Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Akiba has changed a lot since I was last here 12 years ago, it's now absolutely flooded with tourists (Tokyo is in general but Akiba especially so). Most of the arcades are now almost solely dedicated to crane games, though that's true of most arcades in Japan now sadly. They close the main road on Sundays until 6pm I think so it's really busy with foot traffic. As mentioned there's a lot of tourists and a lot of them really don't look like the kind of person you would traditionally expect to see in Akiba (ie. they're not anime/manga/game fans). It's still kind of cool to walk around but things have been cleaned up and focused on the tourist crowds now. Is it a Mecca for anime/game fans or whatever? I guess, but so many other places in Tokyo now offer the same kind of things. There's still some of the seedy and weird stuff down the back streets, and plenty of girls trying to tout for maid cafes or whatever, but that shit was always cancerous anyway.
The footage is a little shaky with my footsteps, that's because I didn't film this in my camera's night mode so the auto-stabilisation didn't work so great. I brightened the video a bit so it still looks decent though.
Shot with an Insta360 Go Ultra attached to my hat, and using the Insta360 Mic Air.
Akiba has changed a lot since I was last here 12 years ago, it's now absolutely flooded with tourists (Tokyo is in general but Akiba especially so). Most of the arcades are now almost solely dedicated to crane games, though that's true of most arcades in Japan now sadly. They close the main road on Sundays until 6pm I think so it's really busy with foot traffic. As mentioned there's a lot of tourists and a lot of them really don't look like the kind of person you would traditionally expect to see in Akiba (ie. they're not anime/manga/game fans). It's still kind of cool to walk around but things have been cleaned up and focused on the tourist crowds now. Is it a Mecca for anime/game fans or whatever? I guess, but so many other places in Tokyo now offer the same kind of things. There's still some of the seedy and weird stuff down the back streets, and plenty of girls trying to tout for maid cafes or whatever, but that shit was always cancerous anyway.
The footage is a little shaky with my footsteps, that's because I didn't film this in my camera's night mode so the auto-stabilisation didn't work so great. I brightened the video a bit so it still looks decent though.
Shot with an Insta360 Go Ultra attached to my hat, and using the Insta360 Mic Air.
