I’m planning on messing with the layout and am curious what sort of horizontal real estate I should work with…

Alrighty, on with the show!

50+ pics… don’t want to have to do 10 more posts for my trip, so doing big chunks ^^; Probably just one more after this…

Just a couple more akiba pics :P Miku bike above was awesome ^^

Here’s animate, where I got the wallscrolls, nanoha/fate stay/night charms and other goodies:

I always seem to take this next shot ^^;

If you’re ever looking for onoden… thar she blows!

Sunday in Akiba just wasn’t the same without the chuuoudoori closed for pedestrian traffic ;_; At least the maids were still out.

I wish there was a district in my city where huge CHAOS;HEAD ads were being displayed :P

Always crowded in the afternoons.

Summore shots of the itasha at wonhobby 9.

More akiba crowds.

I think there was some sort of Valentine’s Day promotion where somehow you would get a ticket then play jyan-ken-pon against miku for a prize.

Alas, I didn’t get a chance to play ^^;

Alrighty, on to harajuku!

You familiar with this free hugs thing? I’m guessing this is related to the wiki article I just linked.

Make sure to stop by on Sunday ‘cuz I think (?) that’s the only time everyone’s just hanging out like this ~

This gal was getting her picture taken by another harajuku girl…

Sundays can be quite crowded ^^;

… excellent. ^^;

You is likes chicken mayo crepe?

If you need gothic lolita outfits, I’m sure you’ll find something in harajuku…

I was a big shopper I prolly woulda been in heaven.

Stopped at a yakiniku for dinner, got a nice view of the chaos. Alas, the window was great for the view but not so much for photography.

Was trying to get a decent photo off of this crazy audi building, spotted while walking over to shibuya. Maxed out my camera’s iso, and stepped to f/2.7 but still had to use a 1/13s shutter speed orz Next time I hope I have my tripod and a better camera ^^;

…on to Yokohama! Takes about 30 min or so by local train and only costs like… 600-700 yen. Not sure if it’s really worth a day trip (unless you have specific plans) but I was gonna meet some coworkers for dinner so I decided to wander around the city.

I did this read this post Danny did recently, but all I could remember that it was near the water… so to the water I walked! Took a while, but eventually I found a park on the water.

Totally randomly, the above pic is where I spotted punynari doing his nanoha review! Alas, I was shy and didn’t introduce myself, but a quick search for “nanoha yokohama” a couple days later revealed the identity of this random person doing a figure review. If I wasn’t so shy I probably woulda ran up and screamed, “omg, I flew across the world, decided to spend 1 day in yokohama, and here I find a fellow collector doing an outdoor figure review!!” ^^;;

A huge bridge was visible from where we were, alas my camera doesn’t exactly have fancy telephoto capabilities ^^;

Not really looking at much in this picture but I kind of like it for some reason ^^;;

Neat looking… hotel?

Too bad all the ugly looking cones were out -_-

Figure photography has made me a nut. I’ll take a picture of anything.

A fancy looking (well, just for the fact that it was on the water)… restaurant was it?

Saw the ferris wheel and remembered Danny’s article… maybe an onsen was near!

…had no idea where I was and pressed on.

In Yokohama you only need half a car.

Decided to head towards Yokohama’s chinatown and hopped on the subway. These are probably the fanciest chairs in a subway station I’ve ever seen.

Arrived with little trouble. Too bad it was cloudy.

If I had felt confident that I could successfully ask them to just, “take me for a ride wherever” I might’ve done it ^^;

This is probably what akiba feels like to non-otaku… just a thousand stores all selling the same stuff… meh :P

So much tasty looking food, but unfortunately I wasn’t very hungry orz

Fancy looking... street sign?

Fancy looking... temple? Shrine?

石獅?

Walking back along the water through some park… they have this statue. “Little girl with red shoes on.” It was even marked on the map I got at the station. Famous… I guess?

Better look at the water front/park.

Bird.

Think danny posted on this a while back… something about it being some famous huge brick warehouse…? Seemed like there were some stores in it, but I was busy getting to my next destination.

…not here, but those building looked neat with those skyways…

…not here either but it was a very prominent building ^^;

Here! The shinyokohama ramen museum ^^; Another big orz, it was getting late and as previously mentioned, I was meeting coworkers for dinner… so I didn’t get to try any of the ramen restaurants ;_; The actual museum is really small (like 3 rooms worth ^^;;) but the basement is filled with different ramen restaurants, I believe each representing a different style of ramen from a particular region of Japan.

And that’s about it! Got lost getting to the office, but eventually found my coworkers and we hit up an izakaya. I love eating at izakaya.

Tiny bit more pics from Narita (had no idea there was anything to see there… thought it was just an airport town ^^;) and Tokyo, then it’s 100% back to the “usual” ^^;

以上！

So!  Here’s a post to help you find what you’re looking for in Akiba… or to at least make it easier to get a feel for how the area is laid out.

Click for the full size (2577x2048, 865kb)

This map is usually being distributed in front of Gamers, which is just outside the JR station.  If you don’t see a stand, it might be too early in the morning, but it should be out by 11 or noon or so.  Evidently there was an English version at one point, although this time I didn’t see it on the table…  Note on the maps I’ve scanned, NORTH is to the RIGHT.  So “up” on the map is west, “left” is south, and “down” is east.

The first point of interest is the JR station.  I almost always take JR to akiba, though if you don’t happen to be by a JR station, there’s always the subway.  Anyhow, it’s important you get your bearings after arriving or you could quite possibly end up walking away from all the goodies! (I’ve done that on my earlier trips ^^;)

The Akihabara JR station

Let’s assume you come by JR for now.  You should see a bunch of signs for the “Akihabara Electric Town Exit”.  That’s the one you want.  Eventually you should arrive at the ticket gates, and you’ll have a choice – left or right.

If you go left, you’ll end up at the red X above.  Right takes you to the blue X.  Unless you’re going to UDX (where the WonHobby event was this year) or otherwise know your way around you probably want to head to the left (red X).  Do so and you should see the following:

View looking in the direction of the green arrow

In the above pic, you’re looking in the direction of the green arrow.  Walk in that direction to the yellow/red/blue sign (circled in red in the pic) and you’ve found Radiokaikan!  This building has a massive amount of stores, including the Kotobukiya store (pictured below, figures are on the 2nd floor, not directly connected – you have to go upstairs then walk down the hall),Volks store (way on the top floors (5 & 6? or 6 & 7? can’t quite remember), and K-Books (3rd floor, tons of manga.  They also have some character goods, although there’s a used section that contains dakimakura which is… err yeah, so make sure you know exactly what you’re buying).

Along practically every hallway and face of the building you’ll see stores.

Above is an alley in the radiokaikan building.  If you refer to the station map pic, it’s the alleyway between buildings 56 and 57 (the white numbers in red circles are building numbers).  You can see there’s 5 stores on the right side alone.

There’s lotsa stairs and elevators and such inside the building to get up, pictured above is where an escalator is (arrow is pointing to it), accessible from the street.  It’s directly to the left of the kotobukiya store.  If you’re curious, the red letters in the sign above say ラジオ会館 – ラジオ rajio 会 kai 館 kan.

View looking in the direction of the purple arrow.

If you refer back to the station map I marked, in the direction of the purple arrow you’ll see the above view.  Not as much (still a buncha stuff thou ^^;) of interest in that direction and if you cross the street and then the wafer, you’ll be walking yourself out of Akihabara in a hurry.  If you do want to get right into some ero stuff like AV or need tenga products, just head that way and into m’s on the corner of the building on the right (building 57 on the map, lower left corner).  That’ll get ya started :P  If you want ero manga though, K-Books has a huge selection (err, not that I would know…? *cough cough* ^^;;), so better to head to Radiokaikan.

The purple arrow can be a good direction to head if you need a quick bite to eat.  Pictured above, starting from the left, there’s a convience store (NEWDAYS), Homemade curry time… turn left at the corner and you’ll find a tempura donburi place, an izakaya, soba restaurant, tonkatsu retaurant (和辛 (wakou) – if you’re never had good tonkatsu, this is a good place to start), sushidon place, ramen, and two other places.  Walk further down and you’ll see on the map Book Off should be on your left (building 88).  I didn’t make it to this store unfortunately, but have been to another.  They deal in used manga/books and if you’re down with that… soooo cheap!  I got some shakugan no shana light novels for 105 yen each and the first volume of the Nanoha strikers manga for 350 yen.  Both usually go for 5-600 yen.  Depending on the store they may also have CDs, games and DVDs.

Alrighty, back in the direction of the green arrow.  Keep walking, and look to your right for Gamers!

Buncha computer/electronics/other random gadget stores in the way, but marked with the red arrow above you’ll get to this multistory paradise kinda across the street from radiokaikan.

Street level of Gamers

Gamers is an all around store with games, manga, anime, music, figures, characters goods… all sorts stuff.  Ground floor is where I picked up the latest G’s Festival containing a dakimakura cover of Feena.  Everytime I buy manga here, they always seem to be giving out bonus character bookmarks, so definitely worth a look before finalizing your K-Books purchases :P  Be aware that Gamers is divided into two sides – each side has different stuff and I think they’re only connected on the manga (4th?) floor.  There’s an escalator (behind the van in the pic) that takes you to the right half of the store, whereas the elevator/stairs accessible from the street level store takes you to the other half (I think ^^;;) – best to just look at the floor guides.

If you keep walking past Gamers the big street in front of you will be 中央通り (chuuou doori, probably more popularly romanized as chuo dori).  This is the main street and it’s lined with a billion more shops, arcades, and sometimes restaurants/quick eats.

Reaching the street, you should see laox and onoden:

(above pic is from my 2008 trip… i think it looked about the same this year ^^;)

Again, heading left (would be south, towards the river) quickly takes you out of akihabara, but don’t discount the sega arcade (top left corner of building 55) and ishimaru music stores (building 1).  If you head to the right, you’ll be confronted with store after store, some small, others very similar to gamers.

If you click on the above pic, you can better see the stores I’ve highlighted in green and red, along chuou doori.  The green box is asobit city (although if I remember, not the one where I found the huge 1/1 figures/dolls on display), the red is where toranoana and animate are.  Toranoana has a ton of doujinshi (like 4 floors or more?) so if that’s your thing, I think you’ll be pleased ^^.  Also, as you’re strolling along chuou doori, there are some bigger electronic stores with pc stuff, cameras, phones, etc.  For now I’ll be restricting the conversation to akiba-kei stuff but feel free to ask if there’s something else ya wanna know.

Here’s another zoomed in view, this time of the area the area west of chuou doori (above chuou doori on the map, since north is right):

The magenta boxes are the ishimaru stores – the one in building 1 (SOFT2) has tons of music – jpop, anime along with dvds up the wazoo.  Ishimaru in building 4 is jazz if I remember… the buildings in building 6 are the ishimaru character & hobby store (bottom on the map) and Idol (top on the map, read: porn) store.  The ishimaru in building 18 is SOFT1 and might have games (haven’t been recently but I believe when it used to be in a different location it was games…)

Above is the ishimaru game/hoby store, coming from chouou doori.  Behind it you can see the idol store.  The yellow box I marked on the map in “building” 6 is the traders store – I’ve never actually been in, but it’s 3 stories of used goods.

The first floor has TV games (console games) and DVDs, 2nd floor is PC games, and the third is… more TV games?

The purple box is Club Sega, which should be an easy to spot landmark on chuou doori.  Arcades like this one and Game Taito Station are usually packed with UFO catcher games on the ground floor so head upstairs for SF IV and other goodies.

The dark blue box is the @home maid cafe, I recommend all otaku going at least once ^_^ …though if you can, take along a Japanese speaker ‘cuz it may be hard to figure out what they’re asking you to do ^^;  There’s plenty others on the map if anyone’s interested.

The red box is the asobit city I was in looking for character goods.  They had one floor with some stuff, but perhaps the bigger spectacle is the 1/1 figures they had on display:

Huge and expensive ^^;

Saber woulda been more impressive in armor :P

Rei along with some busty gals (they from anything?)

No wig for rei.

Asuka and… gah, who is that?

Oppai and pettanko?

The final box I highlighted in cyan is a store called cosmate – perhaps it’s this store?  Alas, didn’t notice until looking over the map as I was making this post, but if it is indeed the linked store, should be a good cosplay resource.

If you’d like to check out one of the huge department stores, head east (down on the map) towards Yodobashi camera.

If you don’t exit directly on that side from the JR station, there’s a little walk way that gets ya there, rather than having to go all the way around.  Otherwise, yeah, head under the tracks towards the big red box marked above.

9 floors of insanity – the toys floor is like a Toy’R'Us in and of itself.  Computers, cameras, lighting equipment, home appliances, luggage… sooooo much stuff!  There’s even a floor of restaurants on the 8th floor if you’re hungry :P  Don’t think I snapped any pics this time, so here’s one from my 2008 trip.

As you may have guessed, despite spending so much time in Akiba, I’ve still only scratched the surface in terms of the stores it offers.  The map is full of stores whose names I don’t even recognize, and I’ve probably never even been to a lot of the buildings in the north west (upper right on the map) part of akiba.  I’m a really slow shopper so I spend most of my time browsing goods when I should be exploring.  On the other hand, it’s pretty daunting with the multi-floor shops crammed into every last square inch of property ^^;;

Some helpful vocabulary which you may want to get familiar with – all the multifloor stores have a directory, but I don’t think it’s always in English, so look out for the following:

アニメ – anime
イベントフロア – event floor (don’t go here unless you’re attending an event ^^;)
雑誌 – magazines
漫画 or マンガ or まんが – manga
同人誌 – doujinshi
ゲーム – games
ホビー – hobby (i forget what this exactly refers to, gunpla & figures perhaps?)
アイドル – idol
中古 – used (this may explain why something is very cheap! often explains $30 dakimakura, so beware!!)
フィギュア – figures
キャラクタグッズ　- character goods (charms, dakimakura, posters, etc.)

If you do decide to come by subway, note that the hibiya line is east of the JR station (down on the map), so you’ll be right by yodobashi camera.  Hibiya line Akihabara station marked in red, below.

You can see building 93 on the map, in the middle right of the map, which is yodobashi camera.

So there’s a brief look at some of the stores I frequent in Akiba.  Again, feel free to ask about specific stores or directions to other Akiba attractions I haven’t covered.  Now that I have that map scanned it will be a lot easier to point out locations.

Also yes, I’m back home orz, but going through loot still great ^^ Loot post in progress!

以上！

There are a ton of little shops selling a buncha stuff, including goodies like deep fried mochi ^_^

If you visit, it’s just a dollar to buy your own incense, so you don’t have to get bad karma by stealing other peoples’ smoke :P

I got 大吉！(daikichi, great luck!)  If you’ve never done mikuji, it’s pretty simple… just pay 100 yen, shake the can until a stick falls out, then open the drawer that matches the number on your stick (though it may take a while if you’re not familiar with Japanese/Chinese numbers ^^; (一　二　三　四　五　六　七　八　九　十))

Back in Akiba I stopped by ishimaru to pick up some games… Final Fantasy Dissidia and… Idol Master for the PSP! They were sold out at Gamers otherwise I woulda tried over there.

My luggage is getting really full so rather than stocking up on more manga, decided to look for some lighter goodies…

Errr ok, no not that was just looking around the store ^^;; I believe that was at asobit city… though don’t tell them, since they don’t allow photos in the shop ^^;

If figmas are just too small for ya, how about a 1/1 poseable figure :P These babies were also in the asobit store but luckily they had a sign saying that photography of them was ok.

I’ll have to get my other pics of ‘em up later…

@Panther, I think I finally did wander into a store with dolfie stuff — the Volks store in Radio kaikan.  (by the way, got to see Volks Nanoha, Fate-chan and Hayate in the flesh… now I want all three orz).  Unfortunately there were no photo signs everywhere and staff walking around so I wasn’t able to get any pics…

@those who inquired about a saber lily poster (well, ad ^^;;)  still haven’t asked about it yet… though I wouldn’t hold your breath… wallscrolls go for 5000 yen at some shops, so given the size of that thing… they’d probably charge more than the figure!

Decided to pick up a ton of goodies for snacks…

I think I’ve just undone the miles and miles of walking I’ve done on this trip ^^;;

Looks like it’s gonna rain tomorrow, but I guess that just means spending more time inside the stores ^^;

以上！

Anyone else want to eat a choco corone after watching Lucky☆Star? Been looking for them in Japanese grocery stores and bakeries but figures that it took a trip to Tokyo to finally get my hands on one ^^;

Yes, I’m sure there probably is somewhere I can get them in the states, but I failed at finding it. Though strangely enough, I found this choco corone from Andersen bakery (was at Tokyu Hands), the same bakery they have at the Japantown in San Francisco.

Was pretty tasty, though nothing special ^^; Some bread and chocolate filling. Not sure how Konata sustained herself on ‘em ^^;

Picked up a bunch of other sweets from the bakery…

So many deserts all over this city. You may already be familiar with the fact that department stores here have a basement floor grocery/food court… but it always feels like half of the area is devoted to cakes, cookies or whatever other treats.

So far two days have passed and I’ve spent over half the time in Akihabara ^^; No heavy purchasing yet, but already some wallet damage.

Decided to get some CDs today, pictured above. The Code Geass Complete Best is a compilation of all the OP and ED songs from the series (both seasons), along with a DVD containing creditless versions. Even came with a set of post cards and picture/story books. I’ll have to go into more detail once I get back…

The other CDs were a completely random find – dance mixes of tons of anime/eroge songs! I love ‘em and will be looking for the other CDs in the series later. Some of the tracks on them include remixes of 悠久の翼 (yuukyuu no tsubasa, ef), Still I love you (school days), I Bless Thy Life (Angelos Armas), 沙耶の唄 (saya no uta), and Find the blue (CHAOS;HEAD). Will try to post some clips later…

Also made the rounds to Harajuku and Shibuya…

Always fun to see all the madness.

And don’t forget some crepes :P Gads, there’s a crepe shop like every 15 feet in harajuku ^^;

Alas, taking a short break from Akiba to see Yokohama and Kamakura over the next two days, but after that, the madness will continue ^^

Lily poster in the Kotobukiya store

If you have a sharp eye you may have noticed some manga purchases from the receipt on the first pics… more stuff I’ll have to go into later :P

以上！