"How much does it cost a year to live in Japan?"- Shane L.
It really
depends where you live and how rich a lifestyle you want to lead! I am in
Tokyo, which, according to a Mercer report in 2009, is the most expensive
city in the world to live in. An apartment is usually between 60,000 yen and
100,000 yen a month, and most meals cost around 1,000 yen. If you consider
100 yen to be roughly equal to one dollar, you get some kind of an idea
about how expensive this can get. The closer you get to the city center, or
rather the transit hubs, the higher prices become. The international
community in Tokyo falls into two groups – the rather wealthy businesspeople
who live the high life, and the rather poor freelance writers and teachers
scrambling to make a living. I fall into the latter category, so I do not
live in the bright lights and glamour of Tokyo. Personally, I spend very
little on housing and food, and my commuter’s pass for the train to school
passes right through Akihabara, where all the otaku hang out. So I can visit
there everyday for free! And therein lies the reason why Tokyo is an
expensive city for me – I spend most of my days in maid cafes and buy
figures of my favorite anime characters. Budgeting for this lifestyle can be
tough!
"How can you afford to live in Japan as an otaku?"-
Robert R.
Cut a lot of corners. I don’t go out with friends and spend money on expensive meals and entertainment. I also have no interest in fashion and dating, and don’t smoke or drink. I live in a small communal apartment and don’t pay rent. In other words, all of my income can be spent on anime, manga, videogames and related merchandise. Where does the money come from, you ask? Fortunately I am paid to do the things I love. I write about Japanese popular culture for magazines such as Metropolis and Otaku USA, receive substantial academic funding to research otaku and conduct a weekly tour of Akihabara for H.I.S. Experience Japan. So, my work, research and hobbies are all the same and somehow or another formed a symbiotic system.
"How long did it take you to write it [the book] ?"-David C.
I was working on it for about five years. At first it was just to satisfy my own curiosity. I first visited Japan – or rather Tokyo, the only part of Japan where I have ever spent any significant amount of time – in 2004 as an exchange student. Born in rural Alaska and raised on a remote ranch in Montana, I had never traveled beyond the United States and Canada before and was fascinated by the country of Japan, city of Tokyo and the difference of everything. I went to Akihabara to be a part of the otaku scene, and found that even the otaku there were different from what I had expected. Everything I saw and heard went into a notebook, which was the basis of my articles on otaku culture. Of course, it was also part of my ongoing academic research on otaku culture. An editor from Kodansha International read and liked one of my articles and approached me in 2008, and together we turned that notebook into The Otaku Encyclopedia. So, I was collecting data for about four years, and intensely editing and shaping that data into a book for about a year.
"Are there any Kitsune characters in popular manga?"-
Cathleen B.
Sure! The kitsune, or fox, is deeply embedded in Japanese folklore, and is believed to possess magical powers. These include the power of illusion, fire and shape shifting, especially into a human. When in human form, the kitsune is typically a beautiful woman or young girl, but can also be a wise old man. Kitsune in human from sometimes possess humans or have affairs with them, and the progeny of these unions are depicted as having special powers. As in many countries around the world, the fox in Japan is a bit of a trickster. Unique to Japan and East Asia, however, is the image of ancient fox spirits that can have as many as nine tails. Kitsune are associated with Inari, the god of rice in Shinto, Japan's domestic animistic faith. Another famous kitsune is Kyubi, the great guardian spirit that helps those who have lost their way. Given this rich background, it is natural that kitsune would appear in anime. Examples include Renamon from Digimon, Vulpix and Ninetales from Pokemon, Shippo from InuYasha, Ryutaro from Pom Poko and Sakura from Hyper Police. More famous kitsune include Uzumaki Naruto from Naruto, who contains the spirit of kitsune and Kurama from YuYu Hakusho, who is a reincarnated kitsune. Konno Mitsune from Love Hina is called a kitsune because she is a trickster. If you are interested in anthropomorphized animals in anime, there is a genre of characters known as jingai, or outside human. The most famous example is girls with nekomimi cat ears and tails, but recent anime such as Kanokon is about dog girls and Wolf and Spice is about a wolf god in human form.