A Walk Through Akihabara

Akihabara is one of the main electronics areas in Tokyo. It's about a 15 minute walk from where I'm staying in Asakusabashi.

The area is anchored by the Yodobashi Akiba department store. Floors one through seven are crammed full of electronics and household appliances and the 8th floor features a food court of about a dozen different restaurants. I hesitate to use the phrase "food court" since the places aren't fast food like you'd find in an American mall.

Two other things Akihabara is known for are Anime and Maid Cafes. In the Anime shops you can find everything from Hayao Mizayaki works to both drawn and photographed porn. A detour on the latter -- a handful of these shops are stocked with DVDs of scantily glad girls. And when I say "girls," this is precisely what I mean. Young teenagers. To say it is uncomfortable and creepy to me would be a gross understatement.

I'd chalk the predilections of Japanese men up to cultural difference, though I don't know how accurate that would be. Even though the national age of consent is 12 (yep, 12) many prefectures, including Tokyo have officially raised this age to 18. To me this says that enough people in Japan share the Western notion that a relationship between a grown man and a child is repugnant. Nonetheless, there seems to be tacit indulgence of this appetite as judged by the proliferation of the material.

According to the guidebook it is not uncommon for Japanese men to pay high school-aged girls for "companionship." What companionship means was unstated though Lonely Planet implied that these relationships often skew sexual.



This fascination with youth and also fetish carries over into the idea of a Maid Cafe (you can see a girl advertising one at about 0:48 in the video). These cafes are like any other place you'd stop for a beer or coffee, with the exception that you are being served these items by a girl dressed in a French maid outfit. This type of practice has its origins in Geishas who would provide company (conversation, musical performance, singing) to guests of Ryokan (Japanese inns).

As the pastoral gave way to the urban this tradition was extended by Hostess Bars, where women provide patrons with their company sans the Geisha attire. From the best I can tell, Maid Cafes are the most recent (and probably not the last) update.

Don't let my discussion of these issues fool you into thinking this is all that goes on in Akihabara. Though they were certainly the most striking features to me, the area is by all measures a normal commercial district in Tokyo in which Manga/Hentai shops and Maid Cafes play a limited role.


Taito and Sega both have several multifloor arcades on the main street where you can play everything from claw/crane prize machines to the latest fighting and dance/music games. Most of the players are young (high school aged kids, or younger girls taking cheesy pictures in the photobooths) but you also see fully-suited people in their 20s and 30s.

The unexpected mix of people occupying every area of town is quickly becoming a source of joy for me and I hope that it continues.

Today I'm going to try my hand at walking to Roppongi from where I'm staying. I don't have a map exactly, just some notes from the Google directions I pulled:


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I'll have the afternoon to explore on my own before I meet up with Kiomi, someone that my friend Rawi in Sacramento arranged for me to meet.

Roppongi is supposed to be one of the more popular night spots, but I'm most interested in a chance to bounce a handful of the questions I have about life in Tokyo off of someone who lives here.