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Tokyo's Geek Ghetto
anaesthetica writes "The Washington Post is running a story on Tokyo's "Geek Ghetto" which has arisen in the city's electronics retail district, "Electric Town." From the article: "We have been discriminated against for being different, but now we have come together and turned this neighborhood into a place of our own.... In Akihabara, we don't need to be ashamed of who we are and what we like.... We can feel comfortable because here, we outnumber everyone else." There are concerns, however, that the total immersion in escapist culture may be causing social problems, including a growing number of shut-ins." I've gone to Tokyo 3x and visited Akihabara all three times. Highly recommended for anime fans and techies.
The persecuted generally manage to find each other. When they do, it's amazing what they can do. Even more so when they are otaku, which they appear to be calling themselves now. And if you've never felt persecuted at least once in your life, you are no geek.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
...Post!
I didn't know there was such thing as non-geek Japanese.
Word
http://www.allometry.com
In the states, we geeks are confined to our parents' basements
Where is a comparable enclave in the US?
Geek universities don't count! (Cal, MIT, etc.)
i present for your enjoyment, the Akihabara home page, plus an intriguing article entitled: Akihabara becomes geek sex paradise. :-)))
I recently visited Tokyo, went to Akihabara.. and subsequently visited Singapore.
I noticed that everything in Akihabara is very expensive. Buying the same stuff in Singapore is a LOT (I mean 30 - 40%) cheaper...
But, one thing I agree.. you can get some really cool stuff in Akihabara...that you cannot find in Singapore, but for regular buys, I would avoid Akihabara.
My 2c
Tokyo xxx or Akihabara?
The great thing about being a eunuch is enjoying things like a kid. I don't get as distracted by the more lascivious aspects of it. I wonder if some of the people in this district have done this life-changing and wonderful operation.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
Tokyo has been destroyed so many times in anime that it makes me wonder if akihabara should relocate to some other city.
Who is John Galt?
This gettho will die out in... like... one generation ;)
for all software and media pirates
why pay full price when you can get it on a CD with box and packaging for 0.00001 % of the retail
bulk discounts if you talk cash
no downloading or surfing malicious sites for cracks
highly recommended indeed !
props WP for letting the public know they can get more for less, why fight USA with bombs and weapons when you can just rob them blind, funny
since when do shut-ins cause social problems? other than those rare occasions when they do come out and have forgotten to bathe? Now they are gonna need shut-ins support groups to help them deal with being social problems. I wonder if they would have to meet at large dressing rooms where they could each have their own small closed room.
visit me at www.longdead.net
Chicks dig me, because I rarely wear underwear and when I do it's usually something unusual.
total immersion in escapist culture may be causing social problems Duh.
Once I cut my hand, but the wound was not part of me. Now I'm a man, there's a wound at the heart of me.
My favorite memory of strolling through akihabara was going through a maze of electronics vendor stalls and coming across a guy selling nothing but big red buttons. If you stick to the normal shops, its pretty much many many people selling the exact same stuff. If you explore a little, you'll start finding the more offbeat tinkerer type stuff.
I ate my sig.
...when people are free to do things the majority of people consider wacky. I'd expect more cool things to come out of Akihabara than Normal, Ohio.
Quality Hosting e3 Servers
I visited Tokyo and Akihabara in 1993. I have to say that it was one of the coolest places I have ever seen. Shops oozing with electronics and games. I went for two reasons: Laserdiscs and Super Famicom games. Games were often marked down to 15-40% of retail a few months after release. I was used to a trickle of Anime in the USA on Laserdisc, but in Akihabara, there were stores that only carried anime on laserdisc, isles full. It was pretty amazing.
I have a friend in Japan right now, but he won't go there because he says it's too nerdy. I don't know if it got worse in 12 years, or I got better.
Hundreds of USD more for high-end electronics than you can get online and if you buy something in Japan your warranty is VOID in the US.
So since when did Anime and comics become synonymous with the word 'geek'? Aren't we a little more diverse then the article states?
I play with Linux, computers and build things, but I have never really liked Anime, and I got over my comics phase when I was a teenager. In my spare time I sometimes play with the computers, but I also enjoy GETTING AWAY from the computer and play my son, go bicyling, play in the garden, etc.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Two floors above, an alarm went off. Taco opened his eyes. Then, realising what was going on, he jumped out of the bed, yelling: "Hey, Roland, wake up and go get the gun! We're being robbed!"
Thirty seconds later, they tumbled down the stairs. A door went open and a light was turned on. Then Roland clicked the safety back on and stuffed the gun into the pocket of his silk night gown.
"What ze fuck," he said. "Zere's noone here."
But Taco was already unwrapping the large sheet of paper around the brick lying on the floor. He almost tore it open, then froze and dropped the brick on his foot.
Roland rushed to him and grabbed the paper, while Taco was screaming with pain and anger. His face slowly turned red and then blue as he read: "These were not noodles."
...clustering around your "own kind" is easier than rounding yourself out by interacting with a diverse blend of people, but that would require open-ness to the possibility that you are not the center of the universe.
This isn't about geek "persecution", it's about geek arrogance.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Oops. Better to say that people don't get persecuted unless they interact with others.
Otaku differ from American geeks in having no positive connotations at all. In Japan, academic achievement is highly prized, and the academic achievers are socially rewarded.
Otaku are the hard-cores geeks, the comic book guys. Unpleasant, anti-social, afflicted with atopic dermatitis. Misfits.
In America, geeks achieve because everybody who's popular is too busy with recreation to get anything done. It's not that American geeks are smarter than normal people. They just have more free time.
Conversely, a few people who actually are smarter don't have time to chase popularity. They're tiny minority, though, and generally don't complain much about the lack. Too busy.
Where to go in Tokyo in order to bang beautiful young girls?
...looks to have a high content of schizoid and/or avoidant "disorders".
The comment that "we outnumber" others is right on the mark - these "disorders" are considered such because of the societal "norm" experienced by the researchers. It's only a disorder because it falls outside of "normal". Google "Oppressed Group: Schizoid A Personality Not a Disorder" for more insight.
And I concurr. Akihabara is one place where you are expected to haggle. Failure to do so will leave you pretty screwed. That aside, the place is good for people with little or no time to spare, to find (almost) everything a geek would want.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I got to a * Institute of Technology, and it sounds about like this, other then the fact that we lack stores. Anime obsessed people, game obsessed people, social misfits, a good number of shut ins.... Yeah.... Sounds familiar.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
seems the brown has hit the fan
You have to be kidding me. UPS? To transfer secure information? Where I work, we receive a backup tape from a production system that we load that contains sensitive data. That tape is sent back to my group via Iron Mountain (and we send the old tape back the same way). And this isn't even stuff as high profile as like what's Citigroup apparently lost. When services exist like this to facilitate occasional, VERY important shipments, there's just no excuse using UPS or Fedex. I fear for the free market if this is "business as usual" for it.
just because you didnt hear about things like this in the past doesnt mean they didnt happen.
I used to work for UPS customer service. I'd say at least .1% of all packages either get damaged or lost during shipping. Shipping packages of low value is no big deal, your losses over time will be minimal. Shipping packages of high value, however, will result in considerably larger losses over time.
DO NOT SHIP YOUR HIGH VALUE GOODS VIA UPS/FEDEX/DHL/ETC. I cannot stress that enough. Hire a private courier. Hire someone in your company. Drive it yourself. Find someone with better than a 99.9% success rate if your package is worth millions.
What can Brown do for You?
My favorite memory of strolling through akihabara was going through a maze of electronics vendor stalls and coming across a guy selling nothing but big red buttons.
Most likely that's one of the small electronic shops under the station. That's one of the most Blade Runner-esque spots I've ever seen. Many shops there are a 1x1 meter square with a hole on the midle barely wide enough for the guy to stand on it, with all kind of components surrounding the guy.
Shameless plug:
Akihabara photos on my site.
More Akihabara photos.
And more.
And yes, I'm living in Tokyo.
My site
Japanese culture is much less anti-intellectual and anti-geek than North American/UK/Australian culture. So it is not just akihabara that is geek friendly. And girls might at least glance in your general direction even if you are invisible elsewhere. Not that they like geeks or anything. But I think they have a somewhat higher geek tolerance level. A great reason to learn Japanese!
However, if you are non-Asian you will still be regarded as a bit of a monkey on display at the zoo. People may avoid sitting next to you on trains unless it is totally packed and you may be followed around while in some small shops with suspicious owners, as if waiting for you to pocket a few items and then make a run for it. So there is a bit of racism over there, but they are generally a nice group of folks.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Geeks or nerds are singularity seekers. Simple enough.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
... in a William Gibson novel? I just can't wait 'till I can head over to Chiba city for some new internal organs to replace those that have been destroyed by years of abuse. Also, as one who has lived in, and has friends who still live in "Gamer Households" I know only one place where this can lead. Paying more for your various forms of connectivity than you do for food, and that wonderful smell of Eau du Unix.
We have an intruder on /.
Fake geek sighted.
He exercises, reproduces, touches non-processed plant material, shows signs of growing up.
He even LEAVES HIS COMPUTER ALONE! (Poor thing. Probably crashes in lonliness.)
Quick, somone hijack the space laser and fill his house with popcorn before he infects us.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
God, I never thought I'd be able to say this again:
STFU, Katz.
As something of a geek (I guess not as much of one as I used to be, but still somewhat of one), I wonder about a few things after reading the article:
(a) "We can feel comfortable because here, we outnumber everyone else"
As someone who has been a member of both predominantly geek- and non-geek social groups at one point, I've always wondered greatly why geeks, who always complain about being tortured and abused by non-geeks, turn around and do it amongst their own geek groups? "We outnumber everyone else" is hardly the way geeks should be fighting back against the non-geeks they claim abuse them so much, and if ya ask me, I'd tell you they were acting just like the non-geeks to one another. Just goes to show you that social structures work the same, geek or not.
(b) "Here, the waitresses' uniforms are inspired by the French maid-meets-Pokemon outfits of adult manga. At other cafes, waitresses greet patrons at the door with a curtsy and the words "Welcome home, master.""
So most of the 10% females left in this area have resorted to saying "welcome home master"? I feel kinda awkward saying this, but any self-respecting (woman-loving?) geek should be trying to get the hell OUT of there as soon as possible, not try to rush into this place.
(c) "Nerd subgroups include not only people obsessed with cartoons and computer games, but also pop idols such as Morning Daughter, a music group marketed to kids that has become so popular among otaku that men sometimes attend its concerts wearing kimonos covered in glossy pictures of young band members.
That, along with the child pornography aspect of some adult manga, has led to allegations that some nerds are pedophiles."
This has been a very long-standing problem in Japanese culture in general (five minutes of Google should net you more than enough information), so trying to stick this behavior to just the nerds specifically discussed here is misguided, to say the least.
I hear that Lambda Lambda Lambda is looking at houses in the area.
As an IT professional - this is the LAST place I want to go on vacation.
A nice beach - cold beer - girls - bikinis!
The purpose of a vacation is to ESCAPE - the last thing I want to see is technology and be surrounded by GEEKS.
(no offense guys)
[Connection closed by foreign host]
Shut-ins are a social problem because if you live in your room you are not working. If you are not working, someone else is paying for your food, clothing and shelter.
What happens when whoever is paying for you to mantain your lifestyle stops doing so? Hikikomori can isolate themselves for years, and when they emerge from their isolation, they are very poorly equiped to handle reality. This poses all sorts of problems for them because they don't know how to support themselves. If they can't get a job or a home, that is society's problem because society has an intrest in reducing the number of homeless people.
I guess not, otherwise this would be a nonissue. It is unbelievable that in this day and age a company the size of Citigroup would ship unencrypted tapes. Geez, it is trivial to do and a no-brainer. Really, whoever is in charge of IT security policy there is an idiot and should be fired immediately and any security credentials (like CISSP) stripped so he/she can't pull another fast one on some other company. This is the height of absurdity and irresponsibility.
I've never felt persecuted for being a geek... on the contrary, I'm usually surprised when people are awed at what they consider completely inaccessible, but what I consider fairly basic. I've been called a "Web God" for nothing more than nicely formatting an HTML table with CSS. Being a geek sucks when you're 12, but not when you're an adult.
I'm a big fan of the dark underbellies of society, but I'd go there because I want to lookit all the pretty lights, not because I don't feel welcome anywhere else...
Embrace your geekdom!
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
will be taking their business elsewhere
i am moving from BofA after their mishap.
Somewhere smaller, hopefully more secure.
Hit them where it hurts!!!!
Get it right. Not a geek ghetto. That would imply that they were poor and all used Commie 64's or Atari ST's to get online with thier LYNX text-only browsers using SSH.
Funny Modifer - +69
Isn't this the second time (or more, most likely) that a set of shipped customer has been "lost?"
It's quite possible that the scum of the universe that feeds on harvested identities has gotten sophisticated enough that they are now able to identify such in-transit packages and have them go missing.
Bottom line -- companies should not be shipping this type of information via common carriers.
If we create legistlation that makes losing customer's personal information a criminal offense, then maybe these giant megalomerates will stop collecting (and abusing) it.
Find Results With
The exact phrase high security
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You are so full of crap you damn UPS apologist.
.1% of all packages either get damaged or lost during shipping
>
You obviously have zero experience in the shipping field despite your claim to have worked for UPS. It isn't uncommon at times to have 100 times that percentage of packages lost or damanged by us. We are a union shop so the lazy thugs we have can get away with anything. For example at the terminal where I work, a local jewelry store went out of business and shipped-out about four dozen nice watches to a broker. Now almost every employee at this terminal has a nice brand-new watch. Another example, Kel-Tec CNC released a new pistol a couple of years ago. One of the drivers here picked-up the first few batches of pistols from them. Not a one of them made it to the FFL's who ordered them. The BATF couldn't even get UPS to take action against the union.
In both cases UPS couldn't fire a single person. Our union allows us to damage or steal as much as we want to. Your 0.1% number is complete crap. If you're shipping something worthless, broken, or bulky that's not worth the time for a union member to steal, you might only have that small of a loss. Otherwise, my coworkers can and will steal. And good luck colleting from UPS. We pay-out on less than 2% of the packages that are damaged and on less than 5% of the packages lost.
Skinner
As yuo no, we are comited to protectng your prievecy adn as such we need u 2 veerify yuor account by going 2 this site CITIGROUP.COM adn entreing lots of peersonil info.
Tahnk you 4 ur help in tihs imprtnt matter
Signed, CITIGROUP
There seems to be a bug in slashdot submitting AC posts to distinct topics. Please fix this! :(
I'm always cautious whenever I go into a neighbourhood with an Electronic Boutique, Best Buy, or other computer stores. There's usually two or three geeks hanging out in the alley. You know the ones: pale-skinned nerds with Vendorwear t-shirts from 1999, utility belts with PDAs, pagers, and cell phones. I always try to avoid these alleys, for fear that I will be beset with geeky talk about overclocking, case modifications, or World Of Warcraft debates.
Geek Of The Day, "A geeky place for geeky faces."
I mean really wanting women to dress up in anime costumes? Give me a break. This is not remotely healthy. :)
Persecuted? Not really I was a white middle class kid that was good at science and computers. I work now as a programmer so if I do not fit your definition of a geek that is fine with me. I prefer the term techie
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Citibank should be able to be fined for sending unencrypted data via UPS because it might cause an accident.
They can be. GLBA, as it's known in the financial services circles, requires any financial institution to design, implement, and maintain controls to protect customer confidential data, which it appears is what was lost. Whether it's an audit trail for a system running on the network, or encryption when travelling on an unprotected network, GLBA dictates that the highest level of care be used when handling customer data. It is something that we in the banking world take very, VERY seriously.
If they so chose, the FTC, the OCC, the SEC, the CFTC, or state insurance regulators could fine Citigroup for violations of GLBA.
I saw this program more than 2 years back. It deals in detail with the phenomenon- hikikimori, mentioned briefly in the washpost article. Japan: The Missing Million. Here's the program transcript. It apparently is a big problem in Japan.
I was just there with my wife a little over a week ago and it was pretty much geek central. =) Our friends there told us there's a new word floating around the area for the Otaku-types that frequent the place, perhaps a little more derogatory: akibake
working on varIous with the wor4, or the most. Look at
This sort of thing is just gasoline on the fire for using biometrics for identification. Once all transactions are backed by solid proof of id, your SSN and credit card numbers can be openly published right next to your address and phone number.
What, you think there's something special about C-bank? No, they're the rule, not the exception. Every financial institutions cares just about the same amount about your data, and your life - in fact, the only money they really watch out for is the huge sums the company gets to keep for itself - THAT money (and the company's data) gets MUCH more carefully guarded!
My rule these days is, giving away information that you don't have to is like giving whiskey and car keys to a teenager. So apply for the credit card, but just write "disconnected" in the phone number box. Use several free email addresses and make sure they're evenly distributed as contact drops. Make a "mistake" in estimating your exact gross annual income, when reporting it to anybody but the IRS.
The point is not to be subversive, but just to be realistic. The information age has spawned a paper-happy beuracracy driven by bean-counters who want you life history at every other step. Check it yourself - 90% of the data that you go though life writing in little boxes is simply dropped into a filing cabinet unread, unneeded, and ignored. I've gotten driver's licences with no address (just a PO box!), paycheck stubs with no SS number on them (you can ask to get it removed), and once got Household Credit to approve "Barney the Purple Dinosaur" for a credit line of $250. (To the best of my knowledge, the address I did this at *still* gets offers for him...)
Most of the people who key the data from your form to the computer do not even speak English! In fact, the most likely method for your data to be read is for the processing center to OCR-scan (or flat picture scan) it into a computer, where the images can then be beamed to the lowest-bidding Malaysian crack monkey (anywhere in the world) who "reads" the picture of your data and keys it in. And they're feeling the pressure from machine-AI reading programs, which are able to translate more and more of your hand-writing with a higher percent-chance of confidence every day.
Bottom line, if you throw a "Jr" onto your name half the time and half not, or only use your middle initial as the fancy strikes you, you're lying to no-one but an SQL database app, and you're only doing what little is in your power to confuse would-be identity thieves; necessary in a world that will always refuse to protect you!
And if you've never felt persecuted at least once in your life, you are no HUMAN!
EVERYONE feels this way at times!
Perhaps geeks might realize that alot of their "differences" are really similarities and that distancing themselves from others takes 2 to not tango. Changing the way YOU see that world changes the way you relate to others. Much of the solitude is self-imposed and plain elitism. I have learned this about myself in 40 years on earth.
Yes but Japan is naturally racist against all but there own. I've discussed this a few times with alot of Japanese people and most say it's because Koreans (usually Koreans, they hate them the most) come to the country, rent a place then pretty much trash it and abuse laws which put them at the advantage.
They don't want to help the community (AKA all of Japan) out and are quite rude. Which obviously to them could mean alot of things, but general anti social behaviour I assume.
I'm not saying all the Japanese are like this or an excuse. But thats how they see it and you can't really blame them. Then again it's the same as having security cameras in shops, only alot cheaper and more effective. I'm not going to steal anything so why do I care if a guys following me?
I like muppets.
They probably screw themselves over anime porn!
That's lame!
--No geek should go there--
Not at all. But with regards to the recent bankruptcy bill, I see it as two wrongs, compounded by a third and bigger wrong.
* Wrong #1: People who use credit cards unwisely. Nothing good about this, and I won't defend it.
* Wrong #2: Credit card companies that push credit on people with relentless advertising. Then they advance credit to just about anyone, and are happy, even eager, to up your credit line. IMHO, they are knowingly making bad loans. This used to be known as "bad banking" and was punished by bad profits.
* Wrong #3: After years of making bad loans, and starting to see personal bankruptcies rise as a result, the credit card companies buy legislation to "close the loophole." They have been taught nothing about prudence in loaning, at all. Neither side is right in this. But the bad part is what happens to that original background of bankruptcies, before this credit abuse bubble. This bill is catching some of those legitimate bankruptcies and turning them into lifetime debtors.
I've gone to Tokyo 3x and visited Akihabara all three times. Highly recommended for anime fans and techies.
Yes - I too wish all anime fans would move to Japan.
I keeeed, I keeeed.
What has impressed me about Linux is not so much that it has enabled some sort of "software revolution", but rather in how it has given chip/platform makers a specific, generic target OS that they can use freely to get something useful running on their hardware quickly.
It used to be the case that platform makers would have to either develop their own minimal operating system for testing purposes or work very closely with an OS maker to port their software to the new hardware platform. With Linux, this has been pushed into the anals of history. Now the Linux OS porting goes hand in hand with platform building, as evidenced by the almost immediate support for Linux at the time of hardware release.
I'm not so much interested in how the Cell board is going to revolutionize anything (it won't), but in how we have, in just the past few years, seen a dramatic increase in the number of hardware platforms being released. And not just in numbers, but also in variety. The number of different types of hardware platforms has risen dramatically. It's only limitation is the number of chip instruction sets supported by gcc and the imaginations of hardware manufacturers.
If you want to see how Microsoft's monopoly has hurt the computer industry, look no further than the current industry. Whereas hardware platforms were pretty standardized and boring, now, with Linux (and real competition to Microsoft's hegemony) the numbers of innovative platforms has increased dramatically. We need a Microsoft out there developing consumer-level applications and quality, user-friendly operating systems. However, we also need a real competitor like Linux to push the giant into innovating.
Can't wait!
And what good would that do? Unless you're buying your Congresscritters 30 second spots or shuttling them around in your private jet with the very accommodating flight attendant, then you're barking at the breeze, buddy.
In this age of government by the highest bidder, the people losing your data are the highest bidders. Too bad. You can get as mad as you want but it doesn't change anything./p
At my site, we posted a two-part article on living in Akihabara. It's apparently not as bad as many make it out to be:
Part One
Part Two
1-way ticket to tokyo(expedia.com) - $700
new laptop - $2500
Finding home at last.. - Priceless
--cros13
That's not how geeks reproduce at all. A child is no more likely to take on traits just because his parents have them, he will take on traits according to HOW he is raised. How do you think the current culture evolved? By assimilation! (btw, resistance is indeed futile) irony meter broken
In the US we call this the classic popular vs. geek syndrome. It's very similar, the only problem in Japan is that by this an other articles I've read it's worse. In the US, we at least pay lip service to the idea of individuality. We also have tons of people who are terribly protective of our right (perceived or otherwise) to own our own copies of music and TV and do what we want to our own bodies.
However, in Japan, my perception as a Gaijin is that Japan's social structure is far far more rigid. You fly this way, or else face social rejection!
Why do geeks in the US withdraw into themselves? Because society shuns them! Why to geeks in Japan withdraw into their houses? Because society shuns them!
My point? Well the article misses the problem because it suffers from the US perception of geeks as weird and shunned. The problem is not the geek, it's the people who shun them. Maybe society needs to be more accepting of these peoples behaviors and appearances add not judge them on actions that do not hurt other people. Otherwise it's society itself that's to blame for people who cannot interact with the rest of society.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
"Unlike existing SMP systems or multi-core chips, only the general purpose PowerPC core, is able to run a generic operating system, while the SPUs are specialized on running computational tasks. Porting Linux to run on Cells PowerPC core is a relatively easy task because of the similarities to existing platforms like IBM pSeries or Apple Power Macintosh, but does not give access to the enormous computing power of the SPUs.
Only the kernel is able to directly communicate with an SPU and therefore needs to abstract the hardware interface into system calls or device drivers. The most important functions of the user interface including loading a program binary into an SPU, transferring memory between an SPU program and a Linux user space application and synchronizing the execution. Other challenges are the integration of SPU program execution into existing tools like gdb or oprofile."
First, there's racism everywhere. Anyway, I just wanted to give a counterexample. I've personally never been to Japan, but from the people I've spoken to, I wouldn't go so far as to say that foreigners are regarded like a "monkey on display at the zoo."
Depending on how foreign you look, you might actually get quite a bit of positive attention. I've had caucasian friends talk about being approached by little kids who are curious. Other times, they run into people that want to practice some English. Last, but not least, there is a decent segment of girls that are interested in dating non-Asian guys. Whether this is an issue of genuine attraction, exotic factor, or "shock value" probably varies from person-to-person, though.
Just a note about the girls, just because you show up and don't look Asian doesn't mean that there will be hordes of girls fighting over you. So don't book that plane ticket quite yet. ;)
Not entirely sure why you got the zoo-animal-criminal treatment... but I'm sure everyone's experiences vary.
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
ddd
Here in mexico there are suspicions of dirty operations by Citigroup. i.e. millionary tax fraud when buying mexican bank "banamex". Mexican News Reporter Lily Tellez has received death threats because she spoke about it.
And you thought losing some customers' information was serious. Ha hah.
Look at the kernel mailing lists, IBM already submited the first set of patches. Basically Linux runs on the PPE, the full PPC core inside the cell, and there are system calls to execute special SPE binaries running on the SPEs (the subprocessors).
In fact Akihabara's fame is for its old electronics, and the people who go there, though they may be reclusive hobbyists, are rarely of the "otaku" ranks of which the article's authour speaks. Most otaku's want the latest computer, the latest manga, the latest hand-held gadget just like most every other electonics-avid consumer.
Lastly, the geeks of which the authour speeks do not live in Akihabara, they only go there. As the author proves himself with his... ...closing quote.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
Whoa, I could swear thats like it's here too. And probably, if you go downtown to _any_ european country you'll find someone giving you that answer.
It's not only rasistic, its stupid and ignorant. Thats no excuse for not accepting foreigners.
That sucks!
In Wired's premier issue they had an article on Otaku (circa 1993). It sounds like what was said then is still true today:
Otaku are considered flunkies and not highly regarded by society at large, etc. I liked one quote: "Socially inept, but often brilliant"
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
I'm a big fan of the dark underbellies of society
I thought it said "a fan of big dark hairy underbellies". I have visions of construction workers in hard hats wearing too short tank tops with their beer bellies hanging out and and their pants too low in the back showing a lot of hairy ass crack.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Of course, in the picture that goes with the story, all the people are either wearing a light shirt and dark pants, or a black suit.
Japan will never change. It's repressed, crazy, and highly productive. Pretending it's a geeky tourist destination is just lame PR.
"Yes, there are those who lose their grip on reality. Yes, I have 130 love pillows. Why?"
Kill it with fire, etc.
Best... True Genius reference.. EVER.
As an aside, it's scary to think I'm a part of a community in which it's assumed there have been OTHER True Genius references in the past.
I suppose it's a natural trend in (somewhat) free societies that the outcasts tend to group and with their peers. (In a non-free society, being that different would be persecuted and banned).
;-)
This is astoundingly similar to self-formed gay "ghettos". When you feel uncomfortable with how the general public sees your tastes and/or customs, you'll gravitate towards your equals and create a micro-culture. I think the SW Episode III lines are the geek equivalent to the Gay Parade
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Thanks, now I have those visions too. Great.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
Two questions, really. Is Tokyo's Akihabara as geeky as Singapore's Sim Lim Square? More importantly, I suppose, is it safer for my wallet? Sim Lim Square, at the corner of Bencoolen St. and Rochor Canal Rd., just next door to the Little India district, is seven floors of IT hagglers' paradise.
Link, Link, Search.
It must be Windows. It needs half a gig of RAM and a hardware-accelerated graphics card just to run Solitaire.
"I mean really wanting women to dress up in anime costumes?"
Really? Have you seen the Tomb Raider movies, hypocrite?
Just because Angelina doesn't serve YOU tea doesn't mean US geeks aren't as rabid about game play as the otaku. How much money is being spent on neon-lit game case crap in this country?
My computer is stock and intends to remain that way. I swore off computer games twenty years ago because I KNOW I could get addicted to that time-wasting crap. A recent relapse into "Hit Man" "re-cured" me (although I still have "flashbacks" making me want to find a first-person shooter that actually lets me win.)
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Otaku behavior is also being blamed, along with social disillusionment following Japan's protracted recession, for the increasing numbers of Japanese youth who have no apparent career ambitions. Instead, many are choosing to work part time -- or not at all -- so they can spend most of their time pursuing their hobbies.
Why is it bad to do the things that we like instead of working day in and day out at the factory/office/etc? I am moving towards this myself, as I plan to leave the big city life behind and move to a small town where there is more time to do the things I like. Sure I won't make as much money, but the commute to work will be a _lot_ shorter, the houses and land are cheaper, and the pace is a lot easier. I'd rather spend my time enjoying life than doing the Monday to Friday grind for someone else.
http://bike.stu.ph/rides - free GPS routes available for Garmin, Magellan, GPX and Google Earth
Ah... Real Genius. What a spectacular film.
what's the male/female ratio there? if its too bad the general atmosphere turns bad, various problems arise, and productivity goes towards zero. this can be a serious issue.
I have to agree. I have been to Japan and all of the Japanese people we interacted with were very nice. When walking around the streets one day, a group of Japanese students walked up and were very interested in speaking with us. They explained that they were members of a English speaking club and wanted to practice on us. They were very modest and kept apologizing for their English, but they were well spoken. Weird that the guys did all the talking, and the girls just stood in the background and giggled. Kind of made me feel like a rock star at times ( could be the fact that I am 6' 5" and they aren't used to seeing anyone that tall). Never felt that I was a "monkey at a zoo" though.
Sigs are just way too much work
Tetsu Ishihara, 34, a computer programmer whose three-room apartment in west Tokyo is filled from floor to ceiling with comic books, does not want to be associated with such charges. Ishihara maintains a growing collection of 130 life-size pillows of female anime characters -- both purchased and self-designed. His favorite is Mio-chan, a female character from a love-simulation computer game in which a high school boy builds up the courage to ask a girl for a first date.
"There are some people who do lose their grip on reality, but that is not me -- or most of us," said Ishihara, a chubby man with glasses who this year started dating a woman steadily for the first time.
What exactly constitutes loosing grip on reality, brother?
True enough, not all geeks are techies and not all techies are geeks. It is possible to be a geek without being a computer geek.
Most techies are good with computers and science and go out to make a pile of cash. Those are not geeks.
Maybe I'm just lucky, but around here, being a nerd/geek is considered hot. Yeah that's right, the ladies (especially attractive ones) love me for my brain. I talk about computers and they're all like "omg Sean you're so smart, plz2bethefatherofmychildrenkthx". PS: I am being totally 100% serious. It scares me sometimes.
Bungo!
...says "I'm huge in Japan"
Nor is there an easy place to put it in the US - we expect close parking to everything, but Akihabara is located right next to both major train lines in a commuter nation). The camera store lines in New York don't even come close to what Akihabara is like.
.. Akihabara is just a commercial district full of very similar types of shops:- PC's, phones and technology.
... say 100 - 150 retail establishments who all sell PC related stuff.
..... several dozen retail establishments selling ....
.... never mind, consult an economics proffessor)
There is otherwise nothing special about the place, and (trust me, I live in Tokyo) _geeks_ _dont_ live there.
Nobody lives there, it's a retail district in central Tokyo for heavens sake! Does anyone you know live on Times Square? Maybe a few wankers do, but who was the last bum-in-raincoat you knew who could afford the rent?
Give me a break.
Let me give you a quick tour of the neighbourhood (if you're planning the visit soon - or even if you're not)
Akihabara is a couple of blocks near Akihabara Japan Rail station (from which it gets its name - funny that), within which there are
[There are also a much smaller number of stores - say 3 or 4 - who sell electronics to hobbyists in its 1970's form: chips, soldering irons, 2 guys in a garage. Be very, very afraid America. The Japanese are still coming after you - when I say chips I don't mean 74xxxx TTL, I mean Xilinx FPGA's. Over the counter. With a guy behind the counter who knows what they are, and can help you get started. Like the old days. Get scared, you should be.]
But that's another story.
Akihabara? A couple of streets with 20 different versions of PC World, a couple of Wal Marts and some local Radio Shack variants (apart from those sinister hobbyist shops that spawn the evil Asians who will, *will* eat your lunch t/row)
Nothin'. Nobody lives there. The article is totally overblown.
I mean, I only go there once a month; and look at me - I'm a total sucker for this kind of stuff ("girls? what are girls?")
Let me take you over the river, 300 meters away. "Music town" (my term, I invented it, I claim copyright): Ochanamizu.
A similar district. A couple of streets with a lot of retail establishments all selling the same product lines.
In this case, musical instruments (and related paraphenalia).
You can walk there from "Electic Town". It will take about 10 minutes.
Or you could take the subway. If you can stand the 2 changes you have to make because the Tokyo metro for this *particular* change is so damn inconvenient.
That will take you about an hour. Better walk.
There you will find
All exactly the same range of products at exactly the same price....
(It's the natural result of a free market you see. If everyone
Forget it, don't get envious. You can find the same stuff in your home town (or online).
And probably at better prices (I bought my iPod overseas - Australia actually, it was cheaper there)
Read the post again! He "plays his son"... it's probably another geek trying to get out of The Sims
To the contrary: if someone is willing to grant others even a portion of their fantasies, even if for money, there is nothing particularly unhealty about that. What's unhealthy is when fantasy and reality become blurred for these people on a full-time basis.
It's Real Genius, genius.
"Really? Have you seen the Tomb Raider movies, hypocrite?"
Actually no I haven't I think I played a game of Tomb Raider once though. The Dooms, and Quakes where more my style when I do play games. Games are really not a big draw for me. I would rather code something for fun than play most games. Now FS2004 and Nethack are fun.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I mean really wanting women to dress up in anime costumes? Give me a break. This is not remotely healthy.
Here in the USA, we have restaurants where women are paid to dress up in tiny orange shorts, white tank tops, sneakers and pantyhose. A while back there were clubs with women in satin bustiers, hose, high heels and rabbit ears that catered to the wealthiest businessmen. The servers in many casinos wear skin-tastic outfits that aren't remotely grounded in typical dress standards.
The shut-in part is certainly an unhealthy lifestyle, but there's nothing particularly odd about enjoying waitresses in 'fetish' costumes, particularly when common denominator is lots of exposed skin.
...So anyone know where London's geek ghetto is? : )
-Colin
You don't have to leave to the US to get that whole monkey in the zoo effect though. I was visiting a friend in Nashville, TN and we went to the mall. Now I'm white, he was from Taiwan and we went another friend of his who was African-America (very dark-skinned as well). People stared at _ME_ the whole time. I'd never seen anything like it. Apparently they couldn't believe a white guy was hanging out with non-whites. My friends both said they were used to it and just ignored it, but it was an eye-opener to me. Racism is alive and well in the US.
People may avoid sitting next to you on trains unless it is totally packed See now that's one of your Gaijin Powers (tm)! Even during rush hour there'll be more space around you than anyone who isn't foreign.I think part of the problem is they expect Americans to be rude (sadly we have this reputation just about world-wide). If you're polite and friendly they won't have any problems with you. I don't know why you'd be rude and hateful to someone when you're in a foreign country but apparently a lot of people are.
Oh yes, it's funny that in only two weeks I got used to doing the little bow while thanking people. It felt strange to not have people do that when I got back to the US for a while. :)
strip it Dude, strip it !
[Pruneau
Did you know???
ALSO:
Geek persecution. LOL more like shiftless-do-nothing-outsource fodder persecution. LOL
Your friend is just exhibiting a typical racist attitude where [insert ethnicity X] is invading their cities and destroying their society.
Koreans don't like (hate) Japanese too. Of course, you wouldn't like them either if they invaded your country, subjected the entire country to slavery, systematically raped women to "breed out" Korean blood, and tortured and murdered thousands (amoung other things).
At least the Germans acknowledge what they did, Japanese try to whitewash the whole affair. Ask any average Japanese person about the Korean occupation, and they'll tell you that they were just helping the Koreans, and how the Koreans should be greatful.
We're talking about an unrepentant nazi-friendly country here, and you're wonding why they are racist?
Sorry but fat pasty white guys who have the complexions of a plumber's ass aren't going to be popular in Japan either.
They are complaining about Koreans? These are the same people they kept under their colonial thumb for a 100+ years and treated like slaves in WW2? I guess they are a bunch of ungrateful troublemakers.
You won't find many fat geeks in a place like Akihabara. I spent a day wandering around there this past January looking for a part to fix a customer's machine. Most of the stores are stacked up many stories high and since I can't read Japanese I was forced to explore most of them hoping they had what I needed. I easily walked more vertical miles than horizontal.
I slept good that night.
I am the inventor of the hilarious refrigerator alarm.
I'll bet there haven't been... mainly because the movie is called Real Genius.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Wandering around Akihabara at random, I went into what I thought was a comic shop. Which it was... but a very specialised comic shop. It was devoted to fan-produced manga based on videogame characters.
Pornographic fan-produced manga based on videogame characters. A whole shop of it.
Now if that's not an extremely specialised geek market, I don't know what is!
What really struck me about the place was that even however many years ago it was, they were selling hardware that's still barely reached Western markets - and at sale prices! Saw my first ever HDTV in Akihabara, and nobody seemed interested in it but me...
You must think in Russian.
BAH! My geek cred is ruined :(
"For me, the pillows have been my source of unconditional love, a reminder of when I used to be hugged by my parents. There is nothing strange about it."
uh huh...
not enough room ;)
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
Face it, if you like to masturbate to hentai wearing a furry sea otter costume then you're going to be ostracized.
In the US, once upon a time, mental patients were kept in hospitals. Nowawdays many of them roam cities without any form of support. In Japan, these people are more likely to be allowed to stay at home because of the close family unit. Hikikomori are supported by their families in general and would not be thrust out the door like in the US.
--Chag
this is nice and all, but where can a geek guy find a cute anime girl to bang her brains out having sex?
;)
i think the only question on geek guys minds especially in reference to anime and japan is where can we find some cute easy anime chicks?
I was on a flight recently where I was unfortunately in the middle seat. There was a nice-looking gal to my right who I managed to strike up a conversation with. I have enough charisma where this is not unusual, BUT... All was well until the guy to my left whipped out a laptop and started playing some game. I asked him about it and next thing I knew, we were discussing World of Warcraft (I currently have a lvl53 character in that game).
The woman to my right never spoke to me again for the rest of the flight.
So I didn't get laid, but I did get tips on completing my last 2 quests in Zul'Farrak, in particular, that one where about 100 NPC's storm the stairs and you have to defend the high ground. Fun stuff for a party with people who don't bail early...
It is for this reason that I feel I have to maintain "secret likes", which often includes anything IT or game-related, to the point where I find it difficult to even describe my job as it's pretty geeky and I'd rather just say I'm a "consultant". Unfortunately, to my horror I recently discovered that if I google my full name (which is uncommon), it becomes far too obvious what my really geeky likes are, despite my efforts to remove all traces of my full name from Internet sites. See, the gals I date are usually cute and best described as "geek-compatible", not "geeky"...
This is the part I found interesting. --Minus the sensationalist hype.
Should we really be surprised to see this kind of behavior pattern in a society which rigorously punishes people for trying to be unique individuals, for having the gall to actually try to maintain any kind of self-love and respect?
Men are expected to stand out, to express themselves in order to gain power in this world, so of course they are going to have problems when they are forced to grow up under the confines of a no-win situation. I'm not surprised at all that so many of them give up and opt out. Relationships require self-confidence and a wide variety of dynamic social skills which are certainly not taught by punishing people for stepping out of line to experiment with their lives when they are kids.
The retreat into fantasy of a million working-age males isn't their fault. It's the fault of a seriously messed up society.
"The nail which stands up will be hammered down."
Ugh. There are many types of population control and herding in effect in the world, but this particular one really steams me.
-FL
And this one:
Sound suspiciously like Roland Pipaquelle fans. What say YOU!?
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
People stared at _ME_ the whole time. I'd never seen anything like it. Apparently they couldn't believe a white guy was hanging out with non-whites. My friends both said they were used to it and just ignored it, but it was an eye-opener to me. Racism is alive and well in the US"
How is any of that "racism"? Sounds like curiosity to me.
Everything is fucking racism these days...
Kind of made me feel like a rock star at times ( could be the fact that I am 6' 5" and they aren't used to seeing anyone that tall). Never felt that I was a "monkey at a zoo" though. And how can you tell that monkeys at a zoo don't feel like rock stars too? ;)
Shame there's not one like it in London, so when I'm down near the datacenters I could drop in.
mind you isn't the docklands getting a bit like it.
hawk
Not really up to date, but kind of background information from when I was working in Akihabara. I had forgotten about the first one.
http://shanenj.tripod.com/gofj/gofj1.html
http://shanenj.tripod.com/gofj/gofj3.html
Already it's close to 10 years ago, but I still visit almost monthly. In the last couple of years there has been a *LOT* of construction and rebuilding going on, and the appearance of the neighborhood is changing drastically. I think it's mostly for the better, and in particular, the yakuza seem to be much less visible (though I suspect that may be part of a general campaign throughout Chiyoda-ku).
With regards to this article, I've never felt like the otaku were an absolute majority, though there are plenty of them around. As noted in the linked articles above, I've also never been very impressed by the rumors of bargains to be found in Akihabara. If there ever were such days, they had already ended before I worked there. Most of the "bargains" are obsolete and leftover junk. Also, I think a lot of the "bargains" some stolen stuff and pirate copies, and that kind of stuff has also become much less visible, too.
I think the main special thing about Akihabara is that they often test market new models there, so you can get stuff early. Of course the problem there is that the new models may have problems or may not succeed, so you can wind up with a lemon or orphan.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Damnit -- Jon Katz articles make my eyes bleed!
i just found this giant web site with
5 .html
pics of AKIBAHARA !
http://www.marcosilvestri.com/travel/japan/tokyo1
You'd be surprised how many "ugly"-looking men are attractive enough to women who can hold their own in the dating marketplace.
So good looks aren't everything; there are also basic social skills, not talking in a monotone, making eye contact, basic personal hygiene, and being able to hold a conversation about things outside of one's narrow field of specialisation (be it microprogramming, football, the history of punk rock or whatever). And, of course, the skills that come from repeated social interaction with people who don't necessarily share one's interests shouldn't be ignored.
I went on a business trip just this past April, and among some of my wanderings, I visited Akihabara with my boss. I have some photos posted on flickr of a couple of the anime shops, the streets, and a street performer (who was heckled by a drunk old guy, much to everyone's amusement.) The streets of Akihabara are packed with merchants hawking their wares, and the small shops have so many people entering/leaving their places that they simply leave the doors open. One shop we stuck our head in had enough electronic components stocked to make a 1970's era Radio Shack weep. The prices in the shops, in my opinion, were not all that fantastic. In general they were all on par with what can be found in the States. I'll never forget turning a corner and staring in awe at the sea of pedestrian shoppers (both the boss and I, simple country people that we were, observed that we were about to become caucasion flotsam and decided to turn back towards the train terminal end of Akihabara.)
Let me get this straight.
Folks who can't handle dealing with people hole up in the same part of town, where they can join the "growing number of shut-ins," and nevere deal with people--and you go and *VISIT*???
Isn't that kind of missing the point, like a "symposium on alcohol abuse?"
hawk
So easy these days. Geeks *used* to have to eat razor blades and glass, too.
hawwk
He spoke the truth. There are girls in Tokyo.
http://www.ag0ny.com/misc/tgs2004/DSC04171.JPG ahhh
http://www.ag0ny.com/misc/tgs2004/DSC04164.JPG Miss Capcom?
http://www.ag0ny.com/misc/tgs2004/DSC04167.JPG nice boots
http://www.ag0ny.com/misc/tgs2004/DSC04174.JPG seek and find
I've never even seen the game.
I've seen both of movies becaue I have a teenage daughter.
A wealthy noblewoman who runs around having adventures and wreaking violence is hardly demaining . . . no more "cheesecake" there than any of the Bonds have ovfered (I mean the actors, not the "Bond Girls")
hawk
I was once given an explanation of a market (Philippine fish market in Hawaii???) in which it was not only expected that you would haggle, but that they would be insulted if you didn't--they perceived it as looking down on them.
hawk
Okay, everybody pitch in $10 to fund my new restauraunt: "Otaku Here". It'll be a men's lounge where all the female servers are dressed in the most skimpy of Anime costumes. Send checks to...
Ya know, this would really work!
These people put persecution on themselves. They chose to not socalize, do "nerdy" things and let a label to describe themselves. At least they have a choice, if you were a black person in america in the period following slavery up into the late 60's you would have no choice for being discriminated against or persecuted. Hell blacks were fucking hanged for just whistling at a white girl. This is fucking bullshit.
hmmm... i doubt that i am the only one sitting here thinking about going there... could akihabara be the first non-web entity to be slashdotted? or are we all far too much a bunch of "shut-ins" to actually leave the computer and go someplace? hehe
Would you like to see an Anime-themed resturaunt where the female waitresses wear large, heavy Anime costumes or a gentlemen's club where the female waitresses wear VERY skimpy Anime costumes and drinks are five bucks a piece?
As a black man who was born in England and raised in the US... this is different how!?
re: North American/UK/Australian culture The term you are looking for is 'Anglosphere'. This also includes the culture of New Zealand, which you left out. / irate Kiwi
NM means no message
... definitely should be considered the Mecca for the Slashdot crowd. Or should that be Mecha? :)
AnimeNEXT anime convention
Who said it was different?
I have no idea if it is demaining or not. Just someone stated that I was a hypocrite because I watched them. I have not.
However havening a woman greeting you in an Anime costume by saying welcome master is I would say questionable.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Indeed. I think I've nailed down the essence of geekdom, and it has nothing to do with fear of woman, with schoolgirls or J-Pop or Superman. Anime, computers, D&D... these signs and talismans of our tradition have taken on a life of their own, so that folks see admirable geeks, and take on their attributes, thinking that they're alike, when in reality, they're just pathetic. Playing Counterstrike for years on end, but never writing a line of code, doesn't make you a l33t hacker.
Geeks learn. When normal folk shrug, say 'who cares', and walk away, geeks say, 'tell me more'. That's why geeks like poking at systems so much, whether that system is BSD or linguistics or D&D strategy or even comics continuity.
These hikikomori and their ilk? They deserve our pity, perhaps, but they're not geeks. They're a corner case, something that we shoudn't be venerating or admiring.
"Follow not in the footsteps of the masters, but rather seek what they sought."
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Yeah, I'd prefer it if my fellow geeks didn't keep legitimizing this kind of shit. This counts as humor? Pfah.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
On your second point, I have to disagree. I've spent quite a bit of time in Japan - I'm white, and I have a fro, to boot. If anything, I get more attention, more people talking to me on the train, have more fun in clubs, because I'm non-asian. You wouldn't believe how many Japanese women are interested in talking to you because you *don't talk down to them*.
Do pc assholes insist on referring to you as an african american?
Incidentally there is a nice albeit short descriptin of Akihabara in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. It's page 837 of the arrow book paperback...
In Soviet Russia my signature is reading YOU
At first I thought it said Adrilankha.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Don't be a short white guy over there, with dark hair and brown eyes.
My friend and I used to cruise around there while we were exchange students. I'm 6'2", dark-blond with blue eyes, and he was average height, black hair with brown eyes. He almost never got attention, but I got tons of it. Which was pretty annoying at the time, since he was looking and I wasn't
My 229 is all the Sig I need http://thegunwiki.com/
I've gone there once with my dad. They have ALL the electronics there.. its just amazing. When you want to buy things, you can go up to a salesman to lower the prices and they usually do! I really don't know about the anime otaku scene there but yeah, it's a really cool place for the tecchy people. Oh and I think those kind of people only crowd in Akihabara. Shibuya/Harajuku/Shinjuku and other cities are very different. shibuya, harajuku, and shinjuku are "fashion" cities.
And you could call it "Hooters" after a loveable comic owl.
oh wait....
Have you considered lowering your testosterone? There turns out to be things in life a lot more interesting than the sex drive. The drug Androcur, available online, can lower your testosterone level to that of a eunuch. I should know, as I took it before I became one--the feeling is similar. Mathematics...the beauty of something as simple as binary (like your user id)...this becomes visible.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
How much of a geek do you have to be to feel like a misfit in a country where 9 out of 10 people on the train are playing a game or texting on their cell phone, or reading an anime comic book? I mean come on.. Japan is a country full of geeks, at least in our perception of a geek in western society. They focus on the strangest part of other cultures when incorporating them into society.
IE, in the US, if you have a Kanji shirt or tattoo, it's meaning is somewhat important. You probably wouldn't want to say "I sleep with my sister," for example.
In Japan, it doesn't matter what your shirt says, as long as it's in English. The meaning is almost irrelevant (if there is any meaning).
And food..
In the US, pizza can have a variety of toppings, but when it comes down to it, there's bread, tomato sauce, and cheese.
In Japan, squid-ink is a popular substitute for tomato sauce. Sometimes you can't even get tomato sauce. I'm sorry, but that's not pizza.
But it's a society where everyone is expected to behave and live in a certain way, so there's not a lot of room for individualism, which can ironically, I suppose, lead to feelings of isolation and not belonging, since nobody knows the "real you." But that happens everywhere.
Most people carry their own towel for washing/wiping their hands. You can find napkins, but they're generally very small, and waxed.. for reasons nobody yet understands.
But I digress.. at any rate, I've been to Akhiabara a few times, and it's not all that spectacular. Tokyo is divided into districts, and each district generally serves a purpose. It's an interesting way of arranging a city.. clubs are in Roppongi, electronics are in Akhiabara, clothing stores are somewhere else.. There's a little mixing, but generally, that's how it is. It makes it less convenient to shop for different types of things in one trip, but more convenient to find the exact item you want. (Although, when you do come across a department store, there tends to be LOTS of space devoted to electronics.. Almost every department store I saw had mini Crusoe powered laptops, for example. What's "geek," in the US is much more mainstream there, hence the first sentence of my post).
Honestly though, the prices aren't much better than the states for computer equipment, possibly worse if you're converting from US$. Aibo's are still 5 grand (or however much they cost nowadays), and the fastest P4 is still going to set you back close to a grand. (Although cell phones are generally significantly cheaper). You're also not going to see some advanced PC technology you've never heard of, like USB3.0, or 15000RPM 2TB SATA hard drives. What you will find is a lot of brands you may not have heard of (Albatron, for example, which I'd never heard of before visiting Japan 3 years ago). And be careful what you buy, because the stores aren't under any obligation to accept returns. When I bought a Gigabyte motherboard and couldn't get it to boot (after swapping out everything, one component at a time), I eventually took it back and I was told to run slower memory and an older video card. They wouldn't let me return it or exchange it for another. Just because they sell a ton of electronic equipment in Akhiabara, don't expect the stores to have more or equal knowledge than you do. These guys are just salespeople and first-level tech support, just like anywhere else in the world.
It *is* easier to find exotic parts that you'd generally have to mail-order in the states, like a Zhallman fan.. although some cities (San Diego, for example) have tons of mom'n'pop computer stores with the same sort of things.
Pretty much, if you have a Fry's near you, you're not missing anything except huge throngs of shoppers, and people who aren't sure if you know which side to walk on, so every-other head on encounter turns in to a little dance.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Are you trying to say hentai isn't healthy or something? ;)
Interesting...
I just finished reading some article about kiddie porn busts, and they were saying (honestly, not a toll) just about all the time, they have star trek or star wars stuff (like costumes, light sabers, and such geek/fan items nobody else has) - 90% of them being trekkies. It happens so often that they even make jokes about it...
And now thinking how many nerds are trekkies (can't believe the amount of star trek articles on here)... Not a good idea.
There is no direct/backwards correlation, but it IS a rather disturbing thought... Who knows? Maybe the rate of pedos amongst nerds really is higher? I doubt there are too many studies about that!
I couldn't find a torrent (isohunt/torrentsearch/torrentspy), but there's ~20 sources on the eDonkey network that have a 70MB low-res version of it: ed2k://|file|Hikikomori-Japan.The.Missing.Million. (30.Minuts)(Divx5)(Ogg.Vorbis)(Catalan).ogm|745544 28|69CA73729C661DAA9E239D955C237DA7|/
(sorry about the spaced plaintext link, but slashdot still doesn't support ed2k hrefs. I have no idea if there's english subs in this OGM.)
Power to the Peaceful
Did you just openly admit to working for EA on Slashdot?
Here, into this door! I can offer you protection!
The way you socialise, and the people you socialise with, can impact, say, geek-projects in a negative way, or it can impact them in a positive way (or it can be essentially neutral). The food you enjoy eating can make you better at sport, or it can make you worse.
Every pursuit affects the same person's body, mind, habits and reputation (yours), and affects the world around you, and so every pursuit affects each other.
It's only a zero-sum game when we're unlucky, or can't figure out how to make our different interests co-operate (which I admit is too often).
Not in that geeks aren't black, but in that I can't recall geeks being lynched, enslaved, denied entrance into universities and good high schools, segregated against by law or even simply being worse off economically.
That's also where the comparison to homosexuals fails: as shocking and unnerving as some of the ``hellmouth'' stories of geeks are (and I by the way, had experienced *much* of that -- in terms of being daly denigrated by peers *and* educators in high school and junior high), none of them come close to the Alan Turing's story (a war hero and the one of the century's most brilliant mathematicians as well and a founding father of computer science being driven to suicide by forced hormone injections due to his homosexuality).
I am not a PC victimhood fetishist by any means (to the contrary, I tend to learn to the conservative or libertarian spectrum) and I definately concurr that geeks are treated unfairly, especially in high school -- yet we tend to also be the ones who excel in college and in the job market.
I will also be the first to admit that I am ``anti-social'' (which of course is completely the wrong meaning of that word, but I'll use it in the accepted terminology), but so what? The salary I enjoyed as a junior *in high school* more than compensated for my lack of a prom date.
(Some will accuse me of equating financial or academic success with happyness -- which is a fair comment -- but from the point of *tangible* measures of degradation, it simply isn't fair to call whatever geeks (myself included) endure[d] persecution).
As for my last comment, the whole persecution complex is also somewhat reminiscent of both Jesse Jackson's ilk (who argue that his chronies not getting a contract is persecution) and fundamentalist Christians who argue that removing the Ten Commandments from courthouses is persecution (and even have the gall to compare it to the Roman persecution of Christians in 100-300AD).
You might have to be kind of careful when you say
Japanese culture is much less anti-intellectual and anti-geek
if you are including these 'Otaku' (shut-ins), then I would have to disagree with you completely. I have been living in Japan the last 11 months and every Japanese person who I have broached the topic with say they dislike 'otaku'. Might it be because there was a famous 'otaku' serial-killer?
As for your second point I would not call it racism at all, more of fascination. The Japanese citizens without 100% Japanese heritage is less than 1%. How many American's can claim they have 100% Native American blood? When you come from an immigrant country (read: USA) it may seem like racism, but some of these people have never had a conversation with a foreigner before in their life. Think about it, the total yearly immigrants into Japan is about 11k, whereas the USA is reaching 450K
I have been living in Hong Kong for the past few years.. We have a place called Mong Kok which is one of the most densely populated places on Earth. From Wiki : With one of the highest population densities in the world (It once attained 130 thousand people per square km, though the actual population didn't attain that much. Apparently the district was smaller than 1 square km). MK sells everything, in terms of "electrical" stuff, it would be enough to make the most season Akihabara shopper quiver. My point is, I found Akihabara quite a let down when I visited. For a true shopping extravaganza, try Mong Kok, HK.
I think part of the problem is they expect Americans to be rude (sadly we have this reputation just about world-wide).
I will give you an example as to why. Me and my wife were visiting in Amsterdam recently. First time we have been there, so we decided to ride on the boats in the canals. These canal boats have benches facing forward and back, across a table and each bench can seat 3 quite comfortably.
So we got on and the boat was pretty packed. We saw this middle age American couple sitting on one of the bench. So I asked them nicely if they can move in a bit so my wife can sit down. The woman just glared at us and told us to go away.
You tell me why people expect Americans to be rude.
This is a group thing and not sick. Cosplay is for us otaku just as normal as you visiting a stripbar or halloween. You gaijin really like to beat on japanese don't you.
I live in Hong Kong as well...
no.... HK's one is just bunch of copied products and dirty streets packed with uneducated people... Don't proud it (even with statics!!!). it's very shameful... shame...
and more of a pilgrimage.
Not gaijin just people too stupid to see outside of thier microclasim that is thier life.
we get signal!
It's a good thing you have such a huge sample set to back up your prejudices. Get over yourself.
It's a good thing you've never once in your life needed help, compassion or time to grow up and get your act together.
Those who strictly believe in the survival of the fittest with no shades of gray have been sold a faulty bill of goods without thinking it through carefully enough. If the fittest were the most worthy of survival, then sharks and psychopaths should be given the world without complaint or resistance since they are un-hindered by such weaknesses as emotions, compassion, and ethics which prevent others from defining and dominating the food chain.
-FL
I have to say, it was fun going from "broke college student with marginal looks" to "Super Stud Rich American" simply by stepping off of a plane. . .
Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
Buy him! use him! break him! fix him!
trash him! change him! melt - upgrade him!
charge him! pawn him! zoom him! press him!
snap him! work him! quick - erase him!
write him! get him! paste him! save him!
load him! check him! quick - rewrite him!
plug him! play him! burn him! rip him!
drag and drop him! zip - unzip him!
lock him! fill him! curl him! find him!
view him! curl him! jam - unlock him!
surf him! scroll him! pose him! click him!
cross him! crack him! twitch - update him!
name him! read him! tune him! print him!
scan him! send him! fax - rename him!
touch him! bring him! obey him! watch him!
turn him! leave him! stop - format him.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Does this remind anyone of the Sprawl and Chiba City in William Gibson's Neuromancer? It sounds like the sprawl to me, I mean lots of geeks, gutterpunks and street techs all in a somewhat anarchistic area of town they have carved out for themselves.. sounds like an interesting place to visit if I'm ever in Tokyo.
... "This, then was life? To wake up and work just to go to sleep again because you had worked?" ...
page 326 of "The Few Things I Know about Glafkos Thrassakis" by Vassilis Vassilikos (translated by Karen Emmerich) 2002
That quote above is the best phrased description of how work just sucks the life out of you. It makes it so your time off from work is nothing more than recuperation before being grinded down by work again.
Yes, and I always tell them... "Well I'm not an American"... and then watch their idiotic faces crumple up in confusion.
There is a difference between visiting a stripbar and living in one.
Also, what does anime have to do with geeks and nerds?