Otaku, Ojisan and Gaijin: a triumvirate of awkwardness

As featured on the ever-popular, now coffee table bestseller Stuff White People Like, Japan is hands down a crowd pleaser among the Western folk.

Americans tend to glamorize the unknowns, especially those of a foreign, far east creed. The island nation exudes this alien aura of a beautiful unknown. Many of us cannot fathom an ancient society that for so long, kept it's culture and people locked within.

Be that as it may, Japan has now become popularized as being this nucleus where tradition and unparalleled technology fuse and form a mutated creature of a culture all its own.

From the outside looking in, Japan's mystery is alluring and radiates this delicate, exotic beauty. From the inside looking further in, Japan is full of a strangeness that is often exemplified by the men who live in it.

As a patriarchal male society, women are often left as an afterthought to the real inner workings of the country. There is this seeping awkwardness that transpires from the pores of most men in this country and they can be categorized into three major groups:

Otaku. Otaku are the anime-loving, manga-masterbating freaks who adore anything without a pulse. It has been stenciled into their brains that the most sexually stimulating and emotionally fulfilling beings on the planet are in fact characters from their favorite comic or video game. Their minds are addled by steady streams of technology and their aspirations in life are to actually become 2D like their favorite characters, so they can battle in victory together or finally have cybersex with their true anime amor. As a term similar to Trekkie or fanboy, these joystick riding geeks would be the subject of constant ridicule in American high schools across the nation. However, this island of Nihon has come to love and respect them as a sub-culture that adds yet another layer to the fetish for big-breasted cartoons and entire districts of Tokyo existing as a gamer's playground.

Ojisan. Ojisan literally means uncle in Japanese. But, that uncle. The estranged one that dropped out of life to do acid in his mid-40's and join a jazz quartet, touring parts of upstate New York and New Hampshire. The one that occasionally comes to family dinners and plays footsie with you under the table and then blames it on the cat after he steals all the dinner rolls and anything else he can fit into his man purse. Ojisans are creepy, older men who often come in numbers. They enjoy social drinking with fellow ojisan, plopping their overworked bald heads between the bosom of snack shop girls, licking the syphilis from their lips before heading home to their neglected wives, but not before groping the sweet, young short-skirted girls on the train ride there.

Gaijin. Finally the foreign icing on the awkwardly sliced shortcake. Gaijin are scalded like Hester Prynn with that scarlet letter "A" emblazoned all over their white, western faces. Gaijin who stay in Japan do so most likely to teach English or geek it up with their otaku neighbor. They could potentially be outcasted members of another society and seek solace in the strange, cold walls of a Japan unknown. Perhaps they have a hard time assimilating to their own culture so they strive for one so far removed from their own that they might actually fit in. 9 out 10 times it works.

As a friend once said, every foreigner who comes to Japan and stays is crazy. The society of men who breed more and more awkward stock into the livelihood of the country are unknown to the innocent white people who read blogs about how wonderful Japan is and want some sort of bragging rights for knowing which sashimi is best. If they were to come to Japan and live (which they probably wouldn't because they're not crazy), they would see that this triad of otaku, ojisan and gaijin permeate the culture and create a foreign world not even the most pretentious white people would know. It's a scary world of cultural discomfort, even for those born and raised. But, of course, how can I judge because I am just as nuts as the next.