Akihabara calling.

No visa for stays under 90 days on most passports, including EU, UK and US. You'll fill in the Visit Japan Web form before you fly — do it at home, the airport queue for people who didn't is the slow one. Passport valid for the whole stay; no onward-ticket check in practice, though the airline may ask.

Japanese yen. Cards are accepted almost everywhere in the cities now, but keep cash: small izakayas, shrines, lockers and some arcades are still cash only. 7-Eleven ATMs take foreign cards and are open all night.

• Coffee€3
• Bowl of ramen€6–9
• Capsule hotel€25–40
• Business hotel€60–90
• Day on the metro€6

Trains, always. Get a Suica or Pasmo card on your phone the day you land and stop thinking about tickets. The JR Pass only pays for itself if you're crossing the country twice or more — for a Tokyo-centred otaku trip it usually doesn't. Taxis are excellent and expensive; the last train is around midnight and everyone means it.

Quiet on trains, no phone calls. Don't eat while walking. Shoes off where there's a step up and a rack. Tipping isn't a thing and trying will confuse people. In maid cafés and some shops, photos are restricted — the signs are there for a reason and staff will ask you to stop.

Japan is close to scam-free, but a few things catch people out. Touts in Kabukicho leading you to bars with a bill at the end that isn't the one you agreed — walk past. Buying a JR Pass you won't use. Booking Shibuya because it's famous and commuting 40 minutes to everything you actually came for. And planning Akihabara for a Monday, when several of the big stores shut.

Shoes you can walk 20,000 steps in and take off twenty times a day. A day bag with room to grow — you will buy things. Coin purse, because the coins pile up fast. Spring and autumn want layers; a compact umbrella earns its place in June.

Akihabara across a full day rather than an afternoon — the big multi-floor stores reward going up to the top and working down. Nakano Broadway for the second-hand floors, which is where the finds actually are. Ikebukuro's Otome Road if that's your corner of it. One convention if your dates land near one, and one seichi junrei pilgrimage out of the city.

Stay east — Ueno, Asakusa or Akihabara itself. You'll be fifteen minutes from everything on this plan instead of forty, and the same money buys a bigger room than in Shibuya. Hand-picked stays sit inside this block for Pro members, matched to this plan rather than to a star rating.

Curated stays are part of Good Anywhere Pro.

• Lean day€70
• Comfortable day€95–120
• With a convention ticket+€40
• Shopping budgetyou decide, honestly

Different from the culture plan in the same country: you'll spend less on entry fees and considerably more in shops.

Every place in this plan is already dropped on a Google map you open on your phone — stores, the floors worth going to inside them, food near each stop, and a separate layer for the spots worth photographing.

Honest note: the Akihabara crossing shot everyone posts is best before 9am. By afternoon you're photographing other people's phones.

Go on a weekday if you can — Akihabara on a Sunday is a different sport. Carry a second bag folded in your day bag. Cash for the second-hand floors. And check the convention calendar before you fix your dates, because it can be worth moving the trip by a week.