If you’re a true follower of the Japan Nakama blog, you’ll remember our recent MagicalTrip article. Today’s blog stays with MagicalTrip and heads to Akihabara, the anime and gaming centre of the world! While an Akihabara tour may seem counterintuitive to those of you who just want to spend a day or two gaming your lives away here, I want to present to you one of the most immersive Japan anime and gaming tour packages on the market: MagicalTrip’s Akihabara walking tour. Taking in a maid cafe, a game centre, retro game and anime shops and a capsule toy shop full of gachapon, this three hour Akihabara tour is undoubtedly your gateway into all that this neighbourhood has to offer.
So let’s dive right in! But first, let’s have a quick history lesson to truly understand what makes Akihabara the place that it is.
The Many Faces of Akihabara: From Retro Games to Otaku Streets
1. From Radio Stalls to Anime Capital: A Short History of Akihabara
‘Anime stores in Akihabara’, ‘cosplay in Akihabara’, ‘maid cafes in Akihabara’, ‘gachapon in Akihabara’: these are the things this area of Tokyo is world renowned for. But are these the things that this neighbourhood was always known for?
Initially, Akihabara was a quiet residential district for lower ranking samurai. After a great fire in 1869, the new Meiji authorities cleared the land as a firebreak and brought in a shrine to Akiba, a deity believed to protect against fire, which is where the name Akihabara comes from. The railway arrived from Ueno in 1890, along with a station called Akihabara. The growth of the neighbourhood really began after World War II, when a black market near Kanda Ogawamachi came to specialise in radio parts and students from a nearby technical college (now Tokyo Denki University) assembled and sold radios to earn extra money. In 1949 the occupation authorities ordered street stalls to be removed, and from 1950 the traders moved into a covered site under the elevated railway at Akihabara, which made it the go-to place for radios and other electronics. When television broadcasting began in 1953, Akihabara rode the boom in televisions, fridges and washing machines and became the one-stop shop for electronic goods, with all kinds of replacement parts sold alongside. The economy in the neighbourhood was booming and new tech was continuously emerging from the area.
In 1995, the release of ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion’ spelled a new chapter in Akihabara’s history. Before you knew it anime merchandise became the key source of revenue in the area. Sadly, this pushed out a lot of Akihabara’s old tech vendors. However, this made room for what it is today: the gaming and anime heart of Japan.
This present day Akihabara is brimming with maid cafes, some of the largest cosplay stores in Japan and the most vibrant gaming scene and gachapon in Tokyo, so let’s dive into this Akihabara tour and discover an unbeatable Japan anime tour package!
2. Retro Games at Super Potato and Akihabara’s Game Centres
If you’ve made the smart decision to join one of MagicalTrip’s small-group Akihabara tours, you’ll stop at one of Akihabara’s (many) retro games shops, and at a game centre where you can play arcade games yourself. Akihabara is very much a modernised, trendy district. However, it has many of these hidden gems: ageing, nostalgic video game stores. When it comes to charm, these top any anime store in Akihabara. Sega is one of the world’s most widely recognised gaming companies, and its arcades were Akihabara landmarks for decades. They have traded as GiGO since 2022, after Sega sold its arcade business to Genda, and the former Sega flagship, GiGO Akihabara No.1, closed at the end of August 2025.
These days, the main demographic of buyers at these shops tends to be those who want to relive the old times or feel a nostalgic bliss as they play the classics. The best known is ‘Super Potato’, on the third to fifth floors of a building in Sotokanda 1-chome and open from 11:00 to 20:00 every day. It’s a classic Akihabara arcade and candy store all in one, with long forgotten games lining the shelves, a retro game centre on the fifth floor and dagashi (traditional cheap sweets) for sale. Gachapon comes later in the tour, at a capsule toy shop near the end. A fair warning though, the Akihabara gachapon experience will likely leave you having spent a few more yen than you intended to… So let’s continue on to the next part of the tour!
Anime Figure Shops on Akihabara’s Upper Floors
If you’ve seen any building in Akihabara, you’ll know just how many floors they have. When you’re done with ‘Super Potato’, checking out the other floors in the surrounding buildings is definitely worth doing. Your tour guide with MagicalTrip is ready to assist in any translation or character finding! Akihabara’s anime figure stores are world famous for their wide range of collectors’ items and quirky models. So what better time to get your hands on anime figurines than during your Akihabara tour, the one time you’re stood in the heart of anime! Also, many of the anime stores in Akihabara have a unique system for purchasing figures, so be sure to ask your guide about that!
3. The Maid Cafe Stop: Entry Fee and One Drink Included
After a much more relaxing retro shopping experience, it’s time to head to the maid cafe for some drinks and entertainment! If you aren’t already familiar with the concept of maid cafes, they are essentially a regular cafe, only you are served by a group of waitresses dressed in maid outfits. With MagicalTrip, the cafe entrance fee and one drink are included, and the tour’s booking page lists a live performance by the maids among the inclusions.
4. Purikura Photo Booths, Capsule Toys and Akihabara’s Cosplay Shops
The tour also includes a turn in a purikura (プリクラ) photo booth, the sticker photo machines found in Japanese game centres, and that’s on MagicalTrip! After a last stop at a capsule toy shop, your Akihabara tour finishes near Akihabara Station. However there is one last thing you really need to experience, for which you can ask your guide for directions… One of the biggest cosplay stores in Japan! Akihabara cosplay is massive, so you’ll often see youth walking the streets as L Lawliets, Narutos and Zero Twos.
5. Booking MagicalTrip’s Akihabara Tour and More to Do Nearby
Now that we’ve had a look at what MagicalTrip’s Akihabara tour has to offer, I think we would agree that it is arguably the best anime tour in Japan. MagicalTrip offers an immersive experience with friendly guides and even friendlier price tags, so you can enjoy a comfortable touring experience! The tour lasts three hours and meets in front of the ticket office just outside the Electric Town Gate of JR Akihabara Station, where your guide will be holding a MagicalTrip sign. Let’s end this blog with a few other things you might want to check out while in the area:
Street Go Karting: If you’ve ever dreamed of go karting in Tokyo (haven’t we all?) then yes, this is real! AKIBAKART has run kart drives on public roads from Akihabara since 2012, in one or two hour group tours, and visitors from overseas need an International Driving Permit and their passport. The official Mario Kart branding is long gone, as Nintendo won its court case against the original street kart operator, MariCar, in 2020.
Gachapon: Mentioned earlier in this article, certainly one of the most addictive things you can do is play Gacha. It’s a twisting game of guess the character, as you turn the handle on a machine that might just drop your favourite one!
Figurine Shopping: We’ve discussed the anime stores in Akihabara you have the chance to visit during the Akihabara walking tour. However I should also mention that the more ‘niche’ stores sell stunning collectors’ figurines. From Studio Ghibli miniatures to countless other anime figurines you can find all kinds of trinkets. They’re usually the smaller shops, so keep an eye out.
So in case you missed the link the first 50 times… The → MagicalTrip ← website is the place you need to head to book your tour early!
While you’re waiting to jet off to experience the lights of Akihabara though, you could check out this video below in which akidearest goes on the tour with some friends. If you’re really not interested in the Akihabara walking tour, or a Japan anime tour just isn’t your thing, MagicalTrip has a multitude of other tours, so still check them out! Alternatively… You guessed it, you can click here to head over to our Japan Nakama online store!
