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Well crap - Akihabara Radio Store closing its doors

The pronunciation is like Hockey-Harbor-Rah! and you drop the first "H". From The Japan Times:

Legendary Akihabara Radio Store closing its doors after six decades
The Akihabara Radio Store, the shopping center of small merchants that pioneered the development of Tokyo�s Akihabara neighborhood as the world�s largest commercial district for electronics, will be open for the last time this Saturday.

Facing a decline in customers, the owners decided last year to throw the off-switch on the mall�s 64-year history.

The Akihabara Radio Store opened in 1949 after merchants selling radio components in the area were forced to discontinue street trading under the orders of the Allied Occupation. Ten merchants joined hands to reopen their businesses on the current site.

In the decades that followed and as the �Electric Town� grew up around it, only one of those founding companies withdrew from the business, while the other nine, together with Akihabara Radio Store company, which has managed the building, soldiered on.

I had the pleasure of spending a month in Japan (my GF was teaching English there) and visited Akihabara a few times. The first impression was not that great -- a row of small cluttered storefronts occupying the face of a city block. And then you realized that between every 2 or 3 storefronts, there was a deep alleyway that went through the entire square city block and that along these alleyways were hundreds of other small cluttered storefronts occupying the entire floor of the city-block sized building. And then you looked up to the other five floors. The place was a true force of nature and a mecca for geeks everywhere. End of an era -- sad really... Posted by DaveH at November 29, 2013 11:08 PM