Electornics, Games and Maid Cafes in Akihabara

Akihabara is COOL!

We had a bit of a lie in (thats about 8 when your here, bloody check out times!) then went to Akihabara.

There are LOADS of HUGE shops and LOADS of small shops but big or small the shops are always PACKED with stuff.

Some of them are purely for electronics, which includes erevything from mobiles and cameras and laptops and computers to electronic dictionaries and calculators and SD cards and the like.
These shops are like warehouses! Some are 9 floors high and i couldnt even tell you how big the floor spaces is, and they are PACKED! did i mention that?

then there are loads of toy shops.
Dan Statham (house mate from Uni, SHOUT OUT!) would love these places! We went in a few of them and they look like a kind of toy collectible swap shop.
People take in thier old collectibles, get a bit of cash and buy somthing else, and the Japanese Otaku REALLY love thier collectible anime standees and junk.

The bulk of stock is made up of Gundam junk and Transformers junk. some is sooo cool (man Im a geek, and i was geeking out for a long time in some of these places!)

AND there are LOADS of shops around here that buy and sell old games consoles, some of these things are so old (and uniquie to Japan) that Ive never seen thenm before! There was one, that some people might remember but Ive never seen it, that has two small screens and you wear like a pair of goggles so that the game appears 3D. This is a really old console and it is apparently the only "true" 3D games gonsole ever to have been made!
The only problem was that if you wear/play it too long it starts to mess with your head and it was taken off of the market after a bunch of kids had seizures! (The Japanese media companies seem to like giving people siezures, this also happened with some episodes of childrens TV series a few years ago)

All along the street on both sides the shops advertise with huge neon signs, sadly it was day time so they were not lit but they were still fairly impressive.
Occasionaly among the crowds we would come across a pretty lady dressed in a (slightly skimpy) maid uniform handing out leaflets for the maid cafes. It is basically a high priced cafe where you are served by hot maids and the tag line is "Welcome home master and mistress". LOTS of horny teenagers! but you`re not allowed to take pictures!

At one point, after getting lost in one of the massive stores that sell general tat for cheap, we found ourselves on the top floor with a massive queue of people (men) waiting to get into a kind of girl group gig and we couldnt find our way back downstairs because the only escalator we could find went up! All a bit creepy...

Not only was Akihabara packed with stuff, it was also packed with people, we went on a sunday and it seemed like the Otaku population of all Tokyo comes on a sunday. but that was OK it added to the fun of the place. We came back here a couple of days later when there werent half the number of people and it wasnt anywhere near as much fun.

We also went to a nice temple...