Manga Cafe Mika

A manga cafe (the Manga Cafe Mika) has opened in San Francisco. You pay to go in and then you can read from the extensive stock of 20,000 books. The family manga expert and I went to Japantown to try it out. It costs $5 for the first hour and then $1.25 per 15 minutes after that. When we had looked in the window the other week I had thought it was stocked with English language manga, but in fact 95% is Japanese. The English language section is over 700 books but they are mostly recent kids books, predominately from Viz. There was no Akira, no Osamu Tezuka, no Lone Wolf and Cub. I was a bit disappointed. The local expert happily read Naruto and I read Death Note. I thought everyone there would be children but they were mostly grownups. There are computers too, and a screen continually running anime, which everyone ignored.

Capitalism fails

Free Comic Book Day was a disappointment. The website said there would be manga comics among the free comics. We went to the local comic store. This was the first time G. had been there. She had money burning a hole in her pocket. Comic Outpost is an old style comic store. It was pretty friendly with a two plates of cookies and cupcakes by the free comics. But there was no manga to be seen apart from some books like Akira that were new when I was a kid. It seems like a failure of capitalism when a kid cannot spend her money on what she wants. Fortunately the library provided the goods and we returned home happy.

Hikaru no Go

Hikaru no Go is a manga about a Go player. Because this is a comic things aren't quite that simple and our hero Hikaru (on the right above) is sharing his consciousness with an ancient Go master. I am learning to play Go and so I am perhaps biased, but I find the whole thing very charming. I am not the only one and the success of Hikaru has led to a revival of Go in Japan. Managa is very popular with the kids here in San Francisco and I am hoping for a similar surge in interest here.

Because the stories are written in Japan they read right to left so you read the both the speech balloons and the panels in the revers of the normal direction. That's also what the 'read this way' thing is at the top.

It's also nice that, unlike some manga, these are suitable for all ages.