HARK! My latest book is now on sale! Mondo Tokyo: Dispatches from a Secret Japan is a collection of my writing and photography on Japanese subculture from 2005 right up to the present! Inside, you will find chapters on Movies, Anime, Fashion, Music, Otaku, Kaiju, and all points in-between.
It’s available in both print and digital from Sutherland House Books!
Mondo Tokyo: Dispatches from a Secret Japan
On Sale Now!
Tokyo, in the early aughts, was a weird place. Lonely single men wanted to marry action figures instead of women. High school girls worked at maid cafes and were paid to act like Manga characters. Nightclubs filled with kids in anime cosplay who danced to remixed versions of cartoon theme songs.
People’s private obsessions, once confined to bedrooms and computer screens, were transforming entire city blocks.
Patrick Macias was there, chronicling the emergence of “Cool Japan” in a famous blog entitled “An Eternal Thought in the Mind of Godzilla.” Now with biting humor and cultural insight, he looks back on the trends, personalities, and happenings that dominated the bleeding edge of Japanese pop culture in those years. You’ll meet maids who imitate Michael Jackson, anime producers sent to prison for guns and drugs, school girls determined to resurrect surf rock, nightclubbers who worship “uncool foreigners,” and all manner of wide-eyed ex-pats, weirdoes, and dreamers who came to Tokyo in search of a stranger, more surreal version of life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrick Macias is the editor in chief of Otaku USA magazine, the founding editor of Crunchyroll News, and the author of numerous books about Japanese pop culture, including TokyoScope: The Japanese Cult Film Companion. In addition to contributing liner notes to the Criterion Collection and Arrow Video, he also wrote the original story for the anime series URAHARA, which was simulcast globally in 2017. Born and raised in Sacramento, California, Patrick now lives in Tokyo, Japan. Learn more at www.patrickmaciaswrites.com