Gizmodo: akiba

Visiting Thanko's Tokyo Mecca of USB Weirdness

Brian Lam — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:00:28 EDT

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.

Inside, I found it a bit like the best of Gizmodo's Japan blog pages splattered into a retail space, complete with instructional placards and demo stations. They were all here. The USB heated mittens, the USB lock, the USB microscope, the USB neck tie cooler, to name a few. My purchasing restraint fell, and my credit card did not remain sheathed during this visit. Here's a map to the store if you would like to pay homage to the USB gadget gods. Special thanks to Gizmodo.jp for leading me to the treasure trove.

Japan Watch: Akihabara Stores Using Porn to Sell Vista

Jason Chen — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 18:00:47 EDT

We all knew Japan loves running Hentai games on Vista, so it's no wonder that stores selling Microsoft's newest OS are advertising to the same market.

Scope this ad, found in a shop in Akihabara, saying "Vista Aero function is not possible on XP". Of course, Aero is a pun for "ero", or "erotic", something Ashcraft had to explain to me between swigs of sake and bites of a turkey and cheese sandwich (don't ask).

But is it helping sales? Not even in Japan. – Jason Chen

Akibablog [via Kotaku]

Touching Dozens of Beautiful Japanese Cellphones

Brian Lam — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 11:39:11 EST

I'm in Tokyo, and I've been avoiding gadgets. After all, I'm supposed to be on vacation. But today Lisa took me to Akiba, and I ended up running through a dozen stores, groping over 50 handsets. I've written about some, like the incredibly simple Wilcom R9, glowing Sony Ericsson w43s and walkman-like w42s. But gripping the alien tech live was unexpectedly incredible. Here's a video of the most gorgeous handsets I could find. –Brian Lam

Japan [Gizmodo]