Guide to Akihabara

Great post!

When we were in Japan for a couple of weeks around October/November last year we did two trips to Akiba - the first one was the first time visiting so it was a bit overwhelming, and the second was at the tail end of the trip so I was buying stuff I missed from DenDen Town. In Akiba I mainly focused on the Trader next to the KFC (grabbed some PS2 games), Super Potato and Mandarake - I hit up a couple of Liberty's without much luck (wasn't helped by my Japanese either - asked at one of them about Super Famicom games and said they didn't stock it and didn't offer any info on which Liberty to check out, but like I said - my Japanese is awful so I probably wasn't being very articulate!). The Sofmap I went into where I had some success was the one near one of the Club Sega game centres (nothing terribly retro, but it made for some cheapish DS consoles).

Definitely some great places in that guide!

 

I'll probably spend a half day on Akihabara. I'm not planning buying too much stuff, but who knows lol.

How about Hard Off? I heard there're some cheap stuff on that store chain.

 

Hard offs are way out in the pampa, you would have to travel at least 25 to 30km from tokyo (train and lots of walk) to find a decent one which caries some good junk boxes to get some trashy games for near to nothing.
Most probably you would also need to travel to several shops to find any good stuff at all, this will cost you at least 2 to 3 days of travelling and few 1000 yens. And you first have to locate them as well. which isn't such an easy task for a tourist. So not really worth it.

There is one (new) hard off in akiba, but which is quite different to any other hard off stores. It sells only very high quality used audio stuff. So no games, no junk bin, no consoles, no japanese PCs, ... only amplifiers, mixers, guitars etc.

 

That Hard Off in question happens to be next door(ish?) to Mandarake - dropped into there on the return trip to Akihabara. As you said, no gamage stuff but there was some delicious audio gear in there.

 

Yeah, that Hard Off is not for games, but the Book Off store in Akiba can be quite good at times. I will add it to the guide later as I picked up a boxed skeleton, this is cool Saturn for just under 2,700 yen there recently (they also had like 4 Panasonic Qs going for 12,000 yen!?) and today they had a couple of psones boxed, for 800 yen each.

Of course, other than Psone games they hardly have any retro games but its worth keeping an eye on just for the hardware bargains.

 

awesome post, one day I hope to travel to Japan and see all the fun and scary things

 

More thoughts!

It pays to go back a few times, if you can't find what you're after on the first go. On my first visit to Super Potato, I didn't see any PCEngine Duos, but I went back a week later and they had a grey one, which was rad.

 

Yeah, definitely and things change so quickly in Akiba, one minute a shop may have 20 Dreamcasts, the next day nothing. I heard that they are closing the retro section in Trader down, sad times indeed...

 

The one in the Trader Honkan? No shit? That's the 2nd best place in town

Why would they do that? Good selection, good customers etc.

 

From who? I've heard no such thing from the floor head.

 

Is that right? On Twitter someone mentioned the day he went in they were selling job lots of unboxed Saturn and DCs as he was told they were down-scaling the retro section?

 

When was that? I was in there just last week and nothing had changed, not a bit. Are you talking about the same Trader? The Honkan? Or maybe even the old Trader 2? (I don't really think so, but one does never know :topsy_turvy

 

This one




Well, that's good news if it isn't. I should go seeing as I only live 10 minutes away but this bloody heat makes just going outside a chore! :mad-new:

 

Yeah, that's the Honkan.