Cosplay "guidols" serve as Akihabara tour guides
Akibanana is a Japanese tour company that employs young women in cosplay attire to guide foreign tourists around the otaku-heaven district of Akihabara in Tokyo. Cosplay Akihabara Tours (via Tokyo Mango)
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Catholic priests got nothing on the Japanese.
she's at least 23
Where are the bishōnen?
I must be an otaku, she's tasty.
-abs is married, so tasty or not all he does is make "abs-ervations". Now if I could have a -abs sig line none of you would have had to have read that horrible, horrible, pun.
@#4 She really is, holy cow.
ohhh look, something is happening in japan and its slightly unusual.
my shoulders won't even shrug at this one
bored?
The inclusion of a cherry is a tiny bit disturbing.
But no more than people casually remarking that she is pleasurable to have on their tongues!
reaching, Gloria, reaching
hawt.
Haha, what would they show on the tour? "Here's the 50 en arcade. Here's another store with electronics." I'll bet they pretty much just use the tour as an excuse to get you to a maid cafe.
I'm not sure why they need a tour. "This is a store. You go in and look for things to buy. To your right you will see another store. You can also go into it and look for things to buy as well."
I can only think about everything I missed out on when I dared to go to Akihabara and shop without a tour guide!
This is just another business designed to separate middle-aged schlubs, who think they're going to get laid, from their money.
For a scary split second I thought the title said something about guido cosplayers.. the actual post was quite a relief.
ahhh... are we sure all of these are girls?
http://www.akibanana.com/?q=node/1001#comments
I think I need a wiki session to suss this all out.
Hmmm pervy.
Maybe its the outfit, but when a woman dresses that way I assume that she's either wants a spanking, or step on your junk with a nine inch heel.
Similar to me is http://www.boingboing.net/2006/12/03/japanese-maid-cafe-o.html
I don't recognize the sign she's flashing.
it's the kanji for 'easy, but not cheap.'
Mintphresh
I will set them up and you can knock them down.
to those of you who asked what there is to see in Akihabara, from the Akibana website
(http://www.akibanana.com/?q=node/321)
"despite Akiba's current status as Japan's "silicon valley," consumer Mecca and tourist beacon, it is the convergence of otaku subcullture and technological innovations that makes Akihabara unique. It is only here that you can see a robot do kick-stands and a young man clad in his homemade, plate-metal Gundam costume, an interactive 3D-film and waitresses payed to act the part of a bratty kid-sister. "
There is a paucity of details I find worrying - like they're going to take you to one of those Yakuza ckubs where it's free to get in, but a few thousand dollars to leave.
This could be a really useful service! "Here is the famous Tiger Pit. On the first floor is manga. On floor two are tame fan comics, suitable for anyone. The next floor up is slightly racier. And so forth. Your guide will lead you down safely from the sixth floor when you shut your eyes and refuse to open them again, ever. There will be a slight additional charge for the use of eyespoons, which you may keep as a souvenir."
Akihabara has plenty of maid cafes (there's a gauntlet of maids handing out flyers outside the station after school), but I think the pricy hostess clubs are in a different part of town (Akasaka-Mitsuke, maybe?). There's a mixture of nightlife and at least one all-night manga cafe near Shinjuku station.
Patrick Macias and Tomohiro Machiyama wrote a fun book Cruising the Anime City: An Otaku Guide to Neo Tokyo, and between that and Tokyo City Atlas: A Bilingual Guide it was easy enough to find one's way around.
Has BoingBoing done a post on the Studio Ghibli museum in Mitaka yet? That was wonderful.
Studio Ghibli? that would be wonderful!
The Studio Ghibli Museum has been on BB, but I don't remember if it was a post or a link in a comment. Unfortunately, the website has very few pics.
So - when will the British delegation visit, BlackBerries at the ready?
@Gloria, I'm assuming that the text on the card is a shortened form for Akihabara Guide Idol and her name is Cherry. I don't think they're suggesting anything about her being edible.
@Orchestra Spy, For Akihabara, the outfit would make me assume that she's kind of shy and conservative.
They're not really going after my demographic -- they don't show her laptop, or even her mobile. I want to see the kawaii phones and chibi laptops, and of course, the tons of manga and doushinji that I couldn't actually read. If you only had a limited time, I can see that a tour guide could be kind of useful to point out the best (or most interesting) places, but only on the first day you spend there.
Thank you for your interests in akibanana. Just to clarify, we are not a tour company. We are a media company running a web media like boingboing and video streaming as well but offline, we offer consultancy and marketing solutions, publish a map flyer of Akihabara and run Akihabara tours along with a tour company (we don't have the license to do the tour business but planning and executing tours is our expertise). Seems like there is a debate going on here, kindly allow me to clear up the air:
@Takuan> She's 21
@Antinous> We have another bishonen guidol called Yuya and he blogs on Akibanana too.
@Rodney>You can learn about the tourspots on our tour pamphlet here http://www.akibanana.com/tour The 3000 yen fee includes one drink at a maid cafe but that is just about half an hour out of the two and a half hour tour.
@jccalhoun> On the contrary, one of our tour rules is no shopping during the tour because it would disrupt the tour when others have to wait.
@carl> maids and hostesses are two very different things. Maids are simply waitresses dressed in the maid uniform of course; while they do pander to a certain fantasy but they do not sit beside you, drink with you and go home with you after that. And no you cannot touch the maids.
For a comprehensive report on some maid cafes in Akihabara see http://www.akibanana.com/?q=node/887
by the way, that guidebook you recommend is way outdated. Akihabara changes so quickly even the locals don't know what is happening. That is why we do tours in Japanese as well.
@sparrow> Our tour is about the story of the otaku. We are otaku ourselves and we love Akiba so we hope others can understand otaku culture and Akiba better. The tour naturally has an otaku slant; apart from historical spots and the latests trends, we explain about the local otaku culture and the local otaku slangs (using flash cards) that we use as well as the differences between the otaku subsets. Those who are familiar with Akihabara will still discover something new and definitely learn something new because otaku know-how is usually kept within this world only.
We explain about the Japanese manga industry and the terms "doujinshi" as well as "comike" at K-books inside the Radio Kaikan. K-books have relatively cheaper doujinshis although Toranoana has the latest ones. For more on doujinshi, you can do a search on akibanana. We have exclusive articles on the laws and rules of doujinshis as well as interviews with some manga artists and so on.
Wow. Thanks for all the info!