Japan Trip Day 2: Akihabara (秋葉原)

On my second day in Japan, we went to Akihabara. I came on a great weekend, as Azur Lane, one of the mobile games I’ve been playing recently, had their second year anniversary event. It was everywhere as soon as I got out of the Akihabara subway station.

Anyways, before I get into that, my goodness, this place is literally anime and electric town central. There’s so many banners left and right, but I only managed to snap one photo, here it is below.

Since I love to collect figures, I did go to various stores to check them out. It was an experience going to each store and just looking at figures. In Akihabara Raidio Kaikan, I spent over 2 hours walking around looking at figures and other anime- and manga-related merchandise. It was great. If I had more time in Japan, I would definitely spend more time here. To be fair, every place that I’ve gone to in Japan would be better if I had more time to take it in slowly, but there’s always a next time. Anyways, here’s some photos of figures.

Okay, so after walking around, I did stumble upon the stage for Azur Lane’s second anniversary event. They were handing out Akashi face masks, and I saw lots of people holding bags, which I assumed they got when they bought merchandise. I ended up asking one of the event staff where event goods were being sold, and it was at Akiba UDX, which was nearby. I took a quick glance into the event stage, and it looked like it was being live streamed as well. When I was there, they were showcasing some of the soundtracks from the game, which was pretty neat. Directly outside of the event stage, they had a pair of itashas on display, which were really cool. Here they are below.

On the level below, there was an art exhibit from an abundance of artists. It was beautiful. There’s too many photos to share here, but many of them can be found on pixiv. There was even various figures on display: some have been released already, while some are on pre-order. I have the Eldridge one at home, and I’m waiting for Vampire to be released in November of this year. Some photos of the exhibit are below.

I did go to Akiba UDX, and there I also got to see other Yostar games, including Nekoparaiten. They also had itashas there, too. I got to try out the Nekoparaiten game, and that was pretty cute. The mechanics that were available at the time was to play with your cats (in this case, I tried playing with Chocola, Vanilla, and Fraise), by petting them, and getting to see their reactions was so damn good. The animation was like in the other Nekopara games, so I do look forward to the final game. After trying out the game, the booth staff gave me an A4 clear file with Vanilla, Fraise, and Chocola on the front, and all the Nekoparaiten chibi characters on the back.

After that, I tried finding the Azur Lane goods booth. After walking around aimlessly, I finally asked a staff member, and found it on the other side of the building. Not surprisingly, as I went in the afternoon, most of the goods were sold out, but I wasn’t leaving without something in hand. I remembered seeing a Laffey dakimakura cover back on Azur Lane JP’s Twitter account a few weeks back, so I ended up getting myself exactly that. I only saw one side of it on Twitter, and it actually looks pretty good on both sides, as she’s in her sleep attire. Although it was a steep JPY 12k, it still wasn’t the most expensive daki cover I’ve bought. I’m starting a daki cover…this might be taxing on the wallet…

All in all, my first time in Akihabara was pretty fun, lots of stuff to see, and I lucked out with the Azur Lane event. I only bought one thing, but I did come back later one this week for another round, but that’s for another blog post. Since I took way too many photos, I’ve uploaded everything to Google Photos, which you can see here.

Enjoy, and until next time!
~Lui