Yamagiwa Akihabara

Yamagiwa Akihabara

Yamagiwa
1-5-10 Soto-Kanda, Chiyoda-ku
Tel: 03-3253-5111
Open Mon-Fri 11am-7:30pm; Sat, Sun and holidays 10:30am-7:30pm.
Nearest station: Akihabara

Boasting more than 50 years of history, Yamagiwa is one of the oldest electronics dealerships and sits on the center of Akihabara. The shop, one of the larger landmarks on the main drag of the "Electric Town," which is crowded with retailers of games, software, appliances, computers, and other electronics. Hi-fi equipment is scattered on the entire 4th floor of the building and high-end and import stuffs are concentrated at the far end of the floor. The floor suffers from low ceiling and the "noises" that component-stereos generate, so you can't expect the best-possible sound reproduction here, but anyhow it is filled with gorgeous import stuffs. You can confirm this by listening to the Dynaudio speakers on demo here. Because of the poor room acoustics, those Dynaudios sound like cheap forgeries. Yamagiwa has tied-up with Ishimaru (an old, big dealer chain) and started over as a new entity, so the audio floor possibly could become better in the near future.

Akihabara is known as "Electric Town" - it is here that the biggest concentration of electronic stores in Tokyo is found. The competition is cut throat and prices generally much lower than elsewhere in Tokyo.

There are Yamagiwa Anime, Yamagiwa Soft and Yamagiwa U-Shop, which sells used CD and DVD. They also sell manga, books, DVD, games, merchandise and models, in an area already saturated with such trade.

Other places worth a visit at Akihabara are:

Dyna 5555: This shop epitomizes the new era in Akihabara; pure audio is no more omnipresent but concentrated to some select and mostly pricey premises. Anyhow, Dyna 5555 (called "four-five" according to the shop master) is a large-scale hi-fi dealer consisting of 7 floors that are completely dedicated to pure audio, from cheap accessories to super-expensive equipment.

Tomoca: the shop sells pro-audio equipment like cables, microphones, amps, CD recorders, equalizers, monitor speakers, huge consoles and so on.

Kimura Musen: this shop on the 4th floor provides full-range speakers, accessories such as insulators, treatment fluids, mains outlet and inlet plugs, various cables and so on.

Sato Musen: the shop sells everything from the cables to huge speakers; the shop's specialty is the tube amplifiers.

Radio Kaikan, Tokyo Radio Depart, Kounan Denki, Kaijin Musen, Oyaide, Akizuki, Sengoku etc are some other attractions at Akihabara.

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