So, my first post on steemit and I am already wondering just how much I time I will spend agonizing and rewriting what I will post on here.
What is an Otaku?
What is an Otaku? Wikipedia says it is a Japanese term for people with obsessive interests, commonly of the anime and manga fandom. In other words, if you are a sports fan you are an otaku. What about that person who collects coins? The woman who is always buying shoes? They are an otaku. Every single person has something they like and will obsess about in their lifetime. Hence, everyone, you, me or that crazy dog guarding his bone to the death is an otaku. Well, maybe not the dog, standards Ya know.
Let's begin with a little about me: I am a 35-year-old male. Hobbies are reading, gaming, anime, manga, and reading. Yup, you're reading that right, I put it in twice because I love to read that much. I get up and read, after work I read. Science Fiction, Fantasy, and almost every genre under the sun are within my purview, even the more, how to say it, esoteric romance branches.
One of the problems I will have on Steemit is that my grasp of writing is weak, things like grammar and rules are fuzzy. You would think that with all the reading I do that it would be easy for me, but it's the exact opposite. I am so used to reading that my mind automatically fills in the gaps so that the reading is smooth and without interruption. I end up having an intuitive feel when something is wrong, but I can't pinpoint it.
I began to take an interest in reading by 3rd grade when my uncle bought Redwall by Brian Jacques. Like a typical boy, I wasn't interested in that stuff and wanted to play my NES, computer games, soccer, football, basketball and all the things a typical boy would do. Then I got sick one day and bored out of my mind, I decided to read it. A new world opened up and I was hooked.
Every day before bedtime I would sit on the floor of the living room, put Redwall on the coffee table and read for an hour. It took me 3 months and as soon as I finished it, I immediately began to reread it. This time, it took me only a month in a half. I got distracted a bit when that Christmas my dad got me a SNES and I started playing all sorts of games, my favorite being RPG's. Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire, Chrono Trigger, and Lufia turned into my bread and butter.
It wasn't until I changed schools in 4th grade that I really began to read. Being the new kid in school was really rough and I retreated to the world of books where anything was possible. By the time 5th grade came around I was reading on a college level and could read a 300-page book in 2 hours.
Just before my junior year in High School, I found a little site on the internet called Toriyama's World. Little did I realize that a whole new world was going to open for me, the holy land of the otaku, the world of manga and anime. They were scanlating some little-known manga's at the time called Hikaru no Go, Naruto, One Piece, and Hunter-X-Hunter. I was fascinated!! I had begun to feel limited with the slow release of the type of novels I like to read and had even started to delve into full blown romance novels in a desperate attempt to find something new. I became obsessed and read, read and read so much that I even ended up dabbling in the scanlation scene. It became too much of a PITA though and soon after I decided it wasn't for me, but it did re-ignite my desire to learn Japanese. My current interest in manga has waned a bit from its heyday, mainly due to being jaded with the formulaic archetypes. Instead, my current interests now lay in light novels and xianxia.
Light Novel is a term used for Japanese YA books and they are used to form the basis for a lot of anime/manga being released today. Sword Art Online, To Aru Majutsu no Index, Hidan no Aria, Mahouka Koukou no Rettousai are examples of light novel's being turned into anime and manga.
It was the advent of my light novel addiction that truly sparked my numerous attempts to learn Japanese and my desire to one day go to Japan. Xianxia is Chinese Fantasy and Martial Arts novels combined. It is huge in China with authors releasing multiple chapters online daily. The stories are amazing and it's fascinating how they weave Chinese myths and legends into a world of fantasy.
I currently have my own website called the Internet Otaku but I consider it a failure. It felt like I was fighting the WordPress at every turn and I ended up spending more time trying to get things to work like I wanted it to then I did writing posts, so eventually, I just stopped posting. So far this first post on Steamit seems to be going 10x smoother so I hope this continues.
One of my goals, when I created my website, was to go to Japan and I am happy to say that in early April I went to Japan for 15 days. It was an incredible experience and I plan on making some posts about my trip on Steamit.
Anyway, I hope this was a good first post and introduction. In the coming days, I plan on posting about my current obsession, the digital currency market how I found steamit, Japan, novels, nootropics and just various other items that catch my interest.