Akihabara is small area in Tokyo which is geek central, a place that otakus (fanboys) of anime, video games, toys, electronics or maid cafes seem to congregate at. There are alleys which sell the latest GPS systems, and alleys in which one can find nothing but resistors and miscellaneous electronics. It's not unheard for storefronts in Akihabara to just have containers outside of random bargain-priced electronics -- whether it's hard drives or weird USB devices or PCI cards. And it's always a feeding frenzy, no matter what day or time of day, you will see men and women of all ages picking through the containers looking for a bargain.
The closest thing that I've been to that resembles that kind of frenzy is the 4 day sale at SurplusComputers in Santa Clara -- they order pallettes of electronics set them out in their parking lot for 4 days and let people pick through them. Most of the electronics are really cheap -- prices start at $1 and climb slowly from there. I went early this morning and bought the following:
9 LED Flashlight (Red) $3
LED Flashlight Mount for a Bicycle $1
Digital Multimeter $5
Engraver ($5)
Soldering Iron ($5)
IDE to USB 2.0 Cable ($14)
PCI Firewire card ($10)
Leather Carrying Case ($2)
They had other things too, cordless drills, screwdrivers, etc, but this stuff should keep me plenty busy for a while.
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