A peek into Japan's geek culture

Dodging the traffic in Tokyo's Akihabara district, an old man is dancing a jig while singing an enka song. As onlookers clap and he bows, you can make out the word (written in katakana script) on the Band-Aid plastered to his head: Beyonc.

In many ways, the Beyonc hobo embodies the weird melding of pop culture, absurdity and vague disreputability that makes Akihabara — or Akiba, as it's known — such an interesting place.

My guide Patrick Galbraith is a PhD candidate in information studies specialising in otaku ("geek") culture. He gives tours dressed in an orange bodysuit and a prickly yellow hairpiece — the outfit of Goku, the protagonist of the Dragon Ball anime series. After a massacre in June last year, Galbraith wants to dispel Akiba's reputation as a den of perversion and iniquity.

Moe the merrier

We head for Electric Town, home of the electronics shops, where saleswomen in miniskirts harangue passers-by through megaphones. Here Galbraith stops to demonstrate the emotional heart of otaku-ness. He squats, palms flat out, and adopts a scream or a yell expression. This is Goku channelling his giant fireball, he explains, adding that it is this kind of exaggerated intensity that drives Akiba's otaku culture. It even has a name: "moe" (pronounced mo-ay). "Moe is a way to capture emotion you can't verbalise," he says. "It's like love."

Moe takes many forms. Akiba's rental showcase is like a museum but one where anyone can hire a small display case to show off their collection of rare toys, baseball cards, plastic tank octopi — whatever they feel particular moe for.

Game of role-playing

But the best place to experience moe first-hand is at the @Home Café — one of a growing number of "maid" cafés, where waitresses enact a role-playing game with the customer as "master". We take our seats and our maid, Minami, appears in a jangle of hearts, pearls and rhinestone. She scribbles my name in ketchup on my omu-raisu (omelette rice) and we have a game of robot boxing she clearly loses on purpose.

Later, all the maids go up on stage together to belt out some J-pop songs. A man starts making strange gestures, as if pushing a beach ball forward. "Moe," Galbraith murmurs. "He is sending love, reflecting it back, showing them their talent is appreciated." This is a version of otagei, stylised dance moves with names such as Romance and Matrix, designed to transmit moe to the performer.

The juggernaut of idol pop groups can be found on the top floor of the Don Quijote department store, where a band called AKB48 gives a new meaning to the term "girl group".

Endearingly bad

The median age of the 48 members is 16; the youngest is 12. It's no insult to say the girls have minimal talent — this is part of the point. Their bad singing and dancing endear them to the fans, who grow more attached every time a girl turns left when the other 47 turn right.

For 35 years, Chuo Street, Akiba's artery, was closed to traffic every Sunday to leave the way clear for street performances. Now the police cruise along the back roads in patrol cars, stopping people in costumes.

The authorities would prefer Akihabara to conform to the clean image promoted by former prime minister Taro Aso, a manga fan who helped pump billions of yen into the district, hoping pop culture would save Japan's floundering economy. The embodiment of this hope is the shiny new UDX building, which hosts Digital Hollywood University and events such as Japan Anime Collaboration Market.

Anime, not otaku

"And yet," Galbraith says, "the animation popular in Akihabara is made by and for otaku, who the Japanese don't like. There's a conflict of interest — a policy of wanting to promote anime culture without having to deal with otaku."