0, or 15000RPM 2TB SATA hard drives. What you will find is a lot of brands you may not have heard of (Albatron, for example, which I'd never heard of before visiting Japan 3 years ago). And be careful what you buy, because the stores aren't under any obligation to accept returns. When I bought a Gigabyte motherboard and couldn't get it to boot (after swapping out everything, one component at a time), I eventually took it back and I was told to run slower memory and an older video card. They wouldn't let me return it or exchange it for another. Just because they sell a ton of electronic equipment in Akhiabara, don't expect the stores to have more or equal knowledge than you do. These guys are just salespeople and first-level tech support, just like anywhere else in the world.
It *is* easier to find exotic parts that you'd generally have to mail-order in the states, like a Zhallman fan.. although some cities (San Diego, for example) have tons of mom'n'pop computer stores with the same sort of things.
Pretty much, if you have a Fry's near you, you're not missing anything except huge throngs of shoppers, and people who aren't sure if you know which side to walk on, so every-other head on encounter turns in to a little dance.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I have been living in Hong Kong for the past few years.. We have a place called Mong Kok which is one of the most densely populated places on Earth. From Wiki : With one of the highest population densities in the world (It once attained 130 thousand people per square km, though the actual population didn't attain that much. Apparently the district was smaller than 1 square km). MK sells everything, in terms of "electrical" stuff, it would be enough to make the most season Akihabara shopper quiver. My point is, I found Akihabara quite a let down when I visited. For a true shopping extravaganza, try Mong Kok, HK.