After-School Special

After school, riding the train home and chatting with a few other Japanese students was everything I'd been hoping for. To tell the truth, I didn't really know how to break the ice. We talked about the usual things when you first meet someone.

Where are you from? How long have you lived here. etc. Then we moved on to more relevant topics: What is your favorite manga? Whose art do you like best? Things like that. It was a good conversation and real confidence booster that I could communicate relatively trouble free in Japanese.

As it turns out, they were planning on stopping off in Akihabara and wandering around. I had no other plans for the rest of the day so I tagged along with them. I was hoping they would show me some of the sweet back alley stores that I'm sure I missed during my own touristy explorations of the district.

Before I get in to where we went, Akihabara - or Akiba as we call it for short - is exactly what everyone says it is. There's a kind of running joke that the Otaku here call it "Seichi" which literally means "Sacred Land." Everything from games and electronics to manga, anime, figures and cosplay to maid cafes and more (which I have a few funny stories about, but will save for another time) is jam packed into this brightly lit and always busy district. It really has everything your everyday otaku would need.

But I was interested in the hardcore otaku's needs. I was curious, I'll admit, maybe too curios. And definitely not entirely prepared for what came next.

Things started off mainstream. We hit up this great store called "Animate" which, despite its title, is heavily packed with the full gamut of otaku goods. They even have a cosplay floor and a little corner with manga supplies. We all browsed around, talking about what we've read and we'd recommend to those who hadn't. One of my classmates happens to be pretty into the "bishoujo" (which translates to beautiful young girl) genre - the cute girls with huge eyes - and recommended I pick up a few titles. I glanced through them, but to be honest its not really my style.

Still it was interesting to see what everyone recommended, and to hear what they liked about the different styles. It was soon time to move onto our next destination. We start cornering into some of the back alleys and I'm getting excited. Sweet, time for some of the secret shops!

Next on our agenda was a small used-manga shop that specialized in a lot of the old manga that is out of print, along with carrying the new stuff, of course. It was a blast! I got to look through some of the old Shounen Jump releases from 25-30 years ago. Some going back farther. This was some cool stuff and I was really pleased that I got to see it. After picking up a few titles that caught my eye, and again comparing notes with my newly forming friends, it was time to hit up what would be our final destination. This was a place not for the faint of heart.

I was lead down a few more back-streets and into a Doujinshi shop. Doujinshi in America has become somewhat synonymous with pornographic manga, but in fact in Japan this is not always the case. There are many stores that sell Doujinshi that are just basically fanfics of popular manga.

This wasn't one of those. As I walked through the doors, naked figurines of popular anime heroins - posters, rare and/or popular doujinshi decorated the walls. If I had seen my own face as I walked into that store I probably would have laughed pretty damned hard. I must not have caught the bit in the conversation where we decided to check out the porn shop next.

But I gathered myself quickly, after all, they are in the end only drawings. So I kind of follow my classmates' lead. Browsing the isles they browse. My face was probably bright red, and I was trying not to look too closely at anything for the first 5 minutes or so.

Eyes on the ceiling. Eyes on the floor. Eyes on the wall- No. OK. Eyes in fron- No. Okay- well, you get the point. I eventually gave up and just decided to not feel self conscious and remember that nobody was staring at me. Well, there were people staring at me, but that's the usual reaction to a foreigner.

As I finally relaxed and tried to join in the conversation, I'd found my classmates comparing which of the dating sims or "Ero-ge" (Erotic Games, read like eroh-gay) they had enjoyed the most. Two of them were totally into it, and to my relief one of them seemed less interested in the whole phenomenon.

I kind of drifted towards him.

But, I still did have a peek at some of the work. I admit I was curious. They had Doujin for so many different famous manga! I was shocked. And tempted to read, to be honest. Ahem, purely for the sake of sating my curiosity, of course. But I resisted.

Still, in the end I suppose I got what I wanted. I saw some of the back-streets of Akiba. Got out of the tourist area and hung with the real otaku culture. Just one of the perks of going to Manga school, I guess!