New Akiba Culture Zone Department Store

Flickr / by Masaru Kamikura

Akiba Culture Zone is a new six floor department store devoted to Otaku tastes and shopping. It just fully opened at the end of January 2012.  The basement has a food court named the One Fes Cafe, K-Books on the first and second floors, The third and fourth floor have more anime goods shops with figures, idol merchandise and more. The fifth floor is the Good Smile and Karaoke no Tetsujin Cafe, and the Akihabara Backstage Pass Cafe is on the 6th floor. Looks like it is full of Otaku goodness. I've added it to my Akihabara Map along with the location of the Gundam Cafe!  This will help to replace the loss of the Radio Kaikan Building.

The map below shows the location of the Gundam Cafe and the AKB48 Cafe which are adjacent to each other as the pair of faces in the center of the map.
The map below shows the location of the Gundam Cafe and the AKB48 Cafe which are adjacent to each other as the pair of faces in the center of the map.

View Akihabara Highlights Map / Akihabara Guide in a larger map

Here is a writeup about the place in JapanToday.

Bit of an update on May 20th, 2012 about Akiba Culture Zone.
Crunchyroll did a report on the Kaiyodo Wonder Festival Cafe in the basement of the building closing down as there wasn't enough business on the weekdays.  Hopefully the place and Akiba is still healthy with the economic times were are all going through.  Get the full report here.

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The Gundam Cafe is a place I've always wanted to visit too.  While not new, it is definitely a must see for Gundam fans.  Here are pictures of the cafe from Akihabara News. http://g-cafe.jp/

Right next door to the Gundam Cafe is the AKB48 Cafe and Shop.  I'll bet big fans of both will spend hours and hours here either in the cafe or waiting to get in.  http://akb48cafeshops.com/


Patrick Macias also has a new writeup in the Guardian about the 10 best Otaku Places.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2012/feb/01/top-10-otaku-shops-tokyo-anime-manga