Outing in Akihabara

Akihabara means different things to different people. For technophiles, it’s mecca for the latest gadgets that hit shelves here before they do in the States. Meanwhile, technophobes can dig up a spare part to a dinosaur desktop or score an original Legend of Zelda Nintendo game cartridge from 20 years ago (used to love that one). Representing more ordinary tastes, I have browsed Akihabara for an iPod and a digital SLR camera.

Tokyo’s Electric Town also has an underbelly. Akihabara is ground zero for a nerd subculture drawing devotees of anime (animation), manga (comics) and cosplay (costume play, photo left) to its glowing precincts. Words can’t do justice to this fantasy world that for otaku is the only reality for these “obsessed house-broken geeks.”

Noki is an otaku. He’s also my 11th grade student, and one of the friendlier ones, too. Shirking the school’s required black blazer, he stands out like a flamingo on an iceberg full of penguins. The next layer of the uniform – a white button down shirt – flaps untucked and unbuttoned to reveal his true character: a t-shirt with anime characters.

Anime obsessions do not earn respect among high school peers, but Noki wears his hobby like an honorary shield, which must magically give him protection. The boys’ dress code dictates that blazers be buttoned up like straightjackets. Teachers reprimand those who casually keep two top buttons open, one over the limit. Yet I never saw anyone challenge Noki for sitting in class naked, relatively speaking.

The bell ends the struggle of students’ listening to another language. They file out of the room happily chatting in Japanese, but Noki lingers to reassemble. During the course of class he’s kicked off his shoes – and if summer, socks – and littered the floor around his desk with handouts.

I confer with the Japanese teacher about the lesson plan for next class, which falls every Monday and Wednesday morning. From the corner of my eye I catch Noki creeping up. He’s waiting to tell me something, and I know exactly what it is.

“I went to Akihabara last weekend,” he announces if it’s a Monday. (Wednesday’s opener is, “I will go to Akihabara this weekend.”) Noki is admittedly an Akiba-kei, a pejorative term for an Akihabara-type person. The label still seems benign at his age, at least more so than for those in their 30s branded for similar obsessions.

Noki answers my question before I’ve asked it by showing me his newest anime acquisition. During class I saw him keeping cool with this plastic hand fan, which turned out to be decorated with cartoon girls busting out of maid’s costumes and brandishing weapons far more dangerous than dust mops.

“Which one do you like best?” he asked.

The question caught me off guard. Did he mean sexually? I mean, how else would I “like” them? Lust mulled their heaving chests and oh so slender figures.

“Um, I’ll take the one with blue hair and nunchuks,” I said, slightly ashamed over where my mind just went.

“I, I like this one.” He pointed to a character with sharp red hair cascading down to black socks hiked up to the knees. As I checked her out, oversized auburn eyes flashed at my intrusive gaze. Her raised sword forced my eyes to surrender.

I looked up. Noki was one of the few students who conversed with me willingly, so I was happy to be engaged on any subject. In due time, polite interest earned me and Honda an escorted tour through Akihabara’s subculture that made the sworded maids seem realistic.

Honda and Noki made a curious pair. Honda played the class clown when not otherwise preening his spiky hair, which he fussed over to the exclusion of anything topical. Although he sat in front of Honda, Noki’s position on the totem pole of high school coolness couldn’t have been more distant. Girls extended a sympathetic wince if a friend got paired with Noki for conversation drills. But who was Noki to care? His mind wasn’t bound to the realm of realism anyway.

Perhaps admiring Noki’s rebelliousness, Honda courted him as an ally for in-class mischief, but I never expected them to join forces outside of it. On this occasion, however, temptation was too great. For Honda, a journey beyond classroom boundaries into his classmate’s passion while with his English teacher would be something to brag about come Monday morning, just in time for our first period class.

That class began at 8:50, but punctuality wasn’t in Noki’s or Honda’s vocabulary. They were usually the last two in their seats after the second bell. Honda reveled in any reproach that shifted the bad boy spotlight on him.

It wasn’t surprising, therefore, that while waiting at our meeting point in Akihabara station, my phone buzzed with a text message:

GOOD MORNING p(>o<)q
I am sorry , may be we will late to meeting. so Please wait . for us w(oOo)w

It was from Honda’s number, but with Noki’s name as the author in the subject line. Honda could barely introduce himself in English while Noki was the only student I knew who didn’t own a cell phone. Reasoning was a matter of finance mixed with obsession: why pay a monthly contract when such money could be saved for the next big game release?

Forty minutes later they arrived, whereupon irritation dissolved into speechlessness.
TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK….