Over at Maddox’s “Best Page in the Universe“, he has some great observations on a couple types of nerds, with my favourite being the “I wish I was Japanese” anime nerd.
Everyone knows someone like this. They refer to themselves as “otaku” and they embrace everything Japanese, not necessarily because it’s something unique or interesting, but because it’s Japanese. They wear clothing with Japanese or Chinese characters on it that translate to English phrases like “good will” or “long life.” They wouldn’t be able to get away with wearing a shirt that said “long life” in English because it would just look stupid, but as soon as it’s translated into kanji it suddenly becomes cool and mysterious? Please.
last week i saw an otaku trying to pick up the girls at tokyo roll by ordering in japanese. his japanese was fluent, but they didn’t understand why a white guy was speaking japanese. so he had to speak english. the whole situation was funny, until 2 min later he chose to sit next to me in the food hall, when there were lots of other empty seats to chose from 🙁
i ate as fast as i could and left.
It’s so true. I know a few Jap wannabe otaku.