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My Poruno Kissa Adventure
by Christopher Macdonald on Mon Apr 09, 2007 1:11 pm
If you're reading this, you've probably already heard of Japan's manga cafe's, which are called manga kissa in Japanese (I just learned that "kissa" is short for kissaten which is a Japanese tea cafe).

Most westerners tend to think of a manga cafe as a library/cafe like place where you can sit down at a table while reading the latest manga and sipping a cup of coffee.

In reality, manga kissa (at least the one's I've seen and heard about) are more like Internet cafes than western book cafes. It's true that many manga kissa have common areas where you can sit and read the latest manga (or other publication) if that's all you want to do, but the majority of their business comes from their semi-private booths and rooms.

Each booth will have a computer, TV and/or game system. Some booths/rooms are made for more than one person, others will only fit one.

Drinks are often free, while there is an extra charge for food from the kitchen. For a couple hundred yen an hour (a couple dollars an hour), a person can sit in a private booth and drink as much as they want, read manga, browse the Internet and play games.

Popular night life destinations like Shibuya tend to have a lot of manga kissa. These manga kissa make a lot of their income (probably most) from people who stay out too late at night and miss the last train home. Rather than paying for a very expensive taxi home (Taxis in Tokyo are not cheap), they prefer to spend the night in a manga kissa (the other option is a capsule hotel, but manga kissa are cheaper).

Most decent manga kissa have comfortable leather chairs in each booth that you could easily fall asleep in. Some manga kissa also have private showers, and a shower is included in the cost of an overnight stay ($12 or so typically).

Of course, the "manga" in their name isn't without reason. A good quality manga kisa will have a library of tens of thousands of manga. I did a quick count / estimate of the number of manga on the shelf at the last manga kisa I went to, and I estimated about 30,000 manga on the shelves.

The first time I was in Japan, I tried to find an Internet cafe one night, so in my best Japanese English, I asked a taxi driver for an "Intaneto cafe." After trying this with 3 different taxi drivers I gave up. Someone later told me I should have just asked for a "manga kissa." On subsequent trips to Tokyo, asking for a manga kissa has always worked quite well, until this trip, where it resulted in rather hilarious results.

The first time I went to the hotel desk to ask for a manga kissa, it was right after the hotel's public Internet station died. They directed me to a location only a short walk away, but when I got to the location circled on the map, I discovered a Fex Ex / Kinkos. Since the hotel's Internet station had died, I figured the clerk assumed I just needed to use a computer (which was in fact true at the time).

The next time I asked a different clerk for a manga kissa, he too tried to direct me to the same Fed Ex / Kinkos. He told me not to bother going though, since it would close at 8pm, which was only a few minutes away.

I explained to him that I wanted a 24-hr manga kissa. He reacted as if a light went off in his head, and after a few minutes conversing with another clerk, he gave me a new set of directions. I figured that this time they must have directed me to the right place.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

After arriving at the location indicated, I found what could only be described as a "porno kissa" (or poruno kissa). The business offered private rooms only, with Internet access, and had thousands upon thousands of porn, porn anime, porn manga and eroge on the shelves. Realistically I could have stayed there, because all I wanted was the Internet, but I just wasn't all that keen on the idea.

I returned to the hotel, explained to the clerk (the same clerk this time) that I didn't want porn, but rather wanted a place where I could "read manga, use the Internet and drink coffee all night." He apologized very meekly and profusely (but with an evident amount of humor since I was clearly amused by the situation), and gave me a new destination on the map.

Reluctantly I set out one last time to see if he had really understood what I wanted.

He had, and his directions led me straight to the dingiest smoke filled manga kissa I had ever been to. I asked if there was a no-smoking area, and to my chagrin there was not (and this is in an area of Tokyo that has completely banned smoking in public places).

Not willing to suffocate, I decided to set out on my own to find a manga kissa. I figured that, this being Akihabara, there must be tons of them.

Wrong again.

Akihabara closes pretty early. Most of the stores in the area close between 6pm and 9pm. So there's no reason for people to be stuck in Akihabara after the trains and metro close (around midnight), So without the high nighttime demand, there aren't all that many manga kissa in the area. But after half an hour or so I found a nice one that was only about a 10-minute walk from my hotel.

Sometime in the future, ANN will do a detailed feature on manga kissa.

This will probably remain one of my favorite stories to tell about my experiences in Tokyo.

-t
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