AltJapan

Shin Otaku Gari

Yahoo Japan News: Two Men Arrested for 'Otaku Hunting' (Japanese language)

It's been a few years, but otaku hunting (or "otaku gari" as it's known in Japanese) is back in the headlines. This time, a pair of men attacked the victims in the Nihonbashi section of Osaka, an area similar to Tokyo's Akihabara. Osaka police took them into custody yesterday. At twenty and twenty two, respectively, they were undoubtedly close to the same age as many of their targets.

According to the suspects' confessions, they targeted some one hundred "otaku looking" individuals, mugging roughly fifty of them for about 3,000,000 yen ($30,000) total. Tactics included bumping a mark, dropping their own (pre-broken) cell phone, and demanding "repair money." In cases where the victim didn't have any money on them, they attempted to force them to take out a personal loan from one of Japan's many consumer lending companies.

The reason? Same as it ever was: "Otaku are weak, they give over the money and they don't talk back."

The End of Akiba? No.

It's been 72 hours since the phone calls started coming in: "did you hear about what happened in Akihabara?" The final toll: seven dead, ten injured. The murderer hit Tokyo where it felt safest, cutting down his victims without warning, the vast majority of them in the prime of their lives. I've never met any of them, but they could very easily have been my friends, my family, even me. I had passed through the scene of the crime exactly two days to the minute before it happened, playing tour guide to a friend's teenage son who was visiting Tokyo for the first time. If his schedule had been different... If we'd been there just two days later... It's a sobering thought.

The "AKB Massacre," as Marxy has unofficially dubbed it, is without a doubt one of the most shocking incidents I've encountered since moving to Tokyo five years ago. The Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 was far broader in scope, but it was a planned terrorist operation perpetrated by a group of crazed religious zealots. That the mayhem in Akihabara was wrought by a lone young everyman armed with nothing more than a rented truck and a knife somehow makes it all the more chilling. 

I shouldn't be surprised, then, that scores of emotionally overwrought "otaku" bloggers -- many of whom appear never to have even set foot in the country, let alone Akihabara itself -- have dubbed it everything from a "geek hate crime" to "the end of otaku culture as we know it." It's nothing of the sort. And here's why.

License of Your Majesty

The first rule of visiting a Maid Cafe is....

The Japanese version was even more specific: "No asking of maids about their shifts. No waiting outside the building for maids to get off work. No stalking."

The time: high noon on Thursday. The place: one of the most popular maid cafes in Akihabara. The occasion: a friend's teenage son visiting Tokyo. The bill: close to $50 for four Coca-Colas. And the members cards they gave us afterwards? Priceless.

Maid cafes have been going mainstream since almost the day they debuted. (One of the very first posts on this blog touched on the subject, in fact.) And Thursday's visit pretty much proved exactly how mainstream these "subcultural" hangouts have become.

The line of customers snaked out the door and down the fire escape. The cafe itself was packed. And here's the kicker: the patrons were a mix of wide-eyed foreign tourists and giggling groups of local  salarymen/women, apparently gearing up for a good laugh over the water cooler back at the office. Ironically, there wasn't a single "real" otaku in sight. As a little paper-rock-scissors show played out on a tiny stage along one side of the room, a well-groomed guy in a suit scurried from table to table reminding diners about the two-hour time limit on the tables. So much for "underground" ambience...!

Akihabara Shakedown

Yesterday's TV news programs overflowed with breathless reports of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police swarming Tokyo's famed "Electric Town," Akihabara, to shut down otaku street performances. Although obviously staged as a publicity stunt -- suspiciously well-informed camera crews outnumbered the officers in many shots -- you can catch the broadcast highlights here and here. "An Army of Cosplayers has Taken Over City Streets!" warns one headline. "Cosplayers Versus the Authorities!" screams another.

Beware of Catfish

Spotted on a sign in Akihabara: Mr. Catfish cries "I give up!" when confronted by an earthquake-proof bridge structure. Catfish have long been associated with earthquakes in Japan, both in folklore (legends describe a massive catfish deep beneath the earth that causes tremors when agitated) and in reality (some scientists believe that catfish really do grow agitated when earthquakes approach.)

In any event, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government uses a catfish mascot to designate earthquake evacuation routes out of the city, and one also makes an appearance alongside Mr. Book, the official mascot character of our book of mascot characters, Hello, Please!.

You wa Prey

Japanese news services reported yet another case of otaku gari, or "otaku-hunting," on the streets of Akihabara last night. This time, the culprits weren't a gang but rather a twenty-year-old brother and sister; she'd bump the mark with her shoulder, then her brother would rush in and make him pay "apology money." After being caught, they confessed with the ever-popular motive of "otaku are weak and they’ve got money, so we went after them.”

Combined with the upsurge in shoplifting and weapon confiscations, Akiba has been losing some of its nerd-luster lately. Which isn't particularly surprising given how much attention it's recieved from visitors, press, and the industry in recent years. In fact, the word going around Wonderfest last weekend was that Akiba has become "a wasteland" (in the words of one longtime visitor) due to hordes of foreign toy-dealers scouring the shops for booty to take back to their homelands and sell at a profit. Say it ain't so!

Akihabaran Idol

Footage of my debut appearance on the "hit" NHK show Tokyo Eye has popped up on YouTube. Watch as the staff throw me into the wilds of Akihabara, where we acost up-and-coming idol singers and their obsessive fans on the street, invade a concert, and insinuate ourselves into the lives of "high speed digital unit" trio Junk System. Unlike Yokai Daisenso, for better or for worse this time I was allowed to actually show my face. Are you feeling the love?

Part 1:

Part 2:

Akibazaar

The first thing I notice is the belt buckle. It's huge and shiny, the sort of thing you'd expect a trucker to wear in the United States. But this is Japan, I'm sitting on the Chuo line train bound for Shinjuku, and it's right here hovering in front of my eyes. Its wearer is a twenty-something Japanese man who appears to have put more thought into his outfit this morning than I've spent in a lifetime of halfhearted attempts to look fashionable.

No Maid, No Life

...Is the slogan of a none-too-surprising Tower Records Japan event behind held later this month. ("It's a fusion of Tower Records corporate motto 'No Music, No Life' and Akihabara's maid culture," burbles their website.) If you needed any indication that the whole maid-cafe trend's blown up and gone mainstream, this is it. But if you're one of those types who just can't get enough, show up at their Akihabara store on March 25th. Maids from legendary maid-hole Mailish will be DJing (!), and you'll get a chance to buy shirts emblazoned with a logo sure to impress your socially awkward pals.

Would You Like Fries With Your Moé?

"Thank you for your order... Master." Master? It's dinnertime at the Akiba Maid Deli, home of the Moé Burger. Welcome to Akihabara's latest "maid cafe," an attempt to fuse one of Japan's hottest subcultures with a fast-food restaurant. The woman taking my order is dressed in the de rigeur French maid costume and uses only the politest of Japanese on the customers. I glance at the register again. 2,100 yen ($20) for a "Moe Burger Deluxe" with fries and a beer. The Heineken alone comes to $9. Who's the "master" now? Ah, well. I fork over the bills in the name of pop-cultural journalism.

Confession time: I've never spent any time in a "real" maid cafe, the ones that are like hostess clubs for geeks, where lonely, plaid-wearing men pay a premium for a cup of coffee and the chance to breathe the same air as a female other than their mother for a while. Moé Burger's a little different; being a fast-food joint there's little if any real interaction with the maids beyond them carrying your order to your table for you. The cash register and kitchen occupy the right-hand corner of the narrow, rectangular room, with a tiny, four-table dining area in the rear. Ketchup, napkins, a fake plant or two... It looks less like a "gothic lolita" hangout than a Kentucky Fried Chicken. After getting my meager change and a little sign with my order number from maid number one, a second appears and guides me to an open table. The other seats are filled not with otaku but with what appears to be salarymen and women out for a taste of this hot new "moé" thing. One wall is covered with a swatch of netting from a hundred-yen shop. It's festooned with generically kawaii bric-a-brac vaguely suggestive of the Akihabara scene -- cute anime-girl postcards and little gashapon keychains, apparently hastily culled from the discount bin of the Mandarake down the street. A mid-sized flat panel display hangs on another wall, but rather than anime, it's only showing the DVD player's screen saver bouncing around the screen. Topping it all off, incongruously enough, is one of those wacky, nostalgic Guinness Beer posters you always see hanging in Irish pubs. The second maid hovers in a corner, nervously watching the customers for a chance to leap in and use the word "master" again. I sip the Heineken and ponder the ill-fatedness of the entire venture, but maybe they're just getting into the swing of things. Hell, they only just opened two days ago. The manager's even doing double-duty as the chef, flipping burgers and fry baskets in slacks and a tie. If they were serious, he'd be wearing a maid outfit too.

Waiting for my burger, I spot the inevitable no-photography signs. I'm not sure what one would actually want to shoot in here that couldn't be shot in a Shibuya McDonald's. But there's the Catch-22: when photographing maids is outlawed, only outlaws will photograph maids. Only in Japan could you dress your staff up in ridiculous outfits and yet still get indignant when -- surprise of surprises -- customers get the crazy idea to snap a few photos. It isn't just the maids: "image rights" have been a cause célèbre for the last few years here. Otakuism's come full circle from the copyright-infringing, music-stealing days of Daicon III and IV.

Here comes the meat. The burger, I mean. Maid #2 brushes against me as she sets the meal on my table, but it's tough to tell if this is some sort of "special service" or my increasingly desperate attempts to convince myself I paid $20 plus for something more than a burger and fries. When it comes to hamburgers, "Moé Deluxe" apparently translates into "Thousand Island dressing with bacon." It isn't half bad.

I polish off the food and beer, stand up, and mosey on out. Upon reaching the street, I hear a voice behind me. It's maid #2 again. A light drizzle is falling and Akihabara's normally filthy streets gleam like polished polystyrene. It doesn't stop her from scurrying out and bowing deeply.

"Thank you for coming, master." I resist the urge to take a final, forbidden photograph and run like a girl. Instead I just nod and walk back towards the station in search of a cheaper beer.

Moé Burger Official Site