Experience the World of Japanese Pop Culture Through a Whole New Medium—Japanese Food! #1 New Release in Animated Humor & Entertainment With dishes inspired by otaku culture, this cookbook brings Japanese anime and manga to chefs of all levels. Experience Japanese culture like never before. Japan fever has taken the West by storm. Praised for its attention to detail, it’s no wonder that some of the most appealing images are colorfully culinary. From beautifully animated bowls of ramen and curry to cakes and confectionery, Japanese food culture never looked so good. If only you could reach out and take a bite…and now you can! For the anime and manga reader. With our increasing hunger for Japanese pop culture, comes an appetite to match. And with dishes from pop culture icons like One Piece and Naruto, manga and anime can finally be enjoyed in the comfort of your very own kitchen. Whether you’re enjoying Japanese ramen from Naruto or fried rice from Food Wars, readers and foodies can learn about Japanese cooking basics and some new series to enjoy, featuring recipes like: • Mitarashi Dango from Samurai Champloo • Onigiri from Fruits Basket • Yakiniku from Rurouni Ken shin If you enjoy Asian food, or books like The Manga Cookbook, Japanese Soul Cooking, or The Just Bento Cookbook, then Otaku Food is your next cookbook!

The scene opens with two well-known anime characters, Naruto and Luffy, sitting on a bench in a park. Naruto is holding a copy of "Otaku Odyssey: Uncovering the Anime and Manga Subculture in Japan" and is flipping through the pages, looking excited. Luffy is sitting next to him, munching on a piece of meat, looking curious. Naruto: "Luffy, have you heard about this new book? It's called "Otaku Odyssey: Uncovering the Anime and Manga Subculture in Japan." It's a guide for foreigners who are interested in traveling to Japan primarily for anime and manga. Luffy: "Really? That sounds cool! What's it about?" Naruto: "It's got a lot of information about the otaku culture and the anime and manga subculture in Japan. It tells you about the best places to find anime and manga-related experiences, and it even has a section on cosplay and the best Otaku districts like Akihabara, Nakano Broadway and Ikebukuro." Luffy: "Wow, that sounds really awesome! I've always wanted to visit Japan and check out all the anime and manga stuff there. I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of this book!" Naruto: "Me too, Luffy! It's going to be a great resource for our next adventure in Japan. Let's make sure to grab a copy and start planning our trip!" Luffy: "Yeah, let's do it! Gomu Gomu no Otaku Odyssey!" As the scene ends, the two friends high-five and continue discussing the book, excited for their upcoming trip to Japan and the new experiences they will have in the land of the rising sun.

Learn to recreate delicious dishes referenced in over 500 of your favorite anime series with this practical guide to anime food. Japanese animation has beautiful designs, fleshed out characters, and engaging storylines—and it’s also overflowing with so many scrumptiously rendered meals. Do you ever watch your favorite anime series and start craving the takoyaki or the warmth of delicious ramen or the fluffy sweetness of mochi? Now, you can make your cravings a reality with Cook Anime! Join an otaku on her tour through anime food and find out what your favorite characters are savoring and sharing and then learn to make it at home! Including: -Miso Chashu Ramen from Naruto -Rice Porridge from Princess Mononoke -Onigiri from Fruits Basket -Taiyaki from My Hero Academia -Hanami Dango from Clannad -Rice from Haikyuu!! -And many more! Along with each recipe, you will discover facts behind the food, such as history, culture, tips, and more. A perfect gift for foodies and otaku alike, Cook Anime is the all-inclusive guide to making the meals of this Japanese art form.

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A guide to ramen for the home cook, from the chef behind the beloved shop Otaku Ramen. Sarah Gavigan is otaku. Loosely translated, she's a ramen geek. During her twenty years working in film production and as a music executive in L.A., Gavigan ate her way through the local ramen spots, but upon moving back to her native Nashville, she found she missed the steaming bowls of ramen she used to devour. So she dedicated herself to mastering the oft-secretive but always delicious art of ramen-making and opened her own shop within a few years. An Italian American born and raised in the South, Gavigan is an unlikely otaku. While her knowledge of ramen is rooted in tradition, her methods and philosophies are modern. Though ramen is often shrouded in mystery, Gavigan's 40+ recipes are accessible to the home cook who wants to learn about the cuisine but would sometimes rather make a quick stock in a pressure cooker than labor over a vat of liquid for twenty-four hours. Ramen Otaku strips the mystique from ramen while embracing its history, magic, and rightful place in the American home kitchen.

In recent years, otaku culture has emerged as one of Japan's major cultural exports and as a genuinely transnational phenomenon. This timely volume investigates how this once marginalized popular culture has come to play a major role in Japan's identity at home and abroad. In the American context, the word otaku is best translated as “geek'—an ardent fan with highly specialized knowledge and interests. But it is associated especially with fans of specific Japan-based cultural genres, including anime, manga, and video games. Most important of all, as this collection shows, is the way otaku culture represents a newly participatory fan culture in which fans not only organize around niche interests but produce and distribute their own media content. In this collection of essays, Japanese and American scholars offer richly detailed descriptions of how this once stigmatized Japanese youth culture created its own alternative markets and cultural products such as fan fiction, comics, costumes, and remixes, becoming a major international force that can challenge the dominance of commercial media. By exploring the rich variety of otaku culture from multiple perspectives, this groundbreaking collection provides fascinating insights into the present and future of cultural production and distribution in the digital age.

When a free Otaku who lacked money met a mysterious beauty, his dull life was bound to cause waves. She was sweet and mysterious, she was an intelligent planner in the daytime, and a sexy seductress in the dark at night; he was a web writer with black-rimmed glasses in the daytime, and was still a master gamer with black-rimmed glasses in the evening; when the Otaku met a beautiful lady, when the ordinary planner met a veteran planner, an inverted love would be played out in the city of desire.

Tokyo is ground zero for Japan's famous "geek" or otaku culture--a phenomenon that has now swept across the globe. This is the most comprehensive Japan travel guide ever produced which features Tokyo's geeky underworld. It provides a comprehensive run-down of each major Tokyo district where geeks congregate, shop, play and hang out--from hi-tech Akihabara and trendy Harajuku to newer and lesser-known haunts like chic Shimo-Kita and working-class Ikebukuro. Dozens of iconic shops, restaurants, cafes and clubs in each area are described in loving detail with precise directions to get to each location. Maps, URLs, opening hours and over 400 fascinating color photographs bring you around Tokyo on an unforgettable trip to the centers of Japanese manga, anime and geek culture. Interviews with local otaku experts and people on the street let you see the world from their perspective and provide insights into Tokyo and Japanese culture, which will only continue to spread around the globe. Japanese pop culture, in its myriad forms, is more widespread today than ever before--with J-Pop artists playing through speakers everywhere, Japanese manga filling every bookstore; anime cartoons on TV; and toys and video games, like Pokemon Go, played by tens of millions of people. Swarms of visitors come to Tokyo each year on a personal quest to soak in all the otaku-related sights and enjoy Japanese manga, anime, gaming and idol culture at its very source. This is the go-to resource for those planning a trip, or simply dreaming of visiting one day!

This book aims to provide comprehensive empirical and theoretical studies of expanding fandom communities in East Asia through the commodification of Japanese, Korean and Chinese popular cultures in the digital era. Using a multidisciplinary approach including political economy, East Asian studies, political science, international relations concepts and history, this book focuses on a few research objectives. In terms of methodology, it is an area studies approach based on interpretative work, observation studies, policy and textual analysis. First, it aims to examine the closely intertwined relationship between the three major stakeholders in the iron triangle of production companies, consumers and states (i.e., role of government in policy promotion). Second, it studies the interpenetration, adaptation, innovation and hybridization of exogenous Western culture with traditional popular cultures in (North) East Asia. Third, it studies the influence of popular cultures and how cultural products resonate with a regional audience through collective consumption, contents reflective of normative values, the emotive and cognitive appeal of familiar images and social learning as well as peer effect found in fan communities. It then examines how consumption contributes to soft cultural influence and how governments leverage on its comparative advantages and cultural assets for commercial success and in the process augment national (cultural) influence. These questions will be discussed and analyzed and contextualized through the case studies of J-pop (Japanese popular culture), K-pop (Korean popular culture or Hallyu) and Chinese popular culture (including Mando-pop and Taiwanese popular culture).

American cosplay fans Patty and Ruby move to Tokyo in search of custom costumes and realize they need to get part-time jobs to pay for them, so they begin working at a maid cafe where they struggle at satisfying their boss and customers--until they find magical uniforms.