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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."
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!
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 :)
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.
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
Screw the maids.
Isn't that the idea?
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.
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.
It's a trap!
Ascii artist &
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.
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.