Akihabara Anime Tour: Immersive Exploration of Tokyo’s Otaku Culture

Immerse yourself in Tokyo’s otaku culture on an Akihabara Anime Tour. Discover the best spots to buy electronics, gadgets, and pop culture goods, and get your game on!

Duration: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Cancellation: 1 day learn more
Highlights
  • Akihabara Buhin Ichiba - Delve into the Akihabara Component Market, a collection of electronics stores nestled beneath railway tracks, boasting a legacy that stretches back to the post-war era.
  • Akihabara Radio Kaikan - An expansive 11-floor emporium dedicated to pop culture paraphernalia, including anime statues, trading card accessories, interactive games, digital video discs, outfits, graphic novels, and more.
  • Hey - An extensive 11-story retail complex filled with pop culture merchandise such as animated character models, collectible card game items, electronic games, digital versatile discs, disguises, illustrated stories, and beyond.
  • Super Potato Akihabara - A niche gaming outlet focusing on classic electronic games, gaming systems, and memorabilia, complemented by an entertaining gaming zone.
  • Mandarake Complex - The premier destination for anime and comic enthusiasts, offering a vast selection of rare comics and animated series, alongside figurines, wall art, interactive entertainment, and additional items.
  • Akihabara Gachapon Hall - Engage in the thrill of Gachapon, a blend of anticipation and collection. Picture the act of depositing a coin into a vibrant apparatus, rotating the handle, and acquiring a capsule that encases an unexpected treasure.
What's Included
  • English speaking guide
  • Arcade games (retro game, gachapon)
What's Not Included
  • hotel pick-up and drop-off
Additional Information

Maximize your time and fully discover the depths of Akihabara by joining us on this exploration journey. Our guide will offer valuable knowledge about the vibrant Electric Town that you can’t get by exploring alone. Your well-informed guide will lead you to prime shopping locations for electronics, gadgets and pop culture items, along with the best gaming spots! This is an excellent chance to truly immerse yourself in the area without feeling overpowered, and it serves as a fantastic initiation to Akihabara for newcomers!

Location
Akihabara Radio Kaikan
Please come to Akihabara radio kaikan. The guide will be waiting in front of the Radio kaikan. Radio kaikan is 10 minutes from Akihabara metro station and 3 minutes from JR Akihabara station.
Cancellation Policy

For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure time.

Customer Ratings
5.0
(53 Ratings)
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Alexdx6356sv
May 21, 2024
Fun and insightful tour! - Super cool experience! It was interesting to learn about the history of Akihabara and how it’s grown into the cultural mecca it is today. You can see the roots of the neighborhood among the lesser known spots in this tour, and makes the chaos of the radiokaikan/surrounding area much more digestible. I was here during golden week so it was especially crowded. Hiro was my tour guide and he was very knowledgeable!
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Guide58034699602
May 4, 2024
Unforgettable memory - Lovely tour !! My guide hiro was so kind and awesome storyteller - He let us know variety aspect of akihabara where we can’t reach by myself. I met nice friends and communicate with them. It’s unforgettable memory. Thanks to everyone. I strongly recommend this awesome tour to someone who visit tokyo. Enjoy it!! 멋진 투어!! 제 가이드 히로는 친절하고 멋진 스토리텔러였어요. 혼자서는 닿을 수 없는 아키하바라의 다양한 모습을 알려줬어요. 좋은 친구들도 만나고 소통도 했어요. 잊지 못할 추억이에요. 모두들 덕분에 도쿄에 방문하는 사람에게 이 멋진 투어를 강력 추천해요. 즐겨요!!
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Q2426tbrebeccah
Mar 25, 2024
Fun day in good company - It was the perfect trip for someone who likes anime and gaming. It was just the right length and you got lots of tips on where you should go if you want to buy anime and gaming stuff. In addition, it was nice to hear a little about the history of Akihabara and how the place has changed over the years. Our guide (Hiyori) was super sweet, lively, very inclusive, created a good atmosphere and answered all questions with a smile.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Sunshine04331920029
Mar 22, 2024
Wonderful Experience - Our tour guide Hina was very friendly, considerate, and informative. The tour was fun and comprehensive, and allowed for us to go and experience more even after the tour had concluded.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Carlo
Mar 7, 2024
Blur the lines of reality - What makes Japan so fascinating and intriguing is it's a Country of artistry, invention, innovation, science, technology and beauty. It has amazing precision and efficiency. Enter the world of Anime. This walking tour is not only for nerds and anime fans, this is for people who appreciate fantasy art and a vision where fantasy meets reality. Hiyori-san, our guide met us through rain at Akihabara. She first took us through electric town which was once an actual black market post war of radio parts. It now housed old school technology. I had a lot of fun looking at Sony boom boxes, cassettes and walkman. She then took us through 9 floors of a former radio station converted into an anime department store where each floor is dedicated to a specific merchandise - a floor for figurines, posters, gaming cards, stuff animals game boards, souvenirs...i browsed through rare Pokemon cards, most written in Japanese characters but there are some English cards as well. It started to get overwhelming until we went to Nintendo old-school building. It's like an eBay museum but also an actual store. This building houses consoles and cartridges from the 60s, games I played when I was a kid. It has game watch and game boy- Mario, Donkey Kong, Street Fighter. I'm so jazzed being transported back in time. Hiyori-san took us to the arcade and we played Drum Master, which is basically like guitar hero but with Taiko drums. I learned that my wife is a better drummer than me and she wiped me out good. Finally we went to a Gachapon store like our quarter gumball machines and we had fun finding souvenir toys to bring home to our kids. We're trying to find a good comic book store and Hiyori-san recommended Mangarake which is just at the end of the corner of the block. We found Naruto for my nephew who's learning how to read katakana. Now you may get the impression Akihabara is nothing but a shopping spree town for the lonely and horny weirdoes with self esteem issues but Anime is a lifestyle and an art form. You won't find any sense of fun in this town if your judgy and prude. Anime is playful flirting and secretly innocent. It is all left for interpretation, not an aggressive dirt we have in the West that is loud and obnoxious. You might get lost and you probably will because Akihabara has very little English signage and very few speaks English. We stopped to eat at a Maid cafe (outside of the tour) and our waitress had to use Google translate to speak to us, and even then we still struggle to communicate. Hiyori-san was a great tour guide and perhaps a classy lady like her explains to us that Anime culture is acceptable to Japan and I get it. Perhaps, their teens understand it's just a fantasy, it's not how our mean popular girls treat other shy girls in school. Perhaps social media is more damaging than cartoons because we elevate and emulate fake people whereas after Japanese people strip their costumes off, they return back to their normal self. Whether you agree or not, what Akihabara did in it's town created a mecca of appreciation for people to gather and reinvent themselves, and what this walking tour did for us was see that insight. I highly recommend.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Charlie_c
Jan 18, 2024
Great Experience and Great Guide. - The tour was very good, the guide Hiyori was excellent as well, was able to give great local insight and her English was really good.
Review provided by Viator
Kathryne405
Jan 12, 2024
Very enjoyable tour. - Our guide was friendly and knowledgeable. We had fun looking around and gaining new experiences! Especially playing Retro Pac-Man!
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Izbert
Jan 7, 2024
Akihabara Manga/Retro Gaming/Anime Heaven - My Tour was 28th of August and organised by Yuki-san. We were expecting more people but it was only me and to my delight she still carried on with the tour. Yuki-san took the time to ask some questions to understand my interests and what I wanted from the tour and tweaked the tour to see sights I was interested in. We went to original Akihabara to understand the history of the district and radio technology. We also went to an arcade centre which was like my Holy Land, it was retro console heaven and as I’ve been an importer of Japanese games in the past I saw many unique titles and Yuki-san treated me to a versus on a Street Fighter arcade machine (don’t let her fool you, she is good!). We then went to a store with manga galore. There weren’t many English titles but they had the latest versions of popular titles and the prices were reasonable. Some had no photo signs so you have to take my word for it :) We went to about 4 locations including sweets shop and collector item stores and she was very knowledgeable of the area and gave some very relevant and interesting bits of information. So much so that I went back the following day to check out some of the other places she suggested. As it was just me I was worried the tour might’ve been cancelled but I was very intrigued and not disappointed at all. I would very highly recommend Yuki-san for any anime/manga enthusiasts.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Jet30987583607
Dec 12, 2023
Must experience - I had an awesome time walking around akihabara. It's very interesting when a knowledgeable guide is teaching you all the history behind it all. I can't remember the name of my tour guide, I was there 11-27-2023 she was amazing and very intelligent
Review provided by Tripadvisor
N4493mbbrians
Dec 2, 2023
Wonderful experience touring Akihabara! - Our tour guide, Hiyori, was very helpful, knowledgeable and friendly. She gave us an excellent tour of Akihabara and provided us with an amazing experience. Please recognize her! Thank you Hiyori. We will be returning to Japan again!
Review provided by Tripadvisor
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