I guess it might depend on which Akibahara store you’re going to, but at least a good number of them when I went this year (IMO) are just too ‘generic’ with a lot of the floor space dedicated to just the most popular franchises, with uninspiring merch (e.g. tshirts, acrylic stands) that can easily be found online. Though this might also be cause I’ve been there a few years before and the magic has been lost.
Stuff in Nakano Broadway (where a large portion of the floorspace is dedicated to Mandarake’s secondhand shops) are rarer and more diversified, and there’s even a shop selling original animation cels of old anime (I was salivating over a Cardcaptor Sakura one which cost JPY500,000…). There’s also the JOJO bar which is insanely cool.
I browsed r/JapanTravel a lot to look up tips and general recommendations.
Depends on my mood, I suppose? When I’m less busy IRL, I would have the brain capacity to read nonfictions and meatier novels (including 86…I lost count on the number of times I’ve opened it and stared at the same page for 5 minutes). But during busier times I can handle nothing more than copious amount of comfort reading LNs.