To Akihabara ....again.

My first experience of Akihabara was around 13 years ago when I first came here in Tokyo. Together with a bunch of fellow trainees we were so excited to go to the birth of the latest and hippest electronic technology in the world. I remember seeing the bunny girls who gave out free tissues. Seeing sexy girls on the street and being handed tissues that normally cost something in the Philippines was already a cool experience then. And so we would head out to Laox and check the latest duty free international electronic models. At that time, everybody dreamed of getting a high tech camera (not yet digital).

My second encounter with Akihabara was when I came back to Japan 7 years ago. Although Yodobashi camera at that time seems to be hipper than Akiharaba, there was a need for me to see familiar places, so I bought my DVD player and a digital camera. I was surprised that after 6 years so many stores have closed and the traffic was not so vibrant as it was in my memory. Quite sad.

Then about 2 or 3 years ago, the shocking news of a killing spree by a geek who wanted to be famous. This news temporarily closed most of the stores in Akihabara for a year.

Our otaku friend A showed us around Akihabara yesterday. He told us about its history from a small fresh market beginning to being the radio center of Tokyo, to its transition to be known to the world as Electronic Town, and to its recent transformation of being otaku (anime geek) center. We traversed small alleys, and went to several maid cafes, to an (anime) art museum, to a maid massage, to karaoke and finally to street food. He said that Akihabara is changing once again, moving away from the high tech images to being a geek center - thanks to the movie Densha Otoko. From the outside, Akihabara looks like it lost a lot of its sparkle, but thanks to my friend, I realized that Akihabara has just shied away from the glittering lights, and instead it caters to people who want to intimately know and love the place for what it is - a constantly changing, adapting, surviving town where the good & the bad merge, the old & the new collide as it goes on to fight for its place in this circle of life.