akihabara
Robots
Japan’s Akihabara Vstone Robot Centre Sells Robots and Robot Kits
9:00AM Jason Chen | Akiba’s Vstone Robot Centre is the nerd-friendly destination’s first robot store, selling robots as well as robot kits and parts for robots. If it’s as otaku as other parts of Akiba, expect a lotta dudes. [Dvice] More »
Games
Toshiba’s Digital Billboard Lets Japanese Pedestrians Interactively Game Using Their Mobile Phones
1:00PM Adrian Covert | Nikkei has a post about Toshiba’s new Digital Billboard in Tokyo’s Akihabara district, where passerbys can dial up a number and connect to an interactive game which is displayed on the giant sign. More »
Random Stuff
Before Neon Lights: What Tokyo’s Akihabara Geek District Looked Like 50 Years Ago
9:20PM Brian Lam | Before Tokyo’s Akihabara geek district was laced with neon, it looked like this photo taken circa 1950 which I saw on my recent trip. Despite the horses in the photos, even around this time, gadgets were a part of the trade. (Although as the ads below show, phonographs and vacuum tube radios made up some of the choices.) Doing some research on the area, I did not know that almost 100 years before this time, the area was razed by fires and when it was rebuilt, it was rebuilt with a Shinto shrine on its premises with the name “The extinguisher shrine”. People assumed that the Shrine was devoted to the popular deity of fire-control named Akiba, which is the root of the somewhat similar name of the region today. galleryPost('akiba1950s', 3, ''); More »
Peripherals
Visiting Thanko’s Tokyo Mecca of USB Weirdness
4:00AM Brian Lam | Near a highway, a few hundred feet from the biggest electronics building in Tokyo’s Akihabara district, sits a tiny mecca for gadget geeks. The orange store belongs to Thanko, masters of weird USB devices, and it is their first of 4 shops. The blinking raremonoshop sign tickled my eyeballs, but my geek lust was triggered in full by the wall flyers for odd gadgets printed on top of a mosaic of origami paper. More »
Online
Tour Tokyo’s Tech Paradise, Now On Google Street View
11:00PM John Mahoney | Google’s dutiful camera vans have finished canvassing Tokyo, which means today you can now tour some of the world’s most geek-friendly real estate in “electric town” Akihabara without the 14 hour plane flight. The folks at Mars Mag have put together a tour of some of their favourite Linux Maid Cafes, Dream PC builders, arcade palaces and electronics megastores that call Akihabara home. More »
Press
Update: Japanese News Broadcast of Akihabara Killing Spree
7:30AM Gizmodo US Edition | Even if you don’t speak a word of Japanese, there’s a lot of intensity and information to be had in this newscast of the tragic Akihabara killings last Sunday. I’d just offer up a word of warning before you hit play, as there’s graphic material found throughout the clip. More »
Press
