Updated Tue. Jan. 31 2006 4:38 PM ET
Associated Press
Naoyuki Masuda
YOKOHAMA, Japan — Masa puts his arm affectionately around Konoha's sloping shoulders on the couch in his apartment and gently brushes her hair from her bright blue eyes. Iris stands behind them, decked out in a frilly dress.
Masa speaks warmly to Kohona and Iris, greeting them brightly each morning and when he returns home from work, but they never answer. His two companions are life-sized dolls.
"She doesn't have to talk, because I enjoy her as a doll, not as a substitute for a person,'' Masa, a 32-year-old computer engineer.
A grown man living with two nearly 5-foot-tall dolls -- and dozens of smaller figurines -- would seem bizarre anywhere. And indeed, Masa keeps his full identity hidden and his curtains drawn to avoid ridicule by outsiders.
But Masa and others like him -- known as "otaku'' -- have taken that trend to another level by collecting dolls like Konoha or flocking to cafes staffed by waitresses dressed as comic book maids.
The growing popularity of "otaku culture'' has transformed the Akihabara neighbourhood in downtown Tokyo from the city's main electronics district into a magnet for 20- to 40-year-old men looking for comics, videogames and anime DVDs. Figurines of all sizes of sexy doe-eyed girls in mini-skirts are big sellers.
The otaku -- overwhelmingly male -- have long been considered social misfits who soothe their loneliness with fantasy, but the runaway success of a movie this year about a nerd who falls in love, Train Man, has helped make otaku tastes and aesthetics more widely embraced in Japan.
The otaku economy includes Internet auctions of dolls, comics, films, trading cards, outfits. Osaka-based Kaiyodo Co., Japan's leading anime-doll maker, projects sales of $25.6 million this year, up 10 per cent from the previous year.
In addition to Konoha and Iris, which together cost more than $6,000, his tiny living room is stocked with dozens of smaller dolls, robots and comics.
He carefully combs Konoha's brown hair with a wooden comb to cut down on static. Concerned that her mini-skirt is a tad immodest, he folds her pale hand demurely over her lap.
He has no intention of ever getting married or finding a girlfriend.
"Konoha looks straight out, as if she is talking to you,'' Masa said as he adjusted the angle of her head. "She has a face that makes her my dream girl.''
Click here to read rest of article
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/stor...b=Entertainment
