Nipponbashi Denden Town

This guide to Nipponbashi Denden Town in Osaka follows the street from its start as Nagamachi, a lane of herbal medicine sellers, through a renaming after a vanished bridge, and into the postwar years when shopkeepers began selling salvaged radio parts to hobbyists. It traces where the crackling nickname Den Den came from and how the strip grew into one of Japan's three great electronics districts alongside Akihabara and Sakae. Best walked slowly, storefront by storefront, to see how each generation of shelves has been restocked.