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A Video Guide To Akihabara

Posted by timothy on from the you-mean-it's-not-an-app? dept.

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."

13 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Maids... by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Funny

    Screw the maids. This is nerd porn. Pieces parts. Parts of parts.

    Sigh. And I'm stuck with Radio Shack.

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  2. Great Guide by iONiUM · · Score: 5, Informative

    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 :)

    1. Re:Great Guide by interkin3tic · · Score: 4, Informative

      Even if you can find their shops, you may be greeted with "NO FOREIGNER ALLOWED" thing, lovely huh?

      In Akihabara? No. In a district famous worldwide for selling electronics, with extremely expensive rent, you are not likely to find a place unwilling to sell to foreigners. That would be a bit like a bar with a sign "No drunk people allowed." In Tokyo, the only place I ran into a "no gaijin" policy was a love hotel in Shibuya.

  3. Third Rate Shopping by dorpus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Third Rate Shopping by bakarocket · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That's because it's essentially a tourist trap, both for tech nerds (who live outside of the country and don't know any better), and for anime geeks (who know better but can't stop themselves). There are good shops there, though. It sounds like you went to a bunch of shops that had "Duty-Free" written on the signs. Just like everywhere else, those types of shops are the worst to buy from. You need to hit the backstreets that run parallel to the main drag to find good deals. That being said, anyone who's looking for electronics buys online from kakaku.com now. It's cheaper, and you don't have to run the manga-nerd gauntlets surrounding every cosplaying female-equivalent in Akiba.

    2. Re:Third Rate Shopping by Darkness404 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So your complaint is that shops in Japan sell tings to the Japanese market? That they sell things designed to work in Japan? That they sell computers with a Japanese-localized OS on it?

      Wow, the shops in the US are crappy! I mean, this game is designed to work with NTSC consoles and not PAL consoles! This toaster only has a US outlet on it and won't work with UK power! And I mean, they spell colour without the U! Its like the people in the US are self-serving and cater to people who live in the US and not people visiting!

      I really don't see your complaint, people in Japan sell to a Japanese market, people in the US sell to a US-centered market, people in the UK sell to a UK-centered market, etc.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
  4. Re:Hmm by timeOday · · Score: 4, Interesting
    But why do we need a big electronics bazaar nowadays? You can buy anything anywhere, including from home.

    When I went to Disneyland recently I was disappointed all the Main Street shops are just the same, full of Disney trademark Chinese-made trinkets, with little differentiation even between themselves. I thought, 'is it just that I'm a grownup now?' But no, my kids didn't care for it either. Why? Maybe because they're a Disney store at every local mall, and because searching 'Disney' on ebay returns over half a million results. I really think physical location has become less significant in the last 30 years.

    Similarly, when I visited the Guang Hua Market in Taipei, I saw nothing I couldn't have shopped for much more easily online.

  5. Re:akihabara is awesome! by object404 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    For those who want to live a little more dangerously, you should try Shenzhen, right beside Hong Kong. It's the new Akihabara and all the new bleeding edge mix & match gadgets the rest of the world hasn't seen before is there. It's now also the electronics manufacturing hub of the world since Everything now's made in China :)

    Check these sites out for some of the goodies:
    http://shanzai.com
    http://micgadget.com
    One of the most interesting non-knockoff gadgets to come out of there last month is the Apple Peel, a smart jacket you can slip over an iPod touch that turns it into an iPhone.

    Not everything over there is fake knockoffs and Shenzhen China's Shanzhai garage hardware hacking & remixing culture is very interesting.

    You should also check out the blog of Andrew "bunnie" Huang, said to be the first guy outside Microsoft to hack the X-Box & wrote the book on it. He co-founded & created the Chumby (open source hackable hardware gadget) and his adventures in Shenzhen are pretty cool.

    --
    http://twitter.com/object404
  6. Re:Maids... by Shikaku · · Score: 4, Funny

    Screw the maids.

    Isn't that the idea?

  7. mostly pointless by SuperBanana · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.
  8. subject by Faux_Pseudo · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's a trap!

    --
    Ascii artist &
  9. Re:Hmm by veganboyjosh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sure, you could buy anything from anywhere from the comfort of your home. Isn't there something to be said for browsing? How much inspiration comes from looking at that bin of wiring harnesses and realizing this other harness that you hadn't thought of would allow you to solve some other problem...allow your project to do more?

    I've about given up on being able to go to a hardware store (in my local town, USA) and asking the hardware store employees for help solving some problem that requires thinking outside the box. If they don't sell some product that solves my problem, they don't carry it.

  10. Hardly pointless by turkeyfish · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.