Akiba Report
1. I don't know what I was expecting, but the maid cafe was pretty underwhelming. It was essentially $30 for a sundae, a soda, a photo, and 10 minutes of conversation over an hour while I messed around on my phone. At least it was a nice break from walking around in the heat.
2. According to figure density, the hot properties right now are SAO, Love Live, im@s, Tales of (seriously?), and FSN (mainly Saber). Older mainstays that are still popular are Nanoha, Madoka, and Evangelion to a lesser degree. I bought a $30 set of im@s gashopons because I wanted to buy at least one embarrassing thing, but the few figures of characters I would've wanted were too expensive and/or lewd (pretty much every Kashiwazaki Sena figure). There was a nice Kuroneko figma of her as Shironeko at one store, but it was $70+ for some reason, like twice the price of all of the figmas around that one. There was nothing of older characters like Horo or Shurelia, or maybe I didn't find the right place for those.
3. The mecha figures/models are always on one of the higher floors, quarantined from the regular shoppers. Although there are always some lewd figures of the pink-haired girl from Macross F mixed in there. Get new material.
4. If you're into the Super Sonico chick, there is literally a lifetime of jerkoff material out there for you if you can afford it. If I didn't know she was supposed to be a headphones mascot, I would've figured she was Japan's national eroge character.
5. The video game sections of stores were bad temptations for me. I had to stop myself from walking out with 5 different games I wouldn't have been able to play, particularly Atelier Shallie. There was also a gigantic LE box of Amagami PSP that I probably wouldn't have been able to pack safely in my luggage anyway. I also was tempted to buy Dragon's Crown just so I could have the JPN VA narrators.
6. There was one store where the second floor was just entirely PG-13/R wallscrolls. I should've taken a pic, since there wasn't an employee up there at the time.