How to Use the Akihabara Card Shop Route Planner

Akihabara's trading card shops cluster in a long, narrow band that starts just outside the Electric Town Exit of JR Akihabara Station and runs north along Chuo-dori toward Suehirocho. What makes Akihabara distinctive is just how many shops are packed into an area you can cover entirely on foot — which also means the order you visit them in makes a real difference to how efficiently you can shop.

Electric Town Exit area (station front)
The stretch right outside the ticket gates. Many of the mixed-use buildings here hold several card shops each, so you can pack a lot of visits into a short amount of time. It's busy and lively, and an easy, welcoming entry point even on your first visit. For more, see the Electric Town Exit area guide.

Chuo-dori to Suehirocho area (north side)
The area you reach by heading north along Chuo-dori. It's a short walk from the bustle around the station, giving you a calmer setting to compare each shop's selection. Combine it with the Electric Town Exit area and you'll cover a much wider swath of Akihabara's trading card scene. For more, see the Suehirocho / Chuo-dori area guide.

Precisely because the shops are so tightly packed, wandering in without a plan often means doubling back down the same street more than once. The Route Planner is a tool that, once you pick a starting point and the shops or card games you want to visit, automatically works out an order that keeps the total walking distance as short as possible. You can use it on the spot on the day, or just as easily map out "today's route" before you even leave home.

• When you have limited time — say, half a day — and want to fit in as many shops as possible
• When you want to hit shops carrying multiple card games at once, such as Pokémon cards and Yu-Gi-Oh! (OCG)
• When it's your first time in Akihabara and you have no idea where to start for the most efficient route

STEP 1｜Choose your starting point
Start from your current location, or set a point such as Akihabara Station as your origin.

STEP 2｜Choose the shops or card games you want
Choose shops directly, or narrow things down by card game — Pokémon cards, Yu-Gi-Oh! (OCG), One Piece Card Game, and more.

STEP 3｜Follow the auto-generated route
An efficient order is displayed for you — from there, all you have to do is walk it.

Having even a little sense of the area's layout makes the Route Planner's suggested order much easier to work with. We'd recommend reading through the area guides above first to get the lay of the land. And if you already know which card game you're after, checking the list of shops that carry it beforehand makes narrowing down your picks that much easier.

If you're planning to cover everything in half a day, reading through our half-day model course, which lays out a suggested approach to sequencing your visits, will make it easier to build a route of your own.

Pick the shops you want to visit, or your favorites, and you can put together a route tailored to your own plans in moments. Build it before you leave, and on the day you'll simply follow the route on foot.