At Nerd Nite Tokyo, self-confessed nerds from all walks of life gather once a month to loosen their anoraks, sup a beverage or two and feed on the niche knowledge of three quietly obsessive speakers.
Capsule toy vending machines installed at Narita International Airport near Tokyo have become magnets for foreign visitors. T-Arts Co. set up 325 vending machines to dispense capsule toys in the basement floor of the airport's Terminal 2 building, near escalators connecting Airport Terminal 2 Station ...
Cuba may be one of the world's least connected countries but that is not stopping the Japanese subculture of animated movies, manga comics and video games from spreading feverishly among its youth. More than 1,000 otaku (geeks), or fans of such fantasy worlds, descended on ...
Takamasa Sakurai, a leading evangelist of Japanese anime, fashion and music abroad, was fatally hit by a train early Friday after falling from a platform at Nishi-Nippori Station in Tokyo, police said. Police said the incident occurred on the JR Keihin Tohoku Line at around 12:30 a.m. ...
Several years ago, a vogue of interest in shut-ins, or hikikomori, saw researchers from France touring Japan and meeting reclusive youths. Such was the prevalence of the disorder, said psychologist Nicolas Tajan, that "if you ask people in Japan about hikikomori, almost everyone will ...
Held twice a year and famous among otaku (fanboys and fangirls) the world over, Comiket, short for Comic Market, held its 86th event Aug. 15-17 at Tokyo Big Sight in Odaiba. With more than 550,000 people reportedly attending the event over the three days, ...
Among the wide array of vending machines peddling items from the everyday to the obscure, one staple in Japan is the toy-dispensing "gacha gacha," which is named after the handle-turning noise that precedes the release of the plastic capsule. While the majority of gacha gacha ...
A well-known “otaku” shop in Tokyo is threatening to post an alleged shoplifter’s face online if he doesn’t return what he stole.
Anyone who has visited Tokyo's Akihabara district in the past decade will have run into countless images of cartoonish girls: in posters, in figurines and in the form of real women dressed up as French maids. The Moe Manifesto, ...
While Japan’s video-game industry no longer dominates the world, there is still one niche of digital entertainment that this country does better than any other: romantic man-machine interaction. Love with a virtual being is something plucked straight out of science-fiction.
A viral video of Natalia Poklonskaya's charmingly shy first press conference inspires enough otaku artists to produce a shrine of manga-style illustrations.
