Akihabara Shopping: Where to Go and What to Buy

The lift doors open on the fourth floor of Mandarake and the noise stops. Eight floors of this building hold nothing but secondhand manga, doujinshi, figures and 1970s robot toys, sorted with the precision of a library, and the people browsing are working through the shelves with the concentration of researchers.

Akihabara shopping works best when you know which building does what. Yodobashi Camera covers electronics under one roof, Mandarake and Animate handle anime and manga, Super Potato does retro games, and the tenant shops in Radio Kaikan cover the collector end. Almost everything sits within a ten-minute walk of the station's Electric Town exit.

Chuo-dori, the main spine of Akihabara's shopping district

When to go

Most shops open between 10:00 and 11:00 and close by 20:00, which makes Akihabara an afternoon district rather than a late-night one. Arrive at 11:00 and you have the aisles mostly to yourself. Come at 16:00 on a Saturday and you will queue for the lifts.

Sundays are different. Chuo-dori closes to traffic from 13:00 to 18:00 between April and September, and to 17:00 from October through March, so the road fills with people walking down the middle of it. The closure is cancelled in bad weather. Selling and street performance are not permitted in the pedestrian zone, so this is about space rather than stalls.

Electronics

Yodobashi Camera Akiba, the single biggest store in the district

Yodobashi Camera Akiba

Nine floors directly east of the station, and the most efficient stop in Akihabara if you want to buy rather than browse. Cameras, computers, appliances, watches, musical instruments and toys, plus a duty-free counter, all under one roof, open 9:30 to 22:00 every day.

The restaurant floor is the 8th, with a golf range above it on the 9th. Staff at the information desk speak English, and the tax-free desk processes foreign passports quickly. Their main site lists stock by store, which is useful if you are hunting for something specific.

Two things worth knowing before you buy electronics here. Japanese mains voltage is 100V, so check whether an appliance will work at home, and camera and laptop warranties sold in Japan are often domestic only.

Laox

The long-standing duty-free chain, aimed squarely at overseas shoppers, with multilingual staff and a focus on cameras, rice cookers, beauty goods and souvenirs. The Akihabara main store opens 10:30 to 19:30. Prices are rarely the lowest in the district, but the process is the smoothest.

Laox, one of the district's long-running duty-free stores

Radio Kaikan

Ten floors of specialist tenant shops beside the Electric Town exit, open 10:00 to 20:00. The current building opened in 2014 on the site of the 1962 original, and the tenant mix has moved with the district: figures, trading cards, dolls, model kits and collectibles rather than the radio parts the name refers to.

Radio Kaikan, ten floors of specialist collector shops by the station

For actual electronic components, go to the Radio Center, the warren of tiny stalls under the railway tracks that has sold switches, connectors and vacuum tubes since 1949. Stalls are the size of a wardrobe, the owners have run them for decades, and it is the last piece of postwar Akihabara still doing its original job.

Anime, manga and figures

Mandarake Complex, eight floors of secondhand manga, figures and toys

Mandarake Complex

Eight floors of secondhand everything, open 12:00 to 20:00 daily. The layout rewards a plan: Disney on 2, vintage and shonen manga on 3, doujinshi on 4 and 5, American toys and models on 6, tokusatsu and chogokin robots on 7, figures on 8. The ground floor is where you sell things rather than buy them.

Prices run from ¥100 bargain bins to five figures for sealed vintage toys, and the condition grading is honest enough that you can buy sight unseen from the cases. Their company site lists stock across branches, so you can check before travelling.

Animate Akihabara

New merchandise rather than secondhand, spread across three buildings: the two main buildings open 10:00 to 21:00 daily, and the annex closes at 20:00 on weekends. Manga, character goods, CDs, stationery and whatever series is currently running, with a floor given over to whichever release is in season.

Gachapon Kaikan

Capsule toy machines, usually ¥300 to ¥500 a turn

Several hundred capsule toy machines in one room, at ¥300 to ¥500 a turn. Bring coins, because the change machine has a queue. Stock rotates constantly, and this is the cheapest souvenir in the district by a distance.

Our guide to Japanese souvenir shopping covers what else travels well, and what gets stopped at customs.

Retro games and arcades

Super Potato

Three floors of retro games on floors 3 to 5 of a building off Chuo-dori, open 11:00 to 20:00 on weekdays and from 10:00 at weekends. Famicom, Super Famicom, Mega Drive, PC Engine and Game Boy cartridges sit in glass cases, sorted and priced by condition, with boxed copies behind the counter.

Prices have climbed a long way since the 2010s, and sealed titles now run into the tens of thousands of yen. The retro arcade on the 5th floor still charges ¥100 a play, which is the better value in the building. If you only want to play the classics rather than own them, Nintendo's subscription service covers most of the same library.

GiGO arcades

A GiGO arcade, the successor to the Sega arcades that defined the district

The former Sega arcades, rebranded GiGO in 2022. The red Building 1 that anchored the crossing closed in August 2025 after 32 years, so head for Buildings 2, 3 and 5 instead. Ground floors are crane games, upper floors are rhythm games, fighters and photo booths, and the machines take ¥100 coins or an IC card.

Maid cafes

Maid cafe staff handing out flyers along Chuo-dori

The format is fixed. You pay an entry charge of roughly ¥500 to ¥900 per person for a one-hour slot, order at least one drink or dish, and pay extra for a photo. Realistic spend is ¥1,500 to ¥3,500 a head.

Cure Maid Cafe, the original, opened in 2001 and is the quietest of them, run more like a tearoom than a show. @home cafe is the big mainstream chain, with several Akihabara branches and an English menu. Maidreamin is the loudest, with songs and chants every few minutes.

House rules are consistent across all of them: no photographing the staff without buying a photo, no touching, no asking for personal contact details, and a firm time limit. Staff on Chuo-dori hand out flyers with discount codes, which is the cheapest way in.

Where to eat

Kanda Myojin sits up the hill northwest of the station, and the streets between the shrine and Chuo-dori hold the district's better restaurants. Otherwise Akihabara runs on curry, ramen and standing soba, with plenty of counters open past 21:00 even after the shops have shut.

Shopping tends to eat the afternoon, so eat before 18:00 if you want a table without queueing. The department store food halls near the station are the fallback when everything else is full.

Getting there and tax-free rules

A pachinko parlor on the edge of the district, open late after the shops close

Akihabara Station is on the JR Yamanote and Sobu lines plus the Hibiya subway line, two stops from Tokyo Station for ¥150. From Haneda the trip takes about 40 minutes and costs ¥510.

From Narita, the Keisei Skyliner runs to Ueno in about an hour, then it is two minutes on the Yamanote line. Keisei publishes the timetable in English.

JR East's station maps cover the rest of the network, including which exit puts you where. Take the Electric Town exit, not the Central exit.

The tax-free system changes on November 1, 2026. Until then you show your passport at the register and pay the price without the 10 percent consumption tax. From that date you pay the full price in the shop and claim the refund at the airport before you check your bags, within 90 days of purchase. The minimum spend stays ¥5,000 per shop per day.

That change matters more in Akihabara than almost anywhere else, because this is a district where people buy cameras, lenses and computers. Budget the tax up front, keep every receipt, and get it back on the way home.

Planning your visit

Half a day covers the main buildings. A full day makes sense if you are hunting specific figures or games, or if you want to add Kanda Myojin and the Radio Center at a walking pace.

Akihabara is a 15-minute walk from Ueno and two stops from Tokyo Station, so it slots into almost any Tokyo day without rearranging your plans.

For the background on how the district turned from a radio-parts market into this, see our guide to Akihabara Electric Town.

Our piece on robots and innovation in Japan covers the technology side of the same story, from factory arms to the gadget shops upstairs.

If anime is the reason you are coming to Japan at all, this 15-day anime pilgrimage builds Akihabara into a route that takes in the studios, museums and locations worth the trip.

For the rest of the city, from department store basements to Nakano Broadway, our Tokyo shopping guide covers where to go for what.

And if you would rather have someone else build the day around your list, Trip To Japan can put it together.