What kind of place does Akihabara belong to?

Akihabara is a traditional electric street in Japan (see photo), and it takes five minutes by tram (electric train) from Tokyo Station. Locals usually call it autumn leaves for short. Because most of otaku's interests are "ACG" (animation, comics and games), the demand for electronic and electrical products is greater than that of ordinary people, so Akihabara is an irreplaceable holy place for otaku.

Among the otaku, there is a group of people who are mainly interested in dressing up, and they are called "Akihabara School" (commonly called "ァキバ School"). Akihabara is called "Electric Street" (Akihabara Electric Street). In the popular online novel "Electric Bike Man" in Japan, the protagonist is an out-and-out "Akihabara" otaku, who spends three or four days a week in Akihabara, which has become a gathering place for otaku.

Akihabara is located in the Chiyoda area in the northeast of Tokyo, on the Yamanote Line of the high-speed tram line around the center of Tokyo. Yamanote Line is the tram trunk line of JR East Japan Company around the whole Tokyo area (the scale of Japanese tram line is beyond imagination, and you can reach anywhere in Japan by tram, even Hokkaido or Okinawa). Visitors can transfer from Tokyo Station, Ueno Station or any other station on the Yamanote Line, and the traffic is very convenient.

During the Edo period in Japan, the vicinity of Akihabara used to be the settlement of inferior warriors. In 1870, Japanese worshippers of Buddhism and fetishism welcomed the statue of "Akihabara Great Country" from Shizuoka, and this statue has continued to form the place name of Akihabara today.

The formation of the scene of electrical street can be traced back to after World War II. In Akihabara, which was bombed by the allied forces, a group of radio vendors gathered, and vacuum tubes became a hot commodity, gradually forming hundreds of open-air vendors and dozens of regular shops. With the intervention of the US military command, it was not until the late 1950s that they gathered in some shops similar to greenhouses from the open air. Since then, it has experienced the baptism of several generations of fresh electrical appliances such as black and white TV, refrigerator, washing machine, stereo and video recorder, and the global gathering of stories has created the scale of Akihabara today. The reason why Akihabara became a global tourist attraction was that the digital revolution in the 1990s stimulated the demand for new products, and digital cameras, digital camcorders and notebooks became the new favorites here.

In fact, the famous Akihabara is not very big, but it is in this small site with a width of 400 meters from east to west and a length of 800 meters from north to south that there are more than 1000 specialty stores. If you walk into the "central passage" of the main street, you will find that the whole Akihabara is filled with various popular products. There are hundreds of large and small shops here, including super-large chain department stores, second-hand thrift stores and even roadside stalls. From computer assembly parts to all kinds of software and hardware, home appliances, stereos and even the latest scientific and technological products, even outdated scientific and technological antiques. Going deep into Akihabara, you will find that under the cloak of scientific and technological products, it is as full of interesting Japanese cultural symbols as other places. Walking into the street alleys, groups of vending machines can be seen everywhere, which shows the Japanese people's pursuit of convenience.

When the popularity of personal computers reached saturation and sales began to decline, some shops in Akihabara were forced to close. At that time, it was a natural trend for other industries serving otaku to move in. The products sold started from DVD, game software and other computer peripheral products, and gradually expanded to comic books, fan magazines, dolls, cards and so on.

Therefore, today we set foot in Akihabara. Apart from electrical appliances, many shops have been replaced by computer games, online games, pornographic games, anime shop and humanoid toy stores. The overall appearance of Akihabara has undergone a qualitative change, reflecting that the new generation in Japan has changed from scientific and technological progress to the future nothingness and virtual world. (Photo: Profile picture)

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