french maid costume But their spiritual home remains Akihabara, Tokyo's high-wattage neighborhood catering to video games, animeDVDs and other fetishes. It began as a shopping area for teenageboys, and though it is now popular with tourists and women, it isstill a magnet for the socially inept male. You don't go toAkihabara to drink, unless it's for a cup of coffee at one of thecafes where you pay for the privilege of having your sugar spoonedinto your cup by a young Japanese woman dressed as a French maid.This is a place that has much to teach about obsessivebehavior--and it's a perfect way to enter Tokyo's otaku currents. To get a close-up look, I go exploring with Leo Lewis, a journalistfor the Times of London whose fascination with Japanese videogames, anime and manga began when he was a teenager growing up inOxford, England, and eventually enticed him to Japan to live."Akihabara," he says, "is essentially set up to cater to everyobsession." Lewis was a contributing writer for Roland Kelts'"Japanamerica," a book describing how Japan's postmodern popculture has infiltrated the U.S. imagination, but that credentialis almost beside the point. A walk through Akihabara with Lewisreveals his sheer joy that such a mecca of obsession even exists. Akihabara's main street is a canyon of tall buildings where you'llfind one of the world's densest concentrations of electronic goods.But Lewis whisks me away from the cacophony of amplified salespitches and into the back alleys, ushering me past open-front shopsdevoted to retro Japanese pop culture items, such as miniaturecollectible characters from long-extinct anime and manga series. "Now, this is particularly delicious," he says as he takes me intoone of the many shops that sell original versions of old videogames. True otaku are devoted to old games, and many remember Sega's Dreamcast --now relegated to the also-rans in the competition for globalconsole supremacy--as the epitome of gaming. Manufacturers such asNintendo and Sega have discontinued the original consoles on whichthe games were played, and enterprising companies have manufacturednew ones that will bring the old games to life. But Lewis loves theancient consoles. He leads me up stairwells into shops that buy and sell clunkymonitors and joysticks that look as if they were designed to fly alight plane. "It's the physicality that I love," he says. "Justimagine what it would have been like growing up in this old Britishhouse surrounded by heavy, traditional furniture. To see somethinglike this," he says, fingering an old Nintendo joystick displayedon one of the shelves that slice the store into narrow aisles, "wasto be aware that there was an entire other world out there." He made his first visit to Akihabara as a tourist when he was 18. "I thought I was never going to get here," he says. The retro fascination is just part of otaku culture, but it shows the degree to which purists take personalobsession to the deepest levels: ever more specialization, neverreaching fulfillment, never collecting that last collectible."Completing the quest would be problematic for an otaku ," Lewis says. "That would suggest that it was time to do somethingmore serious with your life." So the niches are always getting narrower. Maid cafes have been therage for about four years now, and a true otaku would never be satisfied to go to any old one. There must be afetish about the experience. Perhaps you'd like to put your head onthe maid's lap and let her groom your ears. "Let me show you anextra-special level of nuttiness," Lewis says. He leads me to ashop called Candy Fruit, where a maid cafe once stood. It's now ashop selling glasses to two specific breeds of client: women whowant glasses to wear with their maid uniforms. And men who want tobuy their glasses from a woman in a maid's costume wearing glasses. "The maids never used to wear glasses," Lewis says with an admiringshake of his head. "It's another new twist." Old is the new new Japanese pop culture is full of new twists, and to Americans--whoselate-in-the-day embrace of manga and anime makes them nouveau otaku , if you will--it can seem cool because it ignores history. It'sdisposable culture, perfect for a digital world. But, as the retro obsessives of Akihabara show, the old is there,embedded in the new. Pop artist Takashi Murakami , creator of some of today's most futuristic contemporary art, isnow tapping Japan's Zen Buddhist traditions for inspiration. "Mynew concept is back to history," he told me in an interview lastyear. I go on a second otaku tour of Tokyo, this time with American-born director MichaelArias, who took a step into the city's past for " Tekkon Kinkreet," his recent Japanese animated hit. Arias insists that he's not an otaku , but his passionate 15-year quest to make the film and hisreinvigoration of one of the classic otaku forms make him more than familiar with the turf. Arias' movie, based on a cult-classic manga series from the early1990s, unfolds on the streets of an unspecified Asian metropolis astwo urchins battle to save their patch of urban wasteland fromdevelopers. In creating his imaginary city, Arias drew inspirationfrom his travels in Asia, and in particular from his favorite partsof Tokyo: the rare undisturbed remnants of the Showa era (1926-89),which spans the city's annihilation and rebirth. In a city where development pressures are constant, and nothingmuch is built to last, this "ancient" world endures because of itslocation: the spaces tucked inside the brick foundations thatsupport the elevated railway lines. These neighborhoods under thetracks are where you feel the age and the intimacy of a placefashioned on the fly out of postwar rubble. That mood has hung oneven as developers have thrown up skyscrapers around them and thefuturistic Tokyo known to the rest of the world has crowded in. From sunset to dawn, there is life in these marginal spaces, andit's this atmospheric realm that Arias mined for his movie, a loveletter to the city in which he's lived for 15 years. It's myfavorite part of Tokyo as well, and it's where our tour begins. We meet in the pouring rain in the Yurakucho neighborhood. Squeezedbetween the expanses of Hibiya Park and the swish Ginza shoppingmecca, Yurakucho is defined by the elevated trains that cut throughits heart on their way into Tokyo Station. When we plunge under thetracks, Arias is a bit disoriented and initially leads us in thewrong direction, but the wrong-way tour reveals places I've neverseen before: Japanese i zakaya s (casual restaurants where people gather to eat, drink and talkafter work); bars paying homage to the American West; the TravelCafe, where a video screen behind the bar displays pixilatedvisions of exotic vacation spots.
- 0 ratings
