To a consumer-electronics aficionado, Akihabara is one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It's a four- or five-square block area of downtown Tokyo that's made up of seven- to nine-story buildings filled, from basement to penthouse, with things electric.

Exit the massive Akihabara railway/subway station by following the "Electric Town" signs and you'll find yourself in another world. Whether you're looking for a vacuum cleaner or a HDTV set, you'll find it here.

Directly across the street is a colorful multi-story building whose escalators crisscross its face like a human-sized Habitrail. A turn to the right takes you toward the main street of Akihabara, but just before you reach it you'll see tiny aisles extending into the buildings to your right. If you're prone to claustrophobia, or more than six feet tall, you'll find these passageways quite intimidating. Enter any one of them and you'll find a warren crammed with small sales stalls -- most no larger than four by five feet -- stocked with every basic component you can think of: transistors, connectors, tubes, speaker voice coils, resistors, capacitors and other whatsits found nowhere else on the planet.

Cross the street and find a five-story building devoted to music and movie software -- video and audio cassettes, compact discs, MiniDiscs, DCCs and laser videodiscs. If you fancy some obscure Russian director's films, you'll find them here, most in the original Russian, but with Japanese subtitles. American films no longer available in the U.S. due to political incorrectness (like Disney's "Song of the South") are sure to be in stock. I found a delicious Japanese laserdisc release of Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor." It runs 219 minutes, some 45 minutes longer than the version released in the U.S. -- though it's missing a few seconds of newsreel footage devoted to Japanese atrocities that had been included in the American release. "Song" had the English soundtrack on one channel, Japanese on the other. "Emperor" had the original English soundtracks, but with Japanese subtitles.

Most of the big stores segregate their products by floor, with washers and dryers on the ground floor, and the more esoteric products (like widescreen TVs and laserdisc players) on the highest floors. In between are the speakers, amplifiers, fax machines, telephones, microwave ovens, bread makers and toaster ovens.

Enjoy the "window shopping," but use caution if you're thinking of bringing something home to North America. The radio-broadcast spectrum and electrical voltage are somewhat different in Japan. Warranties -- though written by multinational companies whose names you recognize -- probably won't be accepted outside Japan.