Charm Up, Mai Dream!

Again with the obscure references, sorry. Hopefully, the relevance will become clear by the end of this post.

Today was the day I returned to Akihabara and seriously levelled up as an otaku. Unfortunately, I discovered that most stores worth photographing have "no photo" signs. I mean, I could offer you pictures of the inside of Sofmap, one of Akihabara's tech and gaming giants, but ultimately it's just a very big and excellent version of something like PC World...in Japanese and with quirks. Nevertheless, what little I have, I share.

One of the earthquake warning/public drill advertisement posters. Some of my readers will recognise, on the right, the Wicked Whale of Witchery, Bringer of Quake.

Having little money left on my Pasmo, I experimented with buying an ordinary ticket. It was nowhere near as complex as I first thought. All you need to know is that Tokyo tickets are distance-based (rather than destination- or zone-based). So you consult a chart, and it tells you the cost for your destination based purely on how far away it is. The ticket will, presumably, also suffice if you decide to get off early, and if you decide to continue to somewhere more expensive, you can easily replace it at a fare adjustment machine.

As for Akihabara itself...I'd set myself two objectives - to buy cheap Japanese things to further my studies and bequeath as souvenirs, and to find what I could of true Akiba geek culture. I learned a variety of things. For example, it is entirely possible for an Akiba shop to advertise "games, DVDs etc" on the outside, and then have one floor of games followed by seven floors of porn. It wouldn't end...Incidentally, the Japanese attitude to sex being in some ways healthier than ours, the only demarcation of adult-only areas is with age restrictions signs and (usually but not always) separate floors. Otherwise they have the same feel as ordinary shopping areas, with no great sense of taboo or furtiveness. Sometimes, in fact, adult floors are sandwiched between ordinary ones, which is a strange sensation indeed as one passes a doorway decorated with naked anime girls on the way to buy, say, discount PC hardware.

I first discovered most of this upon entering the Comics Toranoana ("Tiger's Den"), a shop which my geek intuition told me had some sort of special significance. I was right. It is composed of two separate seven-floor towers of doujinshi, or fan-made publications. In my innocence, I ended up wandering into the more adult-oriented of the two without initially knowing it. However...as the ancient Japanese saying goes, "when going on a journey, discard your sense of shame". I decided to look upon the 14 floors (some of which, to be fair, were quite innocent) as an opportunity to learn about a new facet of Japanese geek culture - after all, doujinshi as a genre are practically non-existent in the West.

The results of my research: first off, like manga, nearly all doujinshi on sale are shrink-wrapped, presumably to prevent people treating the place as a library - or knowing anything about their purchase's contents in advance. I can only assume that Japan has a booming review industry or that everyone reads manga in weekly magazine format before buying collected volumes. Furthermore, I found that even when I was unclear on what type of manga or doujinshi was on sale, I could tell pretty quickly by the people browsing it. Schoolgirls? Shojo manga. Chattering boys? Shonen or maybe seinen. Older Japanese women? It must be the top three floors of the (more innocent) tower, which consist of yaoi or boy-boy romance manga. As for the fans of ecchi (sexually orientated) doujinshi, these were about five eighths men and three eighths women, as well as quite a few couples and even, I think, a Western couple with a beaming Japanese tour guide (female). Incidentally, when I checked an ordinary adult store to compare, its population was exclusively lone men. I wonder why this should be, given that both sets of products are equally pornographic and feature mostly female protagonists.

At last, high-quality Engrish! Somehow, I don't think I want to participate.

Anyway, it was all highly educational - the notion of a booming and legal trade in visual fanfiction intrigues me, given the potential copyright issues. Besides, I'm not sure how I'd feel if any characters from my (perhaps fortunately, unpublished) work were put through some of the stuff I saw in there, so I'm a little surprised that none of the manga or anime companies complain purely from a reputation perspective. Did I mention that there are even fan-made video games, some ordinary and some adult? Not to mention figurines and original goods.

So much Code Geass yaoi...Sorry, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, possibly. I think it's fair to say that nothing 2D can easily disturb me again. Incidentally, one of the musical themes being played at the store was that Norwegian song associated with leeks. Memes really are a powerful force...

At any rate, once I completed that phase of my research (did I mention that, contrary to the owners' intentions, there is NOTHING creepier than having to listen to an H-game soundtrack while you're shopping?), I realised that there was no discount manga to be found and left. Japanese manga, always sold at retail price, is already way cheaper than in the UK (easily two to three times, sometimes more), but after seeing (some very lame series of) manga at the Manga Kissa for 10 Yen a volume, I was feeling ambitious. Also, I felt I had to find the best bargains in order to justify spending the travel money my parents had bestowed on me on something they might not approve of. By a similar principle, I decided to limit my non-souvenir purchases to things that a) I couldn't get at a similar price in the UK and b) things that would further my understanding of Japan or Japanese.

In the end, after a lot of rushing back and forth and comparing, I ended up with a second-hand old-style DS (for a third of the current DS Lite price), unfortunately missing a stylus. Nor could I find a replacement, since they're a different size from the Lite and DSi versions. For now, I have my girlfriend's, and may have to turn to the powers of the Internet when I get back. I also got Gyakuten Kenji, the detective game spin-off from the Phoenix Wright series, and Megami Ibunroku: Devil Survivor from Atlus, both on the twin virtues of being relatively text-heavy and being from awesome series/companies. Again, both second-hand but in fine condition. In short, Japanese goods = huge and up-to-date selection. Second-hand Japanese goods = awesome. I strongly advise any Akiba visitors to carefully note shops with second-hand goods ("中古 or "chuuko") as soon as possible upon arrival.

The quest for manga was harder. There were amazingly few manga stores compared to the wealth of anime, game and DVD ones, and of those all stuck to the same default retail price. However, I knew what I wanted. Of the two ongoing series I follow, Bleach and Naruto, I caught up on Bleach manga a while ago, and have stayed current through the power of online scanlations (http://www.bleach7.com/, for those interested). Where there is an anime adaptation, the original manga is invariably superior, so I enjoy it a lot, but it has entirely spoiled the anime for me since I know what will happen months in advance. Thus, I have avoided doing the same to Naruto. However, then I tried reading Naruto vol. 1 in the Manga Kissa. It's aimed largely at kids and teenagers (I'd say just kids, but then there's the blood, and a villain fond of vivisection), which means even the most basic kanji have yomigana, and it's more fun to read than the anime was to watch. I decided to set myself a challenge: I can catch up on Naruto if I do it exclusively in Japanese.

However, I did not expect to be lucky enough to eventually (and I mean eventually) stumble across K-Books, which has a very large new manga section on one half of the floor it occupies - and an equally large second-hand manga section on the other. When I found Naruto, I actually had to check with a passer-by that the "115 ￥" sticker was really the price. That's about 75p! Though some volumes were a little more expensive. Furthermore, there were so many volumes on the shelf that I decided that if I got them cheaply here, I could complete the set across the floor, and have the complete series (until the next volume comes out in October) for a fraction of the UK price. The fraction in this case being about 1/3, as I bought 47 volumes for a little under 100 pounds (beloved parents, please survive the heart attack) what costs over 300 in the UK. I realise that's a lot to get in one go (and a little on the heavy side), but I felt that getting the complete Naruto at what works out at about 2 pounds a volume, and having it supply me with months of Japanese study to boot, was an opportunity I couldn't miss. K-Books, ladies and gentlemen. Take note of it.

Having achieved this great victory over the forces of...not having manga...however, I was seriously weighed down, and it also occurred to me that if I were to keep my promise from last time, I needed to hurry up and find a maid cafe before it was time to head back. Fortunately, leaflet-waving maids were plentiful, and one even walked me to the elevator of her cafe...MaiDreamin, whose name accurately reflected the level and style of English in the menus.

Upon entry, I was met with a chorus of "welcome, Master!" by the shop's maids. After learning that the pay scheme was similar to a manga kissa (you pay at the end for the amount of time you spent, based on the price scheme you originally chose, with an initial cost plus accruing extra after the initial time), I was seated and a maid lit an electrical "candle" in front of me. As the menu explained, while the candle is lit the guest is transported to a safe, happy magical world separate from everyday reality. The maid might also have told me this, but unfortunately the girls all had squeaky, high-pitched voices, probably heightened further for the sake of cuteness, and spoke quickly, so I understood very little of what they said. The high pitch also hurt my ears when they called to each other across the cafe, which rather detracted from the peaceful atmosphere.

Apart from truly hilarious Engrish (you can see it for yourself at http://maidreamin.com/menu_e.html - hours, well, minutes of pure entertainment) the menu also featured a list of prohibitions, most of them aimed at protection of the girls (e.g. no touching, no asking personal details, no "girl-hunting" and conversely no professional scouting) - understandable since they were effectively role-playing in fetish gear. Alas, it also specified no photography on the premises, which is deeply frustrating.

For the first few minutes, I finished up the notes in my travel notebook, and with surprise and joy listened to the background music of Ritsuko Okazaki's "For Fruits Basket", one of my favourite pieces ever. Incidentally, the next song was the Revolutionary Girl Utena theme. For a second, I felt practically at home. Eventually, I decided to order some food (it's desired that you stay and relax in your own time, but you do have to make at least one order an hour), not having eaten since morning and it being late afternoon. (blame the Urushibaras - their titanic breakfasts make it pretty hard to eat anything for the rest of the day). I settled on what looked like a straightforward deluxe ice-cream, the Ice Cream Tower, having looked at the normal food, not fancied any of it, and decided "why not, just this once?" How wrong I was about the "straightforward" part.

It took me a while to figure out that what happened a few minutes later was my fault. The lights were dimmed. A strobe light on the ceiling came on. One of the maids stepped onto a stage beneath it and proceeded to talk a lot using a microphone, periodically eliciting cheers and such from other maids (incidentally, for "testing, testing" for the mike, they used "moe moe moe moe"). Did I mention that the speed and pitch made them incomprehensible? Then my (unexpectedly large) Ice Cream Tower was brought forth and she talked some more. Then the Tower was taken to the stage and I suddenly twigged that I was the focus of the mysterious speech. Even as I tried to recover from the shock, I was summoned onto the stage myself, to take a photo with the Tower and five of the maids. For reasons no man may ever come to understand, I was asked to make a cat pose.

A photo of the photo. There's really nothing I can add to it.

This wasn't the end, either. The maids invited the entire cafe (including customers) to join them in chanting a magical charm (with hand gestures) in order to make the food tasty. Incidentally, I witnessed one other customer get charmed in this way, but he did not get the full Mysterious Ritual With Cat Pose. Only after this did the lights come back on, and I was left to face the Tower alone.

I have to say, the charm worked. Whether due to the delay in serving or some inherent property of the food, the Tower's ice cream was just that little bit softer than normal ice cream, and this made its texture quite wonderful. However, it really was vast, and between the various flavours of ice cream, the chocolate sauce, the cream, the three bonus cherries, the sweet cereal surrounding the Tower and little pastry foundations, I think I consumed enough sugar to last me a year. To my deep shame, I ran out of room and did not fully conquer the Tower, but ultimately I figured my pride was not worth the risk of being sick.

Overall impressions? Mixed. There was a lot of pink. The place oozed cuteness. The girls were cute, but to me it felt like they were so cute the affectation became obvious. As someone left cold by the maid fetish, I saw them simply as only moderately attractive (I tend to judge that sort of thing by the face primarily), short girls in (admittedly cute) frilly uniforms with exaggeratedly cute voices and many deliberately cute mannerisms. For all that this was a place removed from reality while the candle glows, in the back of my mind was always the awareness that no human being is cute like this naturally. I would take the simple human warmth of the Power Stone store shopkeeper, who chatted to me about my impressions of Japan as she fitted my new bracelet, over this sort of artificial kindness any day.

Paying attention, I noticed that there were plenty of female as well as male customers, so I guess the appeal of the maid cafe goes beyond merely being waited upon by cute members of the opposite gender. Another noteworthy point is that the maids took it in shifts between working at the cafe and handing out leaflets outside, so every now and again the elevator would arrive and you would hear "I'm back" - "Welcome back!" and Japanese set phrases of that sort.

By the way, today marks the start of a new term for schools. This means lots of high school girls in pretty uniforms (this may just be an anime fan thing), as well as the bizarre sight of kindergarteners being taken somewhere in large wheeled cots, like a train. They peer out between the bars with vaguely confused expressions. Curiously, though schoolgirls are abundant, I have yet to see anyone in what I can identify as a male school uniform in this country. I wonder why.

I go now to revel in my increased otaku quotient. Until next time!

A parting shot of Akiba's Yodobashi Camera at night. That's all one store, you know, and a true idol of consumerist glory.