funThe flavor of the day is Akihabara.
Known mainly for Electric Town, Akihabara is the infamous electronics district. Everything you need for equipping your home with spy sensors and cameras to hacking the mainframe, you will find in Akihabara. Electric Town is laid out like this: electronics shop, comic shop, electronics shop, action figure shop, electronics shop, comic shop, electronics shop … you get it now.
This is also the place to go if you’re into Japanese animation and comics, a.k.a. anime and manga. I’m talking nerd central, people. If you’re looking to check out the crazy shops, I recommend Gamers, because it’s famous, and Asobit City and Animate, because they’re the biggest and have the best selection of nerdy goodies.
Being a video game girl myself, I’ve been here a number of times. They have every game ever made, and every game that’s about to explode into popularity in America has already gone out of style here. It’s like living in the future. Right now there’s a drum game that really good people can actually draw large crowds by playing. The arcades in Japan are THE best, but just forget about the claw machines. If you think the American ones are crap, just you wait to try the Japanese ones. I swear, the only way to win something is to look really cute and sad that the claw just doesn’t close on the doll you like, so that the arcade boy will come over and knock it down the chute for you. And that’s only worked once. Try the gatcha-gatcha machines. Remember the twenty-five cent candy machines, where you twist the knob and get a handful of treats or gum? In Japan, you get a little plastic ball with a toy inside, sometimes pre-assembled, sometimes not. There are places where it’s literally wall to wall with these machines, and special trashcans for plastic balls. If you get a character you don’t like, a great way to cheer up is to give it to one of the other people playing. You will make that kid’s day, and he will be so flustered and happy that you won’t even remember being sad.
I also recommend purikura, which are sticker photo booths. EVERYONE in Japan does purikura. They carry little albums of their collections, and stick them on every available surface. You can’t go to Japan without going to the booths at least once.
Back to Akihabara, it’s full of computer geeks, but it’s famous for something called otaku. If you know the word, you may not know the meaning. It’s actually not a very nice thing to call somebody. The word itself means “house”, but in the colloquial it refers to someone who doesn’t shower much, doesn’t have any friends, and stays shut up at home all day playing video games and watching cartoons.*
Anyway, Akihabara is positively crawling with these otaku. There’s a specific look that goes with the title. Greasy hair, thick glasses (most people here need glasses, but most people also get contacts), ancient t-shirt with a picture of a cute girl or a robot on it, huge backpack full of toys and snacks, often a little overweight—and for the very hardcore fan boys, the official smell. It’s quite similar to the D&D player smell, a fragrance of Cheetos or Fritos or any other tasty snack that ends in an “os”. Sometimes it’s french fries. Otaku are generally really nice people, they’re just painfully shy. Anyway, if you’re a girl you can try herding them, by which I mean, walk toward them. 9 times out of 10, they will huddle into a little frightened group the moment you come close.
Unfortunately, most people in Japan find otaku creepy. Do NOT call yourself this in Japan, EVER. A couple of years back, some total shut-in named Miyazaki went totally bonkers and kidnapped and killed a couple of girls. When they finally opened his apartment, it was just wall to wall including the windows and shelves with anime and manga. It’s a classic psycho story. But after that, there was a big scare. It’s starting to calm down now, though. They made a really cute movie called Train Man, about a guy who saves a girl on a train and then gets advice from people on message boards on how to win her heart. I recommend it. Since the movie, people think a lot better about the poor kids. Ah, the media.
But it’s not hard to see where some of the creepy ideas came from. The comic book and toy shops aren’t completely innocent places. Never go in the basements. Never go anywhere with the number 18 anywhere in the contents of its sign. Never go in a store whose windows are blocked off. Dirty cartoons and games are a staple of Akihabara; the absolute weirdest erotic films come out of Japan. Just watch out. They also have something called Maid Cafes, which are themed drink and dessert shops where lonely boys and men go to be served by, you got it, a bunch of adorable, spunky little maids. I imagine you can’t be afraid of anything, to work in a place like that. You’ll see maids walking the streets giving out flyers—they’re promoting the cafes. Don’t go in unless you’re prepared for the consequences.
With these things in mind, you should get by fine. Normal people hang out here too, and it’s a really fun place to go, especially your first time. It’s mainly a place for shopping and emptying your wallets into video game machines, but its easy to navigate and I highly recommend it.
*People who read comics on trains or watch anime at dinner are NOT otaku; this is considered to be normal. In fact, the day of the release of a bigger title like Jump Magazine, you will see every single person on the train with a copy. Everyone reads comics and puts cute little characters on their phones here.
