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.
But there is always something new to discover in the dense, multilayered, eternally evolving metropolis that is Japan's capital. And so up on the sixth floor of Akiba's famous Radio Kaikan, I find myself in Volks, marveling at beautiful — but creepily realistic — Super Dolfie dolls that are priced at over ¥100,000. In an adjacent case a miniature figurine of a limping, black-eyed girl with a hand inching its way out of her emaciated chest is displayed beside a pop band of perky, innocent-looking teenage schoolgirls. I had passed through the rabbit hole and, like Alice, emerged in a wonderland where anything is possible.
Appropriately, what had led me here was White Rabbit Press' audio-guided English-language walking tour of the area, titled "Tokyo Realtime: Akihabara." It's the second in a series of audio tours, launched in 2008 with a trip through the city-center adult-entertainment hub of Kabukicho, that is the brainchild of the White Rabbit Press founder Max Hodges.