Akihabara tour June 13 2010

Was in Japan from 9th to 15th June 2010 on a guided tour with my family. On the fifth day, we were in Tokyo and was finally granted free-and-easy time in the early evening. From Shinjuku, we took the JR Chuo Line to Akihabara, a total of of about 9 stations away.

Upon reaching Akihabara at about 6pm Japan time, we walked around for sometime before eating dinner the local yoshinoya. After that at around 6pm, I started my 2 hours spree around a part (actually only a street) of akihabara. In total I bought stuffs from 3 shops, namely Animate, Softmap and m-land.

A cosplay maid near the bottom left giving out brochures

Animate is located at the purple mark on the map to the north of McDonalds while Softmap is located at the light green mark. m-land is located at 'A'. The huge red object located near the bottom left of the map is Akihabara train station. The west side of the station as seen on the map is where the Electric City entrance is as written in Kanji. From there, we continued in the west direction towards the main road. I actually toured around the 2 sides of the main road there. We first cross the road to the other side of the street and started in the direction of north in the map where Sega is. I visited a game shop too but the price was fairly high and there was limited choices. This side of the street turn out to be quite dull as it was dominated by Gadgets and PC shops.

Things became different when we cross the road to the other side where we orginally came from. Well, individual Japanese shops tends to look more like buildings as they are usually a few storey high. For instance, Animate was about 7 storey high. I was surprised when I climbed to the higher storey to find that each storey has different genre of goods. From instance, th first storey of Animate actually sells games and eroge. It was at the 3rd or 4th storey where I found the COSPA stuffs and accessories as well as small trading figures. Similarly, I bought the K-On! singles PURE PURE HEART and Angel Beat, My Soul, Your Beats at the 3rd or 4th storey of softmap.

m-land is the shop where I found the things that I was looking for, Azusa Nakano Nendoroid and PSP Clannad: Mitsumi Mamoru Sakamichi de - Joukan. If I had turned left first when I was at the cross junction, I would have easily found the things that I wanted, without having to freck at not being able to find the things I wanted and wondering whether I had gone to the wrong parts of Akihabara in the first 1 and half hour here. Well the Azusa Nakano Nendoroid was quite a catch as it was sold up at a lot of stores. At Animate for instance, I saw about 6 - 7 Azusa Nendoroid stacked up on the shelf under 'Reservation'. I tried to enquire 'それ梓仲野ねんどろいと．．．'　Obviously I heard the expected answer. Well, I could only understand 'reservation' and not the rest of the Japanese taht he spoke. At m-land, the 2nd storey was dominated by trading card games ranging from WS, lycee etc. But it was where I found 2 Azusa Nendoroid displayed in the shelf too. I ask the store keeper about it and he retrieve a new one from the storeroom behind him. Yes, finally found one!

m-land: the green one...

Next I returned to the 1st storey where I bought the clannad PSP game. The games sold there was cheaper than those I found across the road.

to be continued....