There is a place in Tokyo officially called Akihabara, and the electronics shops are not in it. Akihabara is a town of Taito City with its own neighbourhood association, and Taito City writes its addresses there without a chome number. The shops, the arcades and the Sunday street closure are across the boundary in Chiyoda City, in a district called Sotokanda. Chiyoda’s own press releases write the name as “Akihabara (the Sotokanda area)” because of it.
Taito City has a town called Akihabara, and the shops are in Chiyoda’s Sotokanda
Taito City lists its neighbourhood associations by district. In the Takecho district it lists the Akihabara Neighbourhood Association, and gives its area as Akihabara in full. Enquiries about joining it go to the Taito District Centre at Taito 1-25-5. Taito City has carried out residential addressing across the whole of the ward, and its own page on the subject says the correct form of a Taito address is chome, block and number, then adds that Akihabara and Ueno Park are block and number only. So the place name is a town in Taito City and it has no chome at all.
Chiyoda City, on the other side of the boundary, publishes a list of every town and chome in the ward. Akihabara is not on it. Sotokanda is, as six chome, one to six. When Chiyoda designated the shopping quarter as a focus area under its solicitation ordinance on 13 July 2020, the press release headline read: Akihabara (the Sotokanda area) designated as a focus area for preventing solicitation. Kanda Myojin gives its address as Sotokanda 2-16-2. The street closure described below runs along Chuo-dori from the Sotokanda 5-chome junction.
So the practical rule is that the name, as a visitor uses it, covers the area around Akihabara Station, which straddles a ward boundary, and that the shopping streets named in the pedestrian-zone notice all sit in Chiyoda City. If you are checking which local authority publishes a rule that affects you, Chiyoda is the one to look at. What the shops there sell, and what is not cheaper there, is covered separately in our article on Akihabara shopping.
The Sunday street closure is about 570 metres and changes hours on 1 October
The Akihabara Electrical Town Organisation publishes the terms of the pedestrian zone on Chuo-dori. It runs on Sundays only. From April to September it operates from 13:00 to 18:00; from October to March it operates from 13:00 to 17:00. It can be cancelled at short notice for rain, storms, strong wind or an expectation of bad weather.
| Period | Day | Hours | Section closed | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| April to September | Sunday | 13:00 to 18:00 | Chuo-dori, Sotokanda 5-chome junction to Manseibashi junction | About 570 metres |
| October to March | Sunday | 13:00 to 17:00 | Chuo-dori, Sotokanda 5-chome junction to Manseibashi junction | About 570 metres |
The organisation also publishes what may not happen inside the closed section, giving as its examples selling goods, performances, street live music and riding a bicycle. It says in the same place that the pedestrian zone is a rule for securing the safe and smooth passage of pedestrians. The closure exists to keep pedestrians moving, not to create a market, and the 570 metres is the whole of it. Anyone expecting the street to fill with stalls on a Sunday afternoon is expecting the wrong thing.
Alongside that, the organisation sets out a local agreement covering the district as a whole. Smoking on the street is prohibited under Chiyoda City’s living environment ordinance, and smokers are asked to use designated places. Chiyoda publishes the terms of that one itself: the whole of the ward is a street no-smoking district, and smoking on the road or in one of the 37 parks and plazas listed under the ordinance carries an administrative fine of 2,000 yen. Freestanding signboards and banners are not to be put on the road. Illegal street trading, illegal parking of cars and bicycles, and reckless cycling are all listed. Shops with queues running outside the door are asked to keep the pavement passable, and shops trading late at night are asked to instruct their staff about the neighbours.
Five bodies sit on the council involved in running the street closure
Chiyoda City describes Akiba 21, formally the Akihabara Area Cooperation Council, in its own press release as the local body involved in operating the pedestrian zone in Akihabara. The Electrical Town Organisation lists its five member bodies:
- Manseibashi District Federation of Neighbourhood Associations
- Akihabara Electrical Town Organisation
- Akihabara Chuo-dori Shopping Street Promotion Association
- Akihabara Shopping Street Promotion Association
- Akihabara Station Front Shopping Street Promotion Association
Chiyoda City’s press release of 13 July 2020 records that Akiba 21 would run regular anti-solicitation patrols in the focus area jointly with Manseibashi Police Station and the ward, and that the ward would deploy private security guards on patrol in support.
Chiyoda’s solicitation ordinance runs to fourteen articles and prints no fine
Chiyoda City enacted the Chiyoda City Ordinance on the Prevention of Solicitation and Related Acts in Public Places with effect from 1 April 2014. Article 7 bans solicitation, recruitment and waiting in any public place, and the ward states on its explanatory page that the ban covers public places across the whole of the ward, not only the focus areas. Article 7 paragraph 2 separately bans paying or promising to pay someone else to do it.
Article 2 defines solicitation as picking out a particular person from passers-by, then blocking their way, walking beside them or following them while talking to them, or presenting the services and price system while inviting them in. It defines recruitment as inviting someone to work in three categories, one of which is being the subject of obscene footage, and it lists soliciting in connection with paid dating with a child, defined as a person under 18, among the examples of solicitation.
Read from Article 1 to the supplementary provisions, the ordinance runs to fourteen articles. The enforcement steps are Article 11, under which the mayor may instruct a person to stop and may have a designated person give that instruction, and Article 12, under which the mayor may set a deadline and order improvement measures against a person who breaches Article 7 in a focus area and is found to be seriously harming the living environment, and may then publish the fact that a person has not complied. Publication is where the text stops. No penalty provision appears anywhere in the fourteen articles, and the text carries neither an administrative fine nor a criminal one.
That is a meaningful difference from Shinjuku City, whose equivalent ordinance runs to twenty articles. Its Article 19 sets an administrative fine of not more than 50,000 yen on a person who breaks the ban inside one of Shinjuku’s specified districts after being given a recommendation, and on a person who obstructs an on-site inspection. Its Article 20 then puts the same fine on the company or the individual employing the offender. The behaviour looks the same on the street; the consequence written into the two texts is not.
Article 8 lets the mayor designate focus areas, change them and lift them, after hearing residents and businesses and consulting the relevant agencies. Chiyoda City currently publishes two: the area around Kanda Station and the area around Akihabara Station. Articles 9 and 10 ask residents and businesses to form a promotion body for each focus area and to conclude an agreement on preventing solicitation, which the mayor then certifies and publishes. The Akihabara agreement referred to on the Electrical Town Organisation’s page is that mechanism in use.
Kanda Myojin is at Sotokanda 2-16-2, and 2026 is its quiet festival year
Kanda Myojin gives its address as Sotokanda 2-16-2 with the postcode 101-0021, and its telephone as 03-3254-0753. It describes itself as the general tutelary shrine of Edo and is running a programme of events for its 1300th anniversary.
The shrine’s own page says the Kanda Festival is held once every two years. Its festival site adds that the 2026 festival is a kagematsuri, the quiet year, and that neither the shinkosai procession nor the mikoshi entry into the shrine is held in it. The seven earlier festivals the site still keeps separate sites for are all odd-numbered years: 2007, 2009, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2023. Anyone planning a trip around the full festival needs an odd-numbered year.
The 2025 programme shows what the full year looks like. The transfer of the deities to the portable shrines took place at 19:00 on 8 May; the spirits entered the parish mikoshi from about 14:00 on 9 May; the shinkosai procession ran all day on 10 May through Kanda, Nihonbashi, Otemachi and Marunouchi, and Akihabara; the tsukematsuri followed from about 15:00 that day, with the shinkosai mikoshi entry the same day and the general mikoshi entry all day on 11 May. A tea offering by the head of the Omotesenke school took place at 11:00 on 14 May, a Kongo-school torchlight noh opened its doors at 17:30 the same evening, and the annual rite was held at 14:00 on 15 May.
The shrine also marks its own move. Its 2015 festival was held as the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the shrine’s relocation to the present site, the Sotokanda address it still occupies.
For the official Gunpla store in the district and how it sits beside the general shops, see our article on Gundam Base Tokyo.
Read on 24 September 2026. Ordinance text, festival dates and street closure terms above are taken from the pages published by Chiyoda City, Taito City, Shinjuku City, the Akihabara Electrical Town Organisation and Kanda Myojin on that date.
Sources Checked
Taito City — page for the Akihabara Neighbourhood Association in the Takecho district
Confirmed that Taito City has a town named Akihabara, that the Akihabara Neighbourhood Association covers it in full, that it sits in the Takecho district, and that enquiries about joining go to the Taito District Centre at Taito 1-25-5.
https://www.city.taito.lg.jp/kurashi/kyodo/tyoukai/11tiku/taketyou/akihabara.html
Taito City — page on residential addressing in Taito City
Confirmed that Taito City has carried out residential addressing across the whole of the ward, that the correct form of a Taito address is chome, block and number, and that Akihabara and Ueno Park are block and number only, with no chome.
https://www.city.taito.lg.jp/kenchiku/jutaku/kenchiku/jukyohyoji.html
Chiyoda City — list of the town and chome names in the ward
Confirmed that Chiyoda City’s own list of every town and chome in the ward contains no Akihabara, and that Sotokanda appears in it as six chome, one to six.
https://www.city.chiyoda.lg.jp/koho/kurashi/bosai/bosai-taisaku/hinan/kensaku/cho.html
Chiyoda City — page on the ordinance for the prevention of solicitation in public places
Confirmed that the ordinance came into force on 1 April 2014, that it regulates public places across the whole ward, that focus areas are designated for concentrated work with neighbourhood and shopping associations alongside the ward and the police, and that the two published focus areas are the area around Kanda Station and the area around Akihabara Station.
https://www.city.chiyoda.lg.jp/koho/machizukuri/sekatsu/kyakuhiki.html
Chiyoda City — full text of the solicitation ordinance (PDF)
Confirmed that the text runs to fourteen articles plus supplementary provisions, that Article 2 defines solicitation, recruitment and waiting and gives paid dating with a person under 18 as an example, that Article 7 bans the conduct in any public place and bans paying another person to do it, that Article 8 governs the designation, change and lifting of focus areas after hearing residents and businesses, that Articles 9 and 10 provide for promotion bodies and certified agreements, that Article 11 provides for instruction to stop, that Article 12 provides for an improvement order in a focus area followed by publication of non-compliance, and that a search of the full text for the Japanese terms for an administrative fine, a criminal fine or a penalty provision returns no match.
https://www.city.chiyoda.lg.jp/documents/9416/kyakuhiki-jore.pdf
Chiyoda City — press release of 13 July 2020 designating the Sotokanda area as a focus area
Confirmed the headline wording naming Akihabara as the Sotokanda area, the designation date of 13 July 2020, that Akiba 21 is described as the local body involved in operating the pedestrian zone, the joint patrols with Manseibashi Police Station and the ward, and the ward’s deployment of private security guards.
https://www.city.chiyoda.lg.jp/koho/kuse/koho/pressrelease/r2/r207/20200713.html
Akihabara Electrical Town Organisation — page on the pedestrian zone
Confirmed that it runs on Sundays, that the hours are 13:00 to 17:00 from October to March and 13:00 to 18:00 from April to September, that the section is Chuo-dori between the Sotokanda 5-chome junction and the Manseibashi junction, that the length is about 570 metres, that it can be cancelled for rain, storms, strong wind or expected bad weather, that selling goods, performances, street live music and cycling are given as examples of what is not allowed inside it, that the zone is described as a rule for securing the safe and smooth passage of pedestrians, that street smoking is banned under Chiyoda City’s living environment ordinance, that freestanding signboards and banners may not be put on the road, that illegal trading, illegal parking of cars and bicycles and reckless cycling are listed, that queueing shops are asked to keep the pavement passable and late-trading shops to instruct their staff, and that Akiba 21 comprises the Manseibashi District Federation of Neighbourhood Associations, the Akihabara Electrical Town Organisation, the Akihabara Chuo-dori Shopping Street Promotion Association, the Akihabara Shopping Street Promotion Association and the Akihabara Station Front Shopping Street Promotion Association.
https://akiba.or.jp/pedestrianzone
Chiyoda City — living environment ordinance page on the street no-smoking district
Confirmed that the whole of Chiyoda City is a street no-smoking district, that smoking on the road or in one of the 37 parks and plazas listed under the ordinance carries an administrative fine of 2,000 yen, and that the ward measures its Chuo-dori illegal-parking focus area from the Sotokanda 5-chome junction.
https://www.city.chiyoda.lg.jp/koho/machizukuri/sekatsu/jore/bika/index.html
Shinjuku City — full text of the Shinjuku solicitation ordinance (PDF)
Confirmed that the Shinjuku ordinance runs to twenty articles, that Article 19 sets an administrative fine of not more than 50,000 yen on a person who breaks the ban in a specified district after receiving a recommendation and on a person who obstructs an on-site inspection, and that Article 20 puts the same fine on the corporation or individual employing the offender.
https://www.city.shinjuku.lg.jp/content/000196698.pdf
Kanda Myojin — shrine website
Confirmed the address Sotokanda 2-16-2 with postcode 101-0021, the telephone 03-3254-0753, the description as the general tutelary shrine of Edo, the 1300th anniversary programme, and that the Kanda Festival is held once every two years.
https://www.kandamyoujin.or.jp/
Kanda Myojin — Kanda Festival site
Confirmed that the 2026 festival is a kagematsuri with no shinkosai and no mikoshi entry, the 2025 programme of 8 May at 19:00, 9 May from about 14:00, 10 May all day for the shinkosai through Kanda, Nihonbashi, Otemachi and Marunouchi and Akihabara, the tsukematsuri from about 15:00 on 10 May, the shinkosai mikoshi entry on 10 May, the general mikoshi entry on 11 May, the tea offering at 11:00 on 14 May by the head of the Omotesenke school, the Kongo-school torchlight noh opening at 17:30 on 14 May and the annual rite at 14:00 on 15 May, that the 2015 festival marked the 400th anniversary of the shrine’s relocation to its present site, and that the seven earlier festivals given their own sites are those of 2007, 2009, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2023.
https://www.kandamyoujin.or.jp/kandamatsuri/
Last updated: September 2026
