Maid cafes, cosplay (costume play), gachapon vending machines, canned oden noodles and otaku (geeks) — lots of otaku: I thought I knew Akihabara, or "Akiba" as its fans affectionately call it. I bought my first Apple computer (a secondhand Macintosh Powerbook) there in the early 1990s and had visited many times since, both to research my "Rough Guide to Tokyo" and, later, my "Rough Guide to Anime" when the area became synonymous with anime and manga.