Reading English manga turns heads on Japanese subways.

23.04.2009 by Adrian A. Lozano

In the last four years I've hand many friends from overseas stay at my house when they come to visit me in Tokyo. Most buy more stuff than they can possibly fit in their luggage and some how they come up with the "bright idea" of giving me their Tokyo travel books they bought prior to arriving to Japan as If I need a book on Tokyo. I think I have a total of about 6 of these books, but finally somebody left some useful reading material. Recently my friend Egan Loo came to Tokyo for the Macross Launch Event back in February and left me his English translated copy of Naoki Urasawa's 20th Century Boys manga by Vis Media.

I honestly had no interest in reading it and have been trying to ignore the TV commercials for the movie version that are always playing on the TV, but I finally gave it a read. I figured the best place to read it was on the way to work, since everybody seems to read manga and newspapers on the commute to and from the office in order to completely ignore the world around them. I don't know what it was but as soon as I cracked it open and started reading I noticed movement from the people around me. They all would lean forward and peer at the cover of the manga and usually do a double take. Some of them would seem to almost want to say excuse me can i see that, but would quickly retreat only to look again as if it was a car accident on a highway.

An interesting reaction from people that read manga on subways and trains all the time. Volume 1 of 20th Century Boys turned out to be pretty good I would like to continue reading the rest of the volumes but it's just that imported translated manga is a way too expensive here in Tokyo. Besides I've got tons of figures to buy. So the lesson here is, when you come to Japan don't leave your travel books with your host, we don't want them leave something we can use like a box of Fruity Pebbles.