I recently had the pleasure of going on a maid-guided tour through Akibahara.
I went on a maid-guided tour with Akiba Land. Here is my guide in front of Akihabara Station.
I have written some articles on specific stuff about Akihabara in the past, one about game arcades and one listing all the big maid cafes in the area.
But this is the first time anyone has shown me around it (I am pretty knowledgeable about Akihabara though, haha)
Our schedule went like this:
1. Meet up in front of the station.
2. Look at some “itasha” (customized otaku cars)
3. Walk around shops: Volks, rental box showcases around Radiokan, Kotobukiya, and Super Potato.
This tour is 3,000 yen. It’s pretty fun going around Akihabara with your own dedicated maid. What is even better about it is that she speaks Japanese, so if you have anything you are having trouble with she can help you.
Currently I think they have tours in Chinese, Japanese, and English. There also is a tour where they take you to a maid cafe.
Some “blinged-out” cars that we got to see in the parking lot of the UDX Building.
Right near the station is a bit of a run-down building with electronics and parts. Apparently there used to be a shrine there that got burnt down. Now there is a mini-shrine in the building that was built over it.
From there we found ourselves in the Volks store. Volks is pretty famous for its super-detailed dolls, Dollfies.
You can pretty much customize any part of the doll’s body. Here are a bunch of different types of eyeballs in packages that kind of freaked me out.
In Radio-kan, as well as in other buildings in Akihabara, there is a rental box system.
There are dozens and dozens of acrylic boxes filled with whatever the owner has been collecting. This is a place to let go of some of those valuable collectibles.
You can find some pretty unusual/rare stuff inside.
We then made our way across the street to the networks of streets that make up most of the “otaku” activity of Akihabara (there is a lot of it outside this area, to be fair).
Kotobukiya, world-famous figurine maker…This shop is semi-dangerous for me, I used to have a figure-buying problem.
The photo below is one of the places that speaks most to me, Super Potato.
Super Potato is a store that is devoted to “retro games.” It has memorabilia from different games, candy, every old game you could imagine, and old arcade game machines to play.
It’s sad seeing Playstation 2 games and Nintendo 64 there. It makes me feel old that Super Potato now carries them…
After a hard day of walking around and shopping you may want to stop and rest at a maid cafe or the honey toast cafe.
