[merylsilverburg]

Originally posted by Cannibal Clown

I sit with a japanese girl every day at lunch. Her name in Fumiko, and she called me an otaku, in the sence that i liked anime a lot, and was really good at drawing it. So i guess that by now it kinda has a lighter meaning in Japan as well.

Yeah, like I said in an earlier post, the word probably lightened up by now, but I only wanted to share this information just so that everyone can know the real meaning of otaku. I mean, there might be still some people who feel edgy hearing the word (that Chika's Otaku 101 was last updated around '98) but now that something such as that probably hasn't occurred in a while, the meaning has lightened up.
There are still some very odd and delusioned people in Japan though...especially teens nowadays. Some teens run away from home, skip school and just stay in an run down room and do nothing but watch anime and play videogames everyday. I'm sure that maybe these type of people would be called "otaku" but really, they're probably just lazy kids.