re: #187 wheat-dogg

There’s a lot about pop culture in Tokyo and Japan in general I don’t get, but still find endlessly fascinating. It’s Japan’s “soft power,” because cosplay is now an international thing, and the kawaii fashion sense is slowly spreading outside Tokyo. A few of my Chinese students are into it, but don’t generally wear it in public. That’s why the student in an Alice dress last week was so remarkable.

I’ve gotten curious about manga and hentai, but visiting a manga shop in Tokyo was like trying to get a drink from a firehose. Absolutely bewildering. I had no idea where to begin, and ended up buying nothing.

If you have a year or so you could hang out in a manga kissaten (cafe) and read as much as you want for the price of a cup of coffee. Not my thing, but my kids are into soccer, so they read “Captain Tsubasa” and “Whistle” (soccer manga) and “Dragonball Zed”; I have a few history manga.