Akihabara, Tokyo: Electric Town, Anime Shops, Maid Cafés and How to Get There

Step out of the station and the first thing that reaches you is sound: arcade jingles spilling from open doors, shop speakers repeating cheerful announcements, and young women in maid costumes calling out invitations along the sidewalk. Above them, giant anime faces look down from the fronts of the buildings. Akihabara is the part of Tokyo where electronics, games, manga and fan culture all share the same few streets, and it rewards anyone who likes to wander with no fixed plan.

What is Akihabara like?

Akihabara is a neighborhood in the Chiyoda ward of Tokyo, generally understood as the area around Akihabara Station, and it is nicknamed Electric Town. The name comes from its long life as a shopping center for household electronic goods, a trade that grew out of the post-war black market. Walk its main street today and you still see that history in the shape of the place: narrow storefronts stacked with cables, cameras and components, now sharing the pavement with shops selling figures, trading cards and games.

People consider Akihabara the center of Japanese otaku culture, the world of devoted fans of anime, manga, video games and computers. The main area lies on a street just west of the station, and the whole district is covered in icons from anime and manga, painted on shutters and printed on banners.

Cosplayers stand along the sidewalks handing out advertisements, especially for maid cafés. Under all of this runs a quieter thread. Doujinshi, the amateur or fan-made manga, has been growing here since the 1970s, because Akihabara worked as a free market where a large amount of homemade work could find readers.

The station itself was built in 1888 and became a major freight transit point after it opened in 1890, which explains why goods and tinkerers gathered here in the first place. Akihabara suits collectors, gamers, gadget hunters and anyone curious about how a subculture turns into a whole district. It also suits people who simply enjoy a street with a lot going on, where every shop door opens onto something unexpected.

Things to do in Akihabara

The district is best taken as a series of floors and doorways rather than a list of monuments. You climb stairs in tall buildings, step into arcades, and drift from one themed shop to the next, with a shrine waiting at the edge when you want a change of pace.

Chuo-dori, the main street

Chuo-dori is the spine of Akihabara, the avenue where the anime banners, the cosplayers and the large arcades gather. It runs just west of the station, so you reach it within moments of leaving the ticket gates. Along its length you pass shops for video games, manga, anime goods, electronics and computer parts, each with its own icons hung over the entrance.

On Sundays, Chuo-dori is closed to vehicles and becomes an informal stage for cosplayers and local bands. Today the interest is mostly in looking up and looking in.

Stop at the arcades, where whole floors are given over to rows of game machines, and watch the players at the rhythm and fighting cabinets. Even if you never put in a coin, the lights and the music are part of the show.

Electronics stores and Gachapon Hall

The big stores are where the old Electric Town identity is easiest to see. Yodobashi Akiba is a large electronics and entertainment store, while LaOX Duty Free is set up for visitors from abroad. Gachapon Hall is the opposite kind of place: a hall of capsule-toy machines, where you turn a handle and a small figure drops out in a plastic ball. Choosing which machine to try is half the pleasure.

Browse the stores for cameras, games and gadgets, then finish at the capsule machines with whatever coins are left. If rain keeps you off the street, this is the part of Akihabara that works best, since you can move from one building to the next with little time outdoors.

Kanda Myojin Shrine

Kanda Myojin Shrine sits within Akihabara, and it offers the contrast the district otherwise lacks: a Shinto shrine among all the screens and signs. Come here to see the shrine buildings and the gate, and to watch visitors pause for a bow and a coin offering before returning to the shopping streets.

The shrine organizes a festival around May in which a massive portable shrine is carried through the streets. If your trip falls at that time, it adds another layer to the neighborhood, one where the old city appears among the anime banners. Outside that period, the shrine is still a place to slow down between shops. Beyond Akihabara itself, other parts of Tokyo lie within reach by train, such as the upscale shopping streets of Ginza and the financial district of Nihonbashi, which offer a very different side of the city.

Eating and drinking in Akihabara

The most recognizable place to eat in Akihabara is the maid café, where staff in maid costumes serve drinks and plates decorated with cheerful designs, and the whole experience is built around play. Cosplayers handing out flyers on the sidewalks are often inviting you to one. Treat it as part theater and part snack stop: you come for the show, the sweets and the atmosphere, not for a quick bite.

For ordinary meals, the streets around the station are lined with the kinds of places that suit shoppers on the move. Ramen counters serve steaming bowls of noodles in rich broth, curry rice shops offer plates of thick, savory sauce over rice, and set-meal restaurants pair grilled fish or fried cutlets with rice and miso soup. Many of these are small, with a counter or a few tables, and a meal moves along quickly between shopping stops.

Sweets and drinks fit the district just as well. Crepes, soft-serve ice cream and bubble tea are easy to carry as you walk, and themed cafés built around a particular anime or game bring characters to the plate.

For a sit-down break after the arcades, a traditional Japanese coffee shop, called a kissaten, offers strong coffee, toast and a quiet seat. Evenings bring izakaya, the Japanese pubs where small dishes such as skewers of grilled chicken, fried chicken and edamame arrive with beer or highballs, and where salaried workers from the nearby offices gather after the day.

Staying in Akihabara

Akihabara suits travelers who want to be close to the shops and the stations, and who like waking up in the middle of a place with a strong personality. Fans of games, anime and electronics tend to find it the most natural base, since the stores are right outside the door. It is less a quiet residential neighborhood than a working shopping district, so expect the area to feel busy around the main street.

The lodging that suits this kind of district is the city hotel, the sort with compact modern rooms close to the station, rather than a traditional inn. Its strength is location. The station is served by several JR lines, the Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line and the Tsukuba Express, so you can reach many parts of Tokyo without more than a train or two, and you return to a base with a lot to do right outside.

Compared with other parts of Tokyo, Akihabara has its own flavor. Ginza is an upscale downtown area with high-end restaurants and luxury shops, and Nihonbashi is known for its rich heritage and as the main financial district of Japan.

Choosing Akihabara means choosing the street culture of fans and shoppers over the polish of those areas, which is exactly why visitors like it.

Getting to Akihabara

People arrive by train, because Akihabara Station is served by five lines: the JR Yamanote Line, the JR Keihin-Tohoku Line, the JR Chuo-Sobu Line, the Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line and the Tsukuba Express. That mix of JR lines and a subway line puts the district on several of the routes you are likely to use to move around the city.

Akihabara is also the terminal of the Tsukuba Express, which runs to Tsukuba and other stations in Ibaraki and northern Chiba prefectures. If you arrive on that line, you step off at the end of the route and walk straight into Electric Town. From the station, the main area of the district is on a street just west of the station, so the shopping begins almost as soon as you leave.

Tokyo sits on Tokyo Bay, in the Kanto region on Honshu, and its two nearest airports are Haneda Airport, officially Tokyo International Airport, and Narita Airport, Japan’s largest international airport.

Good to know before you go

Akihabara is a place to browse with an open schedule, because the stores keep their own hours and each one runs a little differently. The big retailers, the capsule-toy hall and the duty-free shop all post their opening times, so it is worth planning your stops around them.

Cosplayers handing out flyers on the sidewalk are part of the scenery, and you can simply take a flyer or walk on. In odd-numbered years, May brings the major Kanda Matsuri procession to the neighborhood.