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English Map of Tokyo's Akihabara Otaku Shops Posted

The Akihabara Channel website has posted an interactive English map of Akihabara, the Tokyo neighborhood famed for its otaku-oriented shops and cafés. The map uses tools, freely provided by Google's Maps service, to mark the locations of shops and landmarks in 13 categories. Those categories include books, games, audiovisual releases, dōjin goods, and transportation hubs. Each location has an English description and the official website's address. (Due to the limitations of the map data used by Google, the neighborhoods and the rare streets with actual names are still listed in Japanese.)

Free maps and retail guidebooks are readily available at Akihabara itself, but virtually all of them are in Japanese. Otaku USA Editor-in-Chief Patrick Macias and writer Tomohiro Machiyama wrote a book called Cruising the Anime City: An Otaku Guide to Neo Tokyo (Stone Bridge Press) that details the main otaku haunts throughout Tokyo, although most of the individual stores of Akihabara are not detailed since such information gets outdated within months. Akihabara's "Electric Town" area has a promotional group that maintains a website with maps and transportation information, but its English section is limited to traditional duty-free shops for electronics.

Source: Japanator