Akihabara (or, otaku haven)

Japan [Tokyo] Travel Diaries 13: 秋葉原 | Akihabara

Fully refreshed from an evening in the onsen, we had a very full schedule ahead of us. Because we lived in Shibuya, i.e. the south(ish) west it was somewhat annoying to go Akihabara/Ueno area (i.e. the north(ish) east) of Tokyo. So we decided to cover everything in one go haha. Anyways, as usual, we crossed the scramble crossing and headed to Shibuya station.

And our first stop was Akihabara (or Akiba for short)~

Seeing these small, cluttered electronics and parts shops lining the streets immediately took me to the world of Steins;Gate. The Akiba in S;G mirrored both the geeky and moe atmosphere of IRL Akiba so perfectly that I had a sudden new appreciation for the anime. ((Now if only time travel could exist in real life haha))

All the signs and billboards were promoting something in relation to anime and ‘otaku’ culture.

And of course there were very very many kawaii, moe style anime ads lolol.

So, what do you actually do in Akiba? Well aside from wandering around we went shopping~ Some popular shops are Animate (obviously) and Mandarake. I was somewhat distracted entering these so I forgot about photos…. But there are so many more shops, literally walk into anything on the street and there’ll be merch everywhere. There are also a lot of second hand shops, which are especially good for picking up figurines in good condition for a fraction of the price.

For example, this shop. I don’t know the name of it because we just wandered in, but it had a very impressive Star Wars display (I went in early december, so the Force Awakens craze was real.)

This display actually made me so happy. You see, in this shop, they had glass cabinets like the one above with displays of various animes merchandise, usually with 1-3 series grouped together. And this one literally had my favourite series all displayed together, like it was meant to be < 3. From left to right, it’s Tokyo Ghoul, Kuroshitsuji (Black Butler) and Psycho Pass. SO MUCH LOVE I’m somewhat ashamed to admit haha .
This is the closest to an otaku I’ll get. (Some people are proud to be an ‘otaku’, but really its a somewhat derogatory term to call someone who’s so obssessive with anime and manga that they never leave their house. Otaku literally means house)

These were the only animes I bought the art/concept book for as well (books i will treasure until the end of time, they are actually all so beautiful).

We spent around 4 hours in Akiba altogether before running out of stamina from all the feels, so we went to grab food before heading to Asakusa. Which I will break up for the next post. Coming Soon.

tl:dr

Japanese KFC doesn’t have mash potato and gravy. Or hot and spicy chicken. Maybe the chicken was just that store, but I googled around and there’s actually no potato and gravy in KFC Japan. We had major KFC cravings, and trying foreign fast food is always interesting because of the local variations, but we were seriously so disappointed.

Ok this post was really shit. All I did was rant about anime and kfc.  Next post will be better I promise.