Japan Day 17: An Afternoon of Anime, Manga and Kawaii Finds in Akihabara

Day 17 was Akihabara day!

It was another extremely hot day, so instead of heading out early, we decided to have lunch first and wait until later in the afternoon before going to Akihabara.

Fortunately, we had recently discovered a very convenient place practically next door.

An Accidental Discovery Near Our Airbnb

Tokyo Opera City was less than a 10-minute walk from our Airbnb, but we hadn’t really paid much attention to it at first.

We actually discovered it because of our lost-phone adventure a few days earlier. We had ended up in the area and stopped at the supermarket there to get some food. That’s when we realized there was a whole mall nearby, with plenty of restaurants.

Very convenient!

So we decided to eat there first and wait for the temperature to become a little more reasonable.

We didn’t arrive in Akihabara until around 3 PM, and the heat was much more manageable by then.

Akihabara!

Akihabara is one of those places that is difficult to mistake for anywhere else.

Anime. Manga. Collectibles. Character merchandise. And, of course…

Gashapon. Again.

At this point, I don’t even know how many gashapon machines we had encountered during this trip. They were everywhere! And naturally, we had to investigate some more.

We wandered around the neighborhood for a while, but our best discoveries of the afternoon were inside K-Books and BookOff.

Second-Hand Kawaii Treasures

K-Books turned out to be a particularly good stop for Kid 2, because she found some second-hand Chiikawa merchandise.

Considering how much Chiikawa had already featured in this trip, from Chiikawa Park to shopping around Tokyo, this was a very appropriate Akihabara find!

Kid 1 also found a gift for a friend, so K-Books was already a success.

But then we went to BookOff.

We had actually planned to visit a BookOff earlier in the trip, on our Sunshine City day, but by the end of that day we were simply too tired. I wasn’t too worried about skipping it because I knew there were other BookOff locations around Tokyo.

And apparently waiting worked out just fine.

Kid 2 found a second-hand bundle of Yotsuba&!, a manga we had been looking for because she could use it to practise reading Japanese without the text being overwhelmingly difficult.

We also found a few Chiikawa books for Kid 2 and a Sumikkogurashi book for me.

Everyone came away with something, which made it a very successful shopping day!

Was Akihabara Worth Visiting?

For us, yes.

But I definitely wouldn’t put Akihabara on everyone’s Tokyo itinerary.

If you’re interested in anime, manga, kawaii characters, collectibles or gashapon, it’s a lot of fun to explore. You never quite know what you’re going to find, especially if you spend some time looking through the second-hand stores.

If none of those things interest you, though, you can probably skip it.

There are so many things to see in Tokyo that I don’t think Akihabara needs to be one of those places everyone visits simply because it’s famous.

For us, though, it was exactly the kind of place we enjoy exploring.

After we were done in Akihabara, we headed back to Tokyo Opera City and tried a different restaurant there for dinner.

It wasn’t a complicated day: just an afternoon of exploring, gashapon and some very good second-hand finds.

And that was more than enough.

Coming Next

A rainy forecast changes our plans and sends us somewhere that turns out to be much better visited on a weekday anyway.