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| Gamer in Japan Article 3 | // article |
| What have I learnt this week? Well, I think most important is the fact that in many Japanese stores, one can locate Mecha-Godzilla action figures, Frank Sinatra Dolls and Pornographic Models in the same aisle, side by side, whilst still failing utterly to entertain the possession of a Tachikoma... I think it speaks volumes about the world when one can fulfil ones giant cyborg monster, resin music legends and other less wholesome hobbies, with a single trip to the same aisle of a single store. Truly we live in an amazing world, one so amazing infact that when I was being introduced to some of the local stores by my classmates, I was taken into several Manga stores. Obviously, that's not amazing; Manga is a big thing here, what was amazing however was the reckless abandon with which the interiors of said places had been strewn with pornography. I am quite serious, it was everywhere, magazines, posters and 9 feet tall statues of nothing but comic porn. Did my friends blink? Where they slightly embarrassed at bringing a stuck up Englishman through the child pornography section of their favourite stores so that I might find some Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex CDs? Were they my arse. At one point a girl from my class stood between a giant poster of a fully naked 12 year old with more hanging from her chest than many MacDonald's customers have hanging from their waists and an obscenely tall statue of what I can only guess to be some kind of collectors item for naked alien fetishists. Had I not been so shocked at what I am about to describe, all of this may have been funny in some way. However I was far too busy trying to wrap my head around the following for that, as in every store we went into of this kind, there were more women than men, all of them looking with appraising eyes at pornography, I tried to rationalise it, "Perhaps they're lesbians." I thought, but no, that didn't sit right, I'm pretty sure these middle aged ladies were shopping for their children. Anyway, that's quite enough of that, I once again rambled when I could have just said; "Japan has child-porn-Manga shops everywhere and housewives purchase their wares for their children." (Disclaimer: Japan is a really great place and the people are great, clearly we need more pornography, hey, it'd keep the Chavs busy!) | |
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