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Photo Journal - Inside A Mac Store In Tokyo's Akihabara District (With Pics)

by , 1:45 PM EST, April 5th, 2002

Tokyo's Akihabara District, or "Electric Town," is known around the world for being a tech-fiend's paradise. Electric lights and a cacophony of sounds assault the senses, and everywhere you turn there are electronic goodies. From limited test runs of products that will never make it to the States, to Duty Free shops frequented by tourists anxious for a good deal, you can get it all in Akihabara. Cell phones, appliances, fax machines, DVD and CD players, stereos, mini-disc players, digital cameras, thousands of miles of cords and cables. Oh, and computers. You can find those too, in great abundance.

In fact, there's even a couple of Mac stores. We visited one called Sofmap, which has 5 floors, including a basement level. The store includes displays of old Macs, new Macs, and all sorts of other goodies, which you can see below in our photo journal. Below the images of Sofmap itself are some street shots of Akihabara.

Click on each thumbnail to see a larger version of the image

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5 stories of Mac Banners
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The Store Front of Sofmap
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Sofmap's Store Awning
(you can see the giant iMac banner on the front)
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Just inside - an iPod banner
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Brand new 10 GB iPod poster
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Assaulting the eyes with adverts
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Japanese Advertising Motto: "MORE! MORE! MORE!"
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That's Ace TMO Reporter, Darla Sasaki
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Ah yes, "The Life with Mac."
Or something...
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TMO's Editor
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We want that shelf in our living room
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Up the creaky stairs...
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Watch out for the exhaust on those speakers...
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This was a demo of a display protector. It looked really bad.
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So you want fans?
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We aren't sure why this was in a Plexiglas case, or why it was almost covered in adverts...
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U-Mac
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Blah blah yen blah G4 yen blah blah...
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Japanese Mac Mags: Sex sells...
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Japanese Office v.X poster
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Note the Japanese along the bottom
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Fruity Legacy Display
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Strolling down the ages...
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The other TAM on display...

The streets of Akihabara
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