Tachikawa, an otaku town?

July 2010

Last year I was checking out this page about Tokyo's 3 big otaku towns. I figured it would be Akihabara, Nakano, and Ikebukuro. Instead, it lists Tachikawa (further west from Nakano on the Chuou Line, even further past the Ghibli museum in Mitaka) instead of Ikebukuro. On last year's trip I thought I'd check out Tachikawa, but I was only in the Tokyo area for a day with the wife and baby, so it was a no-go.

For Tachikawa, the site lists the Daiichi Department Building and the From Chubu building. The website for the From Chubu building lists a Volks shop and an Animate. Okay, Animate is also in Ikebukuro, and I don't know how big the Volks store is. Perhaps those are the only two stores of interest, since everything seems to be ladies' wear and such. Doesn't sound like a rival to the Broadway Building to me.

What's special about the Daiichi Department building? Danny Choo has an article about Daiichi (his website is tokidoki nsfw, so be careful). There is a Kotobukiya store there that I'm sure is full of win, but what else? Is it shop after shop of otakuness like Akiba and Nakano (or even Ikebukuro, home of the Sakura Taisen shop)? I can't find much ofanything special on the Daiichi's homepage at a glance, other than a Book Off and a manga shop.

Danny wrote on his blog: "If you happen to be in the Tachikawa area, you may want to pop in but you may be dissapointed if you make the trip expecting to see a '3rd Akihabara.' I do think that over time, more otaku shops may move into the department store but for now its Kotobukiya, some shop that sells idol stuff and a large bookshop with loadsa manga." Well, if this is true, then I'd have to stick with Ikebukuro as one of the Big Three.

Last month, I flew to Japan for a 2 1/2 week vacation. On June 17th, I flew into Tokyo. I stayed in Tokyo area for four nights by myself. Without the wife and kid, I had plenty of time to be selfish that weekend. And by the way, I highly recommend the Hotel Meigetsu to stay at if you're visiting Japan on a budget. The rates are as low as 3,000 yen for the first night, and it's discounted 100 yen each night after then. The accomodation was small, but much better than a capsule hotel, and much better than staying at a youth hostel. Plus, the room had a LAN connection jack, so all I had to do was borrow an ethernet cable. The night I arrived, I checked into the hotel and went to Ueno's Ameyoko area for a ramen dinner. The next morning I headed out to Tachikawa for a half day and poked around. After that, I went to Nakano.

OK, so my verdict for Tachikawa is that it is pretty cool, but a trip out there really depends on how much time you have to spend in Tokyo. There is enough otaku shopping to make it interesting, however a lot of this can be found elsewhere in Tokyo. It took a while to get to Tachikawa by the Chuuou kaisoku (Chuuou line express train). I can't remember how long it took to get there, but I'm guessing it was at least over a half hour. The cool thing about Tachikawa is that some of the merchandise I saw there was not available at the many stores I went to in Nakano or Akihabara. Maybe because it's further out from the central Tokyo area, it isn't quite as picked over. Fortunately, the Daiichi and From buildings are easy to spot from Tachikawa's north exit. After a long train ride, at least I didn't have to walk far to find these two department buildings.

As always, you can click each image for a larger view.

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mail: greg -atsign- stevethefish -dot- net