We can do many things in Akihabara, stick along with us, and you’ll have done it all. Although the possibilities are endless, here are a few things that you must try when visiting Akihabara.

What can we do in Akihabara, you ask? We can dine in authentic Japanese cuisine restaurants, or in maid cafés if you like the feel of it; we can drink in bars while playing a retro game, or we can rent a go-cart and ride it around till we get tired. The enjoyment will be unlimited.

Renting go-carts

You can rent a go-cart and drive around Akihabara, the land of electronics and nostalgia for most of us. What could be better than driving around in a go-cart similar to that of Mario while looking at buildings dedicated to gaming, anime,and electronics? A go-cart can be even more fun if your friends are with you, trying to be ahead of each other while having a friendly race at an economical price.

Dining in maid cafés

What are maid cafés? Maid cafés are a subcategory of cosplay restaurants. In these cafés, waitresses dressed in maid costumes act as servants and treat customers as masters (and mistresses) in a private home, and not as café patrons.

They will treat you so well that you’ll no longer have to feel lonely. Ever felt like you could use some positive energy? If so, visiting a café like this would lift your spirits.

Watching a live J-pop idol performance

Watching a live J-pop performance is something you won’t find anywhere else. Have you ever seen a diverse group of people, ranging from students to salarymen, coming together to witness a small performance of their preference? This is also one of the upcoming cultures of Japan, which has a rather large following by the so-called otakus of the city.

Playing a survival game

Have a group of friends to play with and want to have a fun exercise? Look no further, playing a survival game is loads of fun, equipped with BB guns in a building just for participants and the host.

It would provide you with a new level of excitement while also getting you to sweat. Having played it myself with my friends, this is one of the things that you wouldn’t find in most places. An indoor map to be played with friends in real life is more fun than playing a Call of Duty or Battlefield map with random people online, right?

Gaming

Akihabara is heavily dominated by gaming-related buildings, some for arcades, some for shopping, and some for playing games. Do you ever find yourself in a situation when you want to play a retro game from 10 years in the past? In Akihabara, you can find places to play such games while having a drink.

Another thing that you could find in the arcades of Akihabara would be rare machines, something that many places wouldn’t have. The Arcades in Akihabara also have small vending machines which give out small video game styled or anime styled merchandise.

While this may be the end of gaming-related information, Akihabara also has services that enable you to cosplay as your favorite video game or anime character, which could really be worth it if you are looking for a perfect shot to remember your stay in Akihabara.

Shopping

Last but not the least, shopping. Being at the bottom of the list, this could as well as be the thing that could tear your budget apart. Before you get into shopping in Akihabara, there are the few things that you must take care of: Maintain a fixed budget, with the sky-rocketing prices of anime related merchandise to the high-quality gaming and electronic equipment.

Akihabara is filled with shops to buy anime and manga merchandise along with gaming and electronic equipment. Anime merchandise and gaming equipment itself could cost between ¥1,000 to ¥100,000, while electronics can be even costlier.

Once I visited Akihabara with a budget of ¥50,000 solely for shopping, little did I know how easily I was going to spend all the money on just a little over a handbag full of gaming and anime goods.

Akihabara can be a great place for shopping, ranging from some local electronic devices that you can never find anywhere else to buying some retro game which the rest of the world has forgotten about and from anime action figures to humongous posters. While shopping in Akihabara certainly provides satisfaction, it can easily be the most expensive thing to do in Akihabara.

Along with all this, there are a few more things a person should know before going ahead and enjoying the place; first being carrying a map of where everything is, a map can be very handy as you’d know exactly where you have to go, while a map will always be helpful, knowing a few Japanese words and phrases could help you communicate with another person much more easily.

If this is not possible, it is helpful to always keep a smartphone with you with data enabled, just in case you might need to ask where the nearest washroom is, after gaming the night away. While taking care of everything else, always make sure you allow yourself to have quite a bit time along with enough money to sustain the stay. Take care of all these things, and your road to Akihabara is complete.

Lastly, to prove that I’m not just another self-proclaimed otaku sitting behind his laptop, here are some items I purchased while I stayed in Japan.