I read about the Akihabar area of Tokyo in one of the tourist brochures. This area of Tokyo can be found near the Akihabara station on the JR rail line. The area established itself as the place to find electrical goods for the home in the years after World War II. Today the area is the shopping district for video games, anime, manga, and computer goods.
In addition to the electrical/electronics products that can be found there, the area is considered by many to be an otaku (a Japanese term for people with obsessive interests, commonly towards the anime and manga fandom) cultural center. As you can see in the video clip above, icons for anime and manga are on the buildings throughout the area. Many cosplayers can be found on the streets handing out ads for area shops. Prominent of these are those advertising the ‘maid cafés’.
The area has several ‘maid cafés‘ and ‘cosplay cafés‘. We saw several young Japanese women in front of shops dressed up in the ‘maid’ costumes. I did not realize why they were dressed up like they were until I started researching for this blog post. As one might expect, the area was crowded and most of that crowd was made up of young men.
We just past quickly through the area looking. I could easily have spent hours looking through the shops.
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