Akiba Noodle has just released the very first Akiba instant Ramen. This shop on the Akihabara main street is getting more popular everyday and this new instant ramen is probably going straight on the top of Akiba bestselling omiyage (the crazy market created from scratch by the figure maker Toypla with the Maid cookies).
If your are into instant japanese instant foods you can't miss Akiba Noodle blog!

(3.11 Update) There are Akiba Ramen report on Akibablog and AkibaMap too.

November issue of Wired is dedicated to Manga invasion of US market and "how Japanese comics are reshaping pop culture".
Back in the days when I wanted to be a (post) cyberpunk writer, after visiting Comiket I proposed to Wired an article about Comiket and doujin culture. Anyway, Daniel Pink has written a great article about doujinshi and is nice to see that this theme is still interesting after 10 years I proposed it to Wired! (just a note: it's the first time I read an article about doujin culture and the Comiket is not cited even tought it got 4 times the attendees of Comicon! ^_^')


If you read the article on Wired.com  there are a lot of comments that point out that "there is a version of anmoku no ryokai (tacit understanding) at work in America already". What probably it missed is the magnitute of doujin culture industry in Japan. One thing is a Star Trek fanfic distributed on the net and one is having several shop chains, like Toranoana, focused only in doujin (selfmade/homebrew) manga, music CDs and videogames (doujin game scene is so big that many doujin games has even been ported to consoles)...