It's that time of year again.
With the AKB48 "elections" taking place to see who gets to sing in the next song, Twitter is awash with pictures of boxes of CDs and tickets purchased by passionate otaku fans.
One fan has shared images of towers of boxes, boasting that they spent 1,917,800 yen on them -- and paid for on delivery in cash to the mail man too! They now have thousands of CDs to play to their heart's content.
Another is meant to have shared images of 1,614,400 yen's worth of merchandise -- about half a year's salary for most people.
Or there are piles of ...
To celebrate the upcoming Tokyo performances of the Hatsune Miku opera "The End" we wanted to show a side to the virtual idol that likely won't be put on a stage soon... but deserves to ...
An online survey has found some surprising results about identification with otaku, proving that we have come so far since the days of Tsutomu Miyazaki.
137,734 people were asked, "Do you consider yourself somehow an otaku?"
Yes: 42.2%
No: 57.8%
That's a lot of supposed otaku!
Here's the breakdown per generation:
Teenagers: 62.0%
Twenties: 55.6%
Thirties: 46.4%
Forties: 44.8%
Fifties: 36.7%
Sixties: 26.9%
Seventies: 23.1%
Eighties: 23.3%
Of course, these days the definition of "otaku" is wider, and can apply to soccer fanatic or just about any passionate fans of ...
A man has been arrested for running an online dating (deai-kei) scam that scammed 2,100 otaku out of 210 million yen over the years.
Deai-kei websites are common portals in Japan, usually a ruse for informal prostitution or enjo kosai. In this case, the owner tricked members into thinking they would be able to exchange emails with their favorite AKB48 idols and even go on dates with the girls.
The trial has begun of the 32-year-old man from Chiba who ran the site. He would have his part-time employees send mails to the otaku posing as celebrities and idols. After a time, these mails ...
A nineteen-year old university student was in the college library when he got a message from his mother.
"Super Sonico hug pillow has just arrived" it read.
The student was obviously very ashamed claimed he wasn't sure if he should go home or rather fling himself into the nearest river.
Japan's embarrassed men buying ero manga or ero geemu (erotic games) are frequently defeated by the retailer's over-enthusiasm for nice packaging, resulting in attractive boxes decorated with images of the featured otaku idol and the like, and making any attempt at secrecy ...
That's what the results of a survey would have us believe.
It surveyed 3,616 men and women aged 20 to 49 around Japan on the theme of marriage and children online in early February.
30% of men in both their twenties and thirties answered that they had never had sex or been in a relationship. The numbers of people dated increases for men in their thirties compared with respondents in their twenties, but the proportion of people who with no experience of romance among the unmarried remains the same.
On the other hand, girls in their twenties with no experience of a relationship is ...
The car in front is a Toyota. Really?
Yes, Toyota has proved that otaku are valuable members of its customer base by creating an itasha decorated vehicle especially for the Anime Contents Expo 2013.
The itasha car is available for both the Prius and Vitz models, and has been customized with images from the Girls and Panzers anime.
The cars will also be sold from a showroom in Ikebukuro.
Otaku certainly have enough cash to buy AKB48 singles by the thousands -- but do they have the means to purchase a car? Toyota hopes ...
Here is the otaku hug pillow for the new generation.
A smartphone that is the size of a bed.
That's right, you can sleep on this phone, run on it, even live on it.
But otaku will be interested in how it can revolutionize the hug pillow.
Take the Soine App 4.1, which allows you to snuggle up (soine) to a life-size 2D anime character.
Before you jump to any conclusions about "Japanese" engineers, the development team was actually led by a white ...
Trust an otaku imagination to come up with this.
Previewed at Wonder Festival and spotted by Akiba Blog, this butt pencil sharpener (お尻鉛筆削り) -- a picture of a naked girl's derrière with a sharpener covered in putty.
Crude engineering for a crude design. Yes, some people never grow out of schoolboy humor.
The results are kind of great at the same time, though!
It was retailing at ¥500, or just over $5.
A bargain, one might say. However, we can't see this going over too well in the office.
We have to say, though. Almost no Japanese girls have ...
In the rich and varied pantheon of Japanese moe and fetishes, this is a new one for us.
Tired with not only how a regular water cooler looks but also what it dispenses, one enterprising otaku has added a fixture to the unit.
It's a life-sized cardboard version of a sexy but coy Japanese schoolgirl in the unsurprisingly moe schoolgirl style.
Why is she embarrassed? Because you can look up her skirt, slip your cup in the crotch and then draw the liquid from between her legs!
Yes, you drink her "pee".
Of course, golden shower and pee fetishes are not that unusual ...
