^ ^ That will leave us with only one physical H!P Official Shop in Tokyo, and only three in all of Japan. I can remember a time not too long ago when there were three in Tokyo alone.
"Sometimes it seems as though the whole point of the Japanese writing system is to keep non-Japanese people from understanding what the hell is going on." — Dave Barry
I've never been there so I can't say for sure, but I suspect they're closing the small, run-down, hard-to-find shops in order to put their resources into a large, brand-new, easy-to-find shop. More traffic, more prestige. Akihabara is the otaku Mecca, after all.
^ ^ The Ueno shop certainly isn't easy to find, and since it's only about a kilometer from the new Akihabara store, it really does make sense to close it.
"Sometimes it seems as though the whole point of the Japanese writing system is to keep non-Japanese people from understanding what the hell is going on." — Dave Barry