Japanese "Book" Cards for Otaku

"Otaku" in the west refers to a fan of Japanese anime (cartoons) and manga (comic books). But here it refers to obsessive fans of anything - computers, trains, J-Pop idol groups, cars, baseball...

I would consider myself a baseball, amusement ride, and photography otaku. I am not a camera otaku; I can't tell you anything about camera models - I usually can't remember even which brand I have - but I love the action of photography and later sharing my work on my other blog.

Akihabara has pretty much everything that fits the otaku label, but especially anime/manga and idol fans.

 On the manga front, there are several bookstores selling thousands of comics and merchandise related to the characters. The card above is a promo for some book which comes out on October 27th. I bought my first Japanese manga (no, I haven't started trying to read it yet) and the cashier gave it to me with my purchase. It's a little wider than standard cards and I'm a bit interested in finding out more about these random promos.

Akihabara is Idol Central mainly thanks to the supergroup I've talked about before, AKB48. Their latest single is above.

 The three cards seen here (front and back) came from a series of three small paper doll books. Each of the girls is shown in a tank top and shorts, and you can put stickers in the book over their clothes to give them different appearances.

 I won't be playing with the stickers, but each book came with one card which forms a puzzle on the back.

Each of the three books has a series of cards which I believe forms its own puzzle, with the performers for each book belonging to one of the three subgroups of AKB48.

I saw the books a couple years ago at full price, but I found them on clearance so I picked up one of each. There's no way I'm buying a dozen of each book to build a set, though.