Gaijin, Umeda, and the Mandarake

Today's Japanese Word of the Day:
おたく屋
Otaku-ya
(Phrase: Nerd Store)

That Japanese word up there is kind of a joke. Otaku-ya is not actually a word. The suffix -ya is kind of like saying store; for instance, a hana-ya is a flower shop, and a hon-ya is a bookstore. And by the way, an otaku isn't just any nerd; he is a nerd who pretty much devotes his life to the thing he nerds out about. It's typically derogatory to call someone an otaku in Japan, but in the US people tend to be proud to be otaku.

Enough with my language note. On to the post.

While we were in Umeda visiting the Pokémon Center, we decided to make a side trip to a place called Mandarake. That's pronounced mahn-dah-rah-kay, by the way, not man-drayk.

Before we got there, we of course had to walk outside in Umeda. It was rather fascinating, and I took a handful of pictures.

They say Japan is very densely populated, but you don't fully appreciate just how packed it is until you visit a big city. This is us waiting to cross the street, and those are the people on the other side of the street. And this is just one crosswalk.

While we're talking about dense populations, let's talk about being a gaijin (foreigner). I have seen a grand total of five other white people outside of my own group. Two of those were professors at the university who are part of the International Club. Walking around is like being a minor celebrity. Everyone stares at you. That guy on the left side of my picture is Rick. He's a tall gaijin with red hair. He's probably one of three in the entire country. He and a couple of the other guys were joking about giving him a sword and letting him go Highlander on the other gingers ("There can be only one!").

There's also a bit of a scale with how people react to you, and it seems to have directly to do with age. Adults tend to avert their gaze and not look at us at all. Some young adults, especially at the university, openly stare at us. Other young adults smile and wave and call "hello" to us, which we of course return.

And then you have the young adults at the university who stop to talk to us, and invariably pull out their cell phones for a photo op. This mostly happens in the iTalk Center (which I plan to post about very soon), but once it was in the doors going to the cafeteria.

And then you have the kids. Kids haven't learned to be embarrassed about talking to strangers yet, and gaijin are pretty exciting, apparently. They actually shout "GAIJIN!" to each other when they see us. One time we were walking from the university to the guys' dorm and then on to the supermarket. Along the route there is this park that we cut through to save time. On this particular day, some kids (maybe about ten years old) were playing baseball. They waved to us, and we waved back, and apparently that got them excited because they dropped their game and came running up to us. We were able to get through pretty fast, but we nearly had to offer up the tall blonde guy in the group as a sacrifice.

Back to Umeda, then.

Obviously, I'm not a great photographer. These pictures don't really have any particular meaning behind them, I thought the area just looked cool.

Here's another blurry population density picture.

 

Some more city pictures. All in all, downtown Japanese cities look a whole lot like downtown American cities. This one is a whole lot spiffier than Salt Lake, but to be fair, it's also a lot bigger.

Also on our way to the Mandarake, which I still haven't gotten to talking about yet (call it dramatic build-up), we stopped by a 7-11. A couple of people needed to use ATMs, which of course 7-11 has, and I saw a couple of things here that piqued my interest.

For one, the onigiri display, which I knew my sisters would get a kick out of. Most of the flavors here are fish, but there is also pickled plum. I have one of those sitting in the fridge, which I still haven't been brave enough to try. I've never had plums before, and I don't like pickled cucumbers, and so it makes me nervous to try a pickled plum rice ball. I'll do it eventually, though. Just you wait.

And this is cheesecake pocky, something else I figured my sisters would like. There have more flavors than chocolate and strawberry here.

Outside of the 7-11 was this fabulous sign, which I found to be very, very funny. Maybe you will too.

The Colonel is watching.

This sign made me happy too, though I'd already seen several Coca-Cola logos (in English).

Also, this is a giant bowling pin in downtown Umeda. Another thing that made me happy.

But not as happy as this. The Penguin Army clearly has a base in Japan.

And so we finally made it to the Mandarake. It's on a covered walking street that's hard to describe and harder to get a good picture of. So trust me when I say the street itself was cool. But that's nothing--NOTHING--compared to the sheer might of awesome that was the Mandarake.

That guy in the picture is Jake, the only other LDS guy in the group, in case you wanted to know.

You walk into the Mandarake, and the first thing you do is go up this set of winding stairs. The walls are made out of rock (at least, they don't feel like plastic). And then you see THIS:

Shelves upon shelves upon shelves upon SHELVES of manga. Manga as far as the eye can see. Manga on every subject (which is why I completely avoided some of the aisles). All the popular manga, all the less popular manga, all the fan-made manga. It's all here.

For my family who may not know, manga is the word for Japanese comics. You know, this art style:

Yeah, like that.

In light of the fact that this is a JAPANESE MANGA store, I didn't fully understand why there were AMERICAN COMIC Captain America shields on the floor in this one spot.

Turns out it was a trail to the Captain America comic book. In Japan. Captain America.

I don't get it.

Sorry for the blurry picture, by the way.

Upstairs were more manga, but also the manga-related merchandise. For example, these colored wigs.

And this Sailor Moon costume. One of the girls in the group was very tempted to buy one of these costumes.

I came away from the Mandarake with four manga books, plus two that I've picked up on special recommendation from my classmates from places other than the Mandarake. I've heard that manga is just about the only place where Japanese is written like it's spoken. I had intended to buy a couple books for the dual purpose of souvenir and study fun. I spent about ten dollars here buying those four manga. One of the other girls in my group, who is pretty close to fluent and LOVES manga, bought about sixty dollars worth.

Before you get shocked at that, let me talk manga pricing. If you want to order Japanese manga in the US, you've obviously got to do it online and order it from Japanese companies. Those books will each individually cost about $8. Shipping is about $20. If the package ends up overweight, which is more likely than not, you've got all of those fees to work with, too. Plus there's the exchange rate and the exchange fee to think about. The upshot is that just one of these books could cost upwards of $30. Compare then the Mandarake. Each book costs between $3 and $5... and that's it. The girl who bought $60 worth of manga pretty much bought her entire favorite series, plus an assortment of other books. She had to carry them all back to the dorm, which was rather brutal because they were heavy and we had missed the bus and had a forty-five minute walk with plenty of hills, but she professes that it was worth it.

Okay, that wraps up our trip to Umeda. It was tons of fun, and we CANNOT go back because we would end up spending even more than we already have. Excellent place.

Here's a shout-out to Devaney, who's been leaving comments on my blog! Miss ya, Devaney! Love ya tons!

~Amanda