Cube Shops! I don't know if there's an official name for these but I thought they were a really cool kind of store that a lot of people might not have heard of!
I saw a lot of these at Akiba and Nakano Broadway while hunting for merch/figs with my boyfriend XD. They're stores that are almost completely comprised of rentable cubes, which the renter can fill with whatever they want to sell to people. Since the stores i visited were located in neighborhoods that cater to anime / manga fans, generally the goods lean that way. They are like kind of a tiny flea market or an IRL ebay/craigs list. You can find almost any thing that will fit in a cube and the prices vary because they are each owned by different people.
It's both exciting and kind of over whelming, realizing that every cube is its own tiny shop. If you had something you wanted in mind, this just means even more wares to look through with no direction. One cube could be comprised of all gachapon items, or all pokemon items or just a mix of fandoms. Sometimes you find ones that sell hand made etsy-like goods, or steampunk watches, or deodorant like this picture. Some of the best deals can be found here, and some of the absolute worse. Don't over look them if you are hunting for specific items :O! Some people would prefer to use these than to just straight sell their item to a store!
When you want to buy, generally in the larger stores you find pieces of paper where you can list the cube number, the item number and the price. You then take your slip to the cashier who will go to each cube with you and fetch the item while making sure it's the right one and you check out with your stuff. It's a really neat way to do things that i've never seen in the US and something you might miss if you were only looking at the big name brand stores in akiba~
