K-Books in Akihabara

The perfect haven for anime and manga fans

By Tyra 'nell Pille-Lu

Community writer

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K-Books buys used reading materials and resells them at prices as low as ¥200

K-Books is on the 3rd and 4th floors of Radio Kaikan, near the Electric Town exit of JR Akihabara Station

This is the entrance to K-Books on the third floor

The shop is accessible via several flights of stairs, escalators, or the elevator

There are over 170,000 local Japanese literary works, arranged by category on rows and rows of shelves that ran the whole way from the floor up to the ceiling

On display are a variety of eye-catching doujinshi - independently published literary materials, like manga, novels and magazines - created by artists mostly from Kansai

Aside from books, they also sell stationery items like colored pens and pencils for anime arts

My fondness for books brought me to K-Books while strolling through the rabbit warren of Akihabara, the electronics and anime hub of Tokyo, if not Japan. To my amazement, more than a hundred thousand books met my eyes in just one floor, yet none of them were the usual kind of books I read. It is a place where Danielle Steel and Sydney Sheldon do not exist. In fact most, if not all of the reading materials on display are manga, or related to animation and everything to do with it.