HESO Magazine 10 - Obsessions: The Otaku Issue

[Manny]

HESO magazine

In case any of the regular Chuya readers haven't checked out who we are yet, here's the lowdown: Heso is a free, bi-lingual (English & Japanese) culture magazine. It comes out every two months, and is distributed at over two hundred locations in Fukuoka and the Kanto (Tokyo) area. Every issue has a theme, and features the work of famous photographers, interviews, art, poetry and articles of social and cultural interest. We have published several translations (and plan to do more in future issues) of Chuya's work.

Why Fukuoka and Tokyo? It is one of the busiest air routes in the world (sometimes the busiest, depending on flight schedule). Fukuoka is the cultural and economic center in western Japan, while Tokyo is the center in eastern Japan. The ties are already strong, and we are making them stronger.

The theme of the current issue (January/February) is Obsessions: The Otaku Issue. In this issue <a href="http://hesomagazine.com">HESO Magazine</a> shines the strobe light onto all things Otaku.

What is Otaku? A thing? A person? An idea? All three? Without so much as giving you, the intelligent reader, an easy answer nor giving into the obvious stereotypes, we try to provide you a feel for what we think people obsess over, collect, peruse and secretly adore.

What are your secret indulgences? Weaknesses? Fantasies? Extroverted nerdisms?

Focusing on what we do best (photography) we eulogize the Cult of the Polaroid with a fitting Requiem.

We delve deep into everyday people’s musical passions with our Interview of Peter Barakan (NHK DJ &amp; Cohost of Japan’s 60 Minutes) and our featured live musicians: Derek Trucks of Allman Brothers’ fame and SugarFootStomp - the Japanese Bagpipe Collective.

We've got amazing photographs from Tetsuya Blues, Keico, Tommy Oshima and Clarice

Plus, just what is Love Earth and how are they helping you help the world?

Finally we've got the lowdown on Flickr from the inside: Find out why Flickr matters and if you are a Flickr whore (does that even make sense…)?

Subscribe now! It is a powerful, positive, exciting issue, and we hope that you will become one of our regular readers.