Hey cutie! Why the sour smile? Those guys over there?
They don't look too bad. The green uniforms look kinda like trash picker uppers. They're just getting rid of the trash in Akihabara. The dirty dirty trash that is so prevalent on the streets.
Oh... I see. The trash is you! No live performances on the street is the gist of the message. You can hang out in your costume, but don't you dare consider picking up a microphone and singing.
No bicycles either. ESPECIALLY no idol singers on bicycles. It's some sort of sin apparently. If you break these rules, be prepared for a beat down from some old retired guy who doesn't seem too sure what he's doing there.
There you have it, the state of Akihabara for the past month.
The blue hue of the photos is artistic towards the situation, and not at all me forgetting to reset the white balance on the camera.
Running out of batteries was unplanned, but strangely symbolic. You didn't miss much. There was a dude with a pet rabbit on his shoulder, but thats all.
What's all this Akihabara talk about? Time travel to a year ago, on the weekend, and Akihabara was a must see sight. The main road gets closed to cars, and people take to the street to perform. But not your Yoyogi Park style rock bands and break dancers. No, Akihabara is for the idols, cute girls with dreams of semi stardom. Go watch Perfect Blue to see what idols are about. You'd have these idols being barraged by otaku with their cameras. Imagine 50 fat, sweaty dudes with $4000 camera setups obsessing over a 19 year old girl in a pink maid outfit. Now multiply this by 30, add a couple dude versions of said idol (but keep the pink maid outfit), and you get a picture of the scene.
But it's all gone now. There's still hella people. Actually, there was a big crowd following the manner cops. The keepers of decency. The purveyors of purity. You can still walk into any building and buy a DVD of 18 year old school girls getting molested by guys on the bus, or an animation where the main plot involves a sort of satan - octpuss hybrid penis monster running rampant on the streets. That's still totally fine, just keep the dancers off the street.
Theres all sorts of theories on the internet about what's going on here. Some involves politicians, others involve big business, all of them have a little bit of yakuza thrown in for fun. Regardless of the truth behind the matter, Akiba sucks as a place to just hang out at and see random weirdness now. So yeah... don't go!
1 comment:
LMAO.
Nice post.
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