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A Video Guide To Akihabara
freaklabs writes "Tokyo Hackerspace just put up a video guide to Akihabara in Tokyo, an area that's densely populated with electronics components shops. We get a lot of questions about where to go over there and also requests for guided tours so we figured it's probably best just to put up videos, descriptions, and Google map markers. It was always difficult to tell people where to go, since the places are hard to find, so we're hoping this makes it easier for visitors to Tokyo that want to get their geek on."
I went; it is fucking awesome!
From the third video, I wouldn't mind doing a tour of those maids myself...
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
Is there an American Equivalent to this place? I feel so third-rate here in the USA :-(
Sig: I stole this sig.
I've been to Akihabara before and it's extremely confusing, much like the rest of Tokyo, so I'm really happy about this guide. I watched a few clips from it and it's easy to follow and the google maps addition is great. My only request is if you can do it for the rest of Tokyo :)
Having lived in Tokyo before, I've never understood what the fuss is about. Most stores in Akihabara are tiny, amateurish ratholes run by guys who have no idea what they are talking about, but act snobbish to cover for it. They sell obsolete software for hundreds of dollars, out of torn boxes in poor condition. Most of the stuff will only work on the Japanese electric grid, on Asia-encoded DVD players, or on computers with Windows Japan installed on it. Despite the sales clerks' insistence, it will have problems in the USA. And cameras, they will act like they never heard of a camera that costs less than $300. If I tell them I just want something simple, that doesn't have a million buttons and strange features on it, then they are deeply offended and just turn their back to me. It is the last place I would want to go to buy anything. Between Wal-mart or ordering off the internet, these kind of places serve no particular purpose anymore.
It's like Digikey, Mouser, a hamfest, Radio Shack and Best Buy all mashed up together. Awesome.
Better known as 318230.
There is a place right smack in the middle of Sao Paulo, Brasil called Electronics Paradise that is just like this
I go there often and it is just as confusing
Does anyone know of any good, similar shops in Kyoto or Osaka areas?
I just made my fifth or six trip to Akihabara over the weekend.
Stay away from any store that says "PC game" (in Katakana). Chances are, by "game" they're referring to softcore-porn DVD roms... They're usually B1 level and full of otaku perverts. I went into a few looking for a specific PC title and it took me a bit to realize what was actually going on.
I highly recommend taking a couple thousand yen to a big arcade like Club Sega. Fun times.
Claustrophobic
Holy hell, I'm not claustrophobic but it just feels tight and noisy (not in the sound sense). Ugh, I would go crazy. Literally, mentally insane.
Have not been back in years since the whole Otaku scene crap took hold.
I can appreciate the guide to cut through the crap though!
Self Defense - A Human Right www.a-human-right.com
I watched this when it was posted on HackADay earlier. It was largely a waste of time, because there's not that much to see. Most of what I saw looked remarkably similar to some ham-friendly electronics stores in Boston, like You Do It Electronics (there was another great hobbyist store chain that went out of business, I forget the name.)
The video is shot without any stabilization, handheld, by someone who had a little too much caffine, and who points the camera at Interesting Things for all of about, oh, a tenth of a second. This combined with Youtube's low bitrates = blurry, compression blocks of Fail. Seriously, you can tell the place is amazing visually, but because Cracky McCoffee The Cameraman can't hold the camera still or stop to pause on something, all you see is a blurry mess. And it's all out of focus, too, because it was shot with a dSLR, and this one apparently can't autofocus while shooting video (or Cracky McCoffee bumped the MF/AF switch), and CMcCTC didn't realize that indoors, he has such a large aperture that there's zero depth of field. At one point, the guy is standing in front of the camera talking for a good 30 seconds, completely blurred out, until he steps closer to the camera to get out of the aisle, and then poof! He's out of focus again.
Most of the "cool stuff" seems to consist of enclosures. The guy leading the tour has a borderline fetish for enclosures. Here, let me blast right past these meters and industrial automation gear. Now, check out this enclosure! Wow, it's hexagon shaped, see that? And it's metalic! This one has a stand. Now, pay no attention to those robotics...here's my other favorite enclosure store! This one can silkscreen graphics on the front. WOOOOOOOW. Oh that, those are nuclear-powered minisubs. Waaaaaaalking....
Please help metamoderate.
wow, much brighter in there now...
we went on our senior trip to japan 23 years ago.... visited there..
just think of all the projects i could start and not finish!!!!!!!!!
locked out of this slashdot account for 10+ years... Im back
News for nerds. Stuff that matters.
It's a trap!
Ascii artist &
A video catalog of the various shops in a tinkerer's paradise!
That was an awesome little tour. I think every city has a few electronic parts stores, but I've never seen anything so extensive or well-categorized. I seem to recall a lot more cardboard bins and chaos. The thing which surprised me the most was that it wasn't shoulder-to-shoulder madness. I've been in cities with a lot fewer people and you barely move around in shops like that, but in Japan (of all places), there was permanently enough room not just to navigate but to have a camera man follow you around also.
Maybe it was just early on a week day. Or perhaps that's just what happens when you spread everything out and have more of it.
What a fun video repository, though. Made me feel like a kid again!
-FL
Perhaps you didn't see any products of interest to you, but I know of nowhere in the US or London that even comes close in terms of diversity of components for the do-it-yourselfer. Perhaps, things are picking up in Hong Kong.
If you actually go there, and you know what you are looking for and are willing to learn a little Nihongo, it is awesome.
For a quick non-professional filming effort, it more than served its purpose. My congratulations on developing a very interesting tour.
Anyway, I really appreciated the tour. We'll all be looking for SuperBananas awesome video of his local Akehabara on a future slahsdot post so we can make a fair comparison.
People are quick to hate on their cities here but are you SURE that there isn't a big electronics shop? There actually is where I live. Place is 100% DYI stuff. You need some parts, caps, resistors, etc they got what you need. Big warehouse of a place. Not as cool or famous as this, but there. So have you looked for local places that might be what you want? If not, don't bitch.
Also don't bitch if you love somewhere small. Please remember this is in TOKYO. The population there is north of 13 million people. Means there is room for more specialty stores. You won't find a store like this in Ikuno, just like you wouldn't in a small 5000 person American town.
Looks like "Family vacation," quality camera work. Ummm, that may be fine if you are just shooting something to preserve memories but if you are trying to make something as an online guide/information site, take more time. As you noted, image stabilization is key. Best idea is just a camera with simple optical image stabilization. You don't need an expensive one to get it these days and it works great. Then take some time on shots and frame them. Let people get a look at what you are showing them, in particular if you are showing something neat/unfamiliar and with a lot of stuff in it. Try to keep everything in focus. AF works pretty well more of the time, but you may need to focus it yourself from time to time. Also, roll a lot more tape than you think you need. Want to show people 5 minutes of something? Roll 10, 30, even 60 minutes of tape (or files on a flash card as the case is now). Why?
Because editing is the second part. Don't just shoot a video and dump it raw on to Youtube. Good video editing software can be had for a low price or even free. Get some. Then take all that footage you rolled and edit it. Toss out the parts that aren't good, where things are blocked or out of focus, where it isn't as interesting and so on. Just keep the good bits. If you rolled extra tape this should be no problem, you probably have more than you need. You don't have to do anything fancy, you can just cut or crossfade from one scene to the next. Just try and keep only the good bits for people to watch.
Then maybe take a bit of time for narration. Don't feel like you have to narrate on the fly, video editing software will let you talk over top of what you did. If something isn't clear, or what was being said on the day isn't reliance or hard to understand, redo the narration over top later.
Basically, if you want to put together something to show the world, spend a little time on it. It won't be professional, but that's fine. However with some effort you can make something that looks good, rather than something that is very amateurish.
If you care enough to try and post something special, like this site, you really should spend the time to do a better job on the video.
Just try to keep in mind that it's really more suited to the geek culture of Japan rather than the geek culture of America. Maid cafes and AKB-48 might have international appeal, but it's hard to imagine there are many slashdotters who wouldn't be surprised by Oimoya, self-described as the world's first idol-only shop, where—for a price—customers can talk to and take pictures of teenage and pre-teen girls who feature in DVDs that might best be described as soft-core porn plus clothes. (Not that I've watched any. Just follow the link to find some DVD covers.)
There are plenty of parts and electronics stores, but there are also many plastic model and figurine shops whose Gundam-related wares to non-Gundam wares ratio is much higher than might be expected.
Even when I lived 15 minutes away every visit was confusing because everything there changed so often.
And it's not as diverse and interesting as it used to be anyway. Things are moving online or into super-stores like Yodobashi.
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Just so people don't get the wrong impression. This video since it is basically done indoors doesn't begin to show the immense scale of this place. Closer to the main strip all buildings are 10~20 stories tall filled with stuff. The sides of buildings are TVs. 16wheelers come through but instead of towing a shipping container they have a bunch of 50" TVs playing anime. On certain days you may see >100 people cosplaying while just passing through. And this guy totally focused on things he likes, if you didn't see what you are looking for in his video it isn't because its not there. Its because he skipped it. The fact that they had parts to set up your own bio-lab was telling.
Well, if you don't go in *both* the tourist trap duty-free shops *and* the backalley places where you can barely turn around, you haven't really gone to Akihabara. I was stationed near there for a few years, and loved it, just for the coolness factor. I liked the little warren of components and tool shops, but I also liked the high-end stores with $40,000 (in Yen equivalent) speakers. I thought it was cool to see the bleeding edge stuff. I remember reading about a new 50" LCD TV on a blog somewhere, and seeing it that evening for sale in Akihabara, for $25K. I still have that accursed Bic Camera tune stuck in my head, since there was one of those 10 minutes from my house. I do miss Tokyo, and I hope to get a job there again one day. My only disappointment with Akihabara was that there is almost no Linux representation there. There were a few Linux books in the big stores (in Japanese, naturally), and even Latex books, but mostly it's a Windows-only ad-space. I never even saw Linux or BSD cds for sale.
Wow! One of the best articles in a long time. Really interesting videos. I'm inspired to learn something about electronics just so I have a reason to visit.
I don't respond to AC's.
I used to live in Kanagawa. Kanagawa is the prefecture bordering Tokyo. I was studying at a university in Tokyo. As such, I had the opportunity to shop there a few times.
Call me a buzzkill, but Akiba is not that impressive in my opinion. The arthouses along the border of the sub-city (??) were way more impressive.
Akihabara just feels like a city made out of Fry'ses.
Once upon a time there was NYC's "Radio Row" near Cortland and Canal streets, but that started dying out when the WTC was built and the whole area got turned into yuppie hell. Several blocks of stores selling all manner of electronics, parts, military surplus, tubes, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Row
All that remains of this history nowadays are a couple stores selling crappy car stereo junk.
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So much better to read about than Lindsay Lohan!
So why does that video default to 720P, then run in a rescaled window while you can't fullscreen it? I can even set it to 1080P, google likes to waste bandwidth, don't they?
TFA describes one store as:
"Prices aren’t that great in the store, but the prices are much better online."
The sad fact is, this accurately describes every store that has ever been worth dealing with in Akihabara (of which many have gone online-only), and most of those which remain. Akihabara is great to visit once or twice, but not more than that. And for the love of god, unless you're in some kind of emergency situation (have to pick up a DC supply _now_ the wife will kill you) don't ever buy anything there. You _will_ be raped.
the one in new york city was demolished in the 1970s when they built the world trade center
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Row
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
you see it on the subject of movies, books, fandom... the mindlessly extremely negative person
is it some sort of personality problem?
what exactly do you think you achieve unloading with such negativity on efforts which you have no investment in?
what motivates this completely irrational negativity?
it's an honest question
surely you realize your negativity is way out of proportion, right?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
My first visit to Akihabara was in the early 70s, my latest visit was in '97. It had changed quite a bit. Back in the 70s, I bought the first components to build a radio, then later some test equipment. Later still, went there to build my first computer (pre-Apple and TRS). My last visit, I was there to buy my first digital camera and an MD player. The area to buy tubes, circuit boards and parts had shrunk.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
I love you Bro, (and camera person.) Thank you for the exotic vacation.
Yes, but do you have any products I can use to straighten my hair?
-FL