Friday, March 26, 2010

Walk in Akihabara -4-

This posting is a sequel to "Walk in Akihabara -3-". 

The 4th floor of this building was exhibiting pictures drawn by "Kori Eriko". I think those who like light novels are very familiar with her drawings. She drew pictures for a light novel "Ririko ni Omakase! (Leave it up to Ririko!)" by Dengeki Bunko.

The building you see on your left is "Sofmap", which buys and sells flat TVs, computer-related stuff and other digital devices. Sofmap has 12 outlets only in Akihabara and this is the main one.

This is an advert on Melonbooks, which sells manga for guys. If I were to name a few important manga shops in Akihabara, they should include this one. There is a sister shop called "Livret", which sells manga, light novels, and magazines for girls.

This advert was announcing that a video game called "Okiba ga nai !" would be released on May 27. It is playable on a computer that connects to the Internet. The meaning of the title of the game would be "No place to put it!".

As I said before, the competition among the maid cafes is very fierce, and as you can see there are so many maid cafes in Akihabara. There are various kinds of such cafes, and for example, there is one where a maid cleans your ears with an earpick.
These are figurines from an video game called "Yggdrasil Labyrinth 3". It's going to be released on April 1, and is playable on Nintendo DS. 

 Saw for the first time "Neko Mimi" or cat's ears were on sale. Those who saw K-ON! should know that Azusa was asked by the other 4 members to wear this (watch this video). And some of the maid girls standing on the street had this on their heads. Btw, it's not my hand.

I found Moe canned juice. As far as I saw there were three kinds, green tea, English tea, and grape. I didn't know there were these kinds of Moe juice, but I was looking for things like this to show you when I was wandering about in the street holding the camera.

This is a curry shop well-known in Akihabara called "Go! Go! Curry!". When I looked at the menu, each dish seemed to have much volume, so I decided I would have lunch here next time when I'm very hungry.

I saw many foreign people walking around in Akihabara on this day and that made me think this area was becoming more and more popular among foreign tourists. As I said again and again, Japan is now in recession, so economically this country isn't so powerful, but culturally, my country is getting known to people all over the world. The government should consider attracting more foreign tourists based on that fact.