Love Doll Showroom in Tokyo

Traveling to Japan was a life changing experience, having been a big fan of anime and Japanese video games all my life. I looked for vacation packages to Japan but none covered the areas that I was interested in: Akihabara, Nakano, Shibuya. I didn't need to see the temples or countryside scenery, I only wanted to visit the mecca of J-pop culture.

Akihabara was a nightmare to get to. The subways were a complex mess. I got lost trying to get to Akihabara. Luckily, I managed to find the place just as the number of shoppers were picking up.

After going through mountains of cool games, anime DVD's and anime figures I stumbled upon a store that caught me completely off guard. It was a love doll showroom from the company Orient Industry. To be honest, the room was a bit scary and creepy. They had a lot of dolls that were older and didn't look real or natural. But they did have a couple that looked uncannily real.

They had a couple dolls laying on a bed, the store clerk demonstrated to a middle aged Japanese salary man how flexible the doll was. Even taking off the head to show how to assemble your doll. The whole place was weird, I was not able to hangout there for long before sneaking back to the familiar comfortable stores selling games and DVDs.

What was very interesting was the history of the love dolls of the company. There were displays of styles from the past, with popular faces and hairstyles from the 90's and early 00's. The posters and photos on the wall show their really early works from as far back as the 80's. These dolls have really come a long way.