Tokyo: If Danny Choo had sold as many CD's or books as he has had hits on YouTube he would be as famous as U2 or JK Rowling. Google "dancing stormtrooper" and that's Choo, bedecked in a Star Wars outfit dancing in the streets of Tokyo while hundreds of bemused passers-by look on.
If you think this is a bit geeky, you'd be right. Choo, born in London but now living in the Japanese capital, is the world's most famous "otaku" - which literally means nerd in Japanese. Technology, gadgets and the world of cosplay (costume role play involving film, comic book and animation characters) are his life.
It is a web of weird and wonderful subcultures that roam the streets of Tokyo and the boulevards of cyberspace. Many otaku are loaners who prefer to communicate using their mobile phones through internet forums and social networking sites. "At a Comic Market there was one otaku... he was wearing a surgical mask," Choo recalls. "I was lost and I asked him ‘how do I find a particular booth'. He was really shocked I spoke to him. So I just apologised and went on my way."
Choo has found success because he is one of the few otakus who can talk about the world he inhabits. He has opened the lid on Planet Geek and allowed the rest of the world to look in and see how Japan's techno-obsessed live.
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Choo knows all about being an obsessive. As a teenager growing up in London he was fixated with Kylie Minogue, reportedly even getting into cat and mouse games with her bodyguards to trail her round town. His bedroom was a Kylie shrine.
He trained as a shoe maker and worked in the fashion industry before jettisoning the glitz to learn Japanese and get a job with a Japanese airline in London. This opened Choo to the crazy culture of the otaku. Yearly visits to Tokyo became a permanent move in the 1990's. "When I left Tokyo I used to say to my friends over there how lucky they were to live and work in Japan, so moving there seemed like a natural step for me," he says.
Dannychoo.com started as a blog to keep friends back in England up to date on what he was doing 5,000 miles away. Then the world started looking in and the phenomena began. Two and half million unique users log on each month, generating 20 million pages views. Choo is big in Japan, and now everywhere else.
The site is still a giant blog. He shoots, writes and films everything he does on what he calls his portal to Japan. Hot new topics include the growth of outlet malls in Japan and the latest in gadgets. Pokens (dongles carrying your contact information)are his favourite new bit of kit. "You meet someone, connect your Pokens, go home, stick it in your laptop and then see all of the data of the person you just met. So there's no need to have these pieces of paper, which pile up at home. Everything is online," Danny says, sporting a posh English accent despite his years overseas.
Other developments, such as 3D TV, are already so passé in Japan he dismisses them. One significant trend he does pick out is the death of the laptop: life outside the home or office in Tokyo is solely lived on mobiles, he says. "One of the reasons is they just can't be bothered to turn on their computer," he says. "Many Japanese bloggers update everything from their mobile phones. They're also a medium to pass time. I think we will see phones that do everything eventually. You have seen that in Tokyo. Books, films, art, music, internet, social networking."
Danny agrees to play tour guide to his adopted home when we meet up. Tokyo is immense and impenetrable to the unfamiliar. It has taken him 15 years to unpeel the layers of this urban onion.
Techno geek central is Akihabara, a mega-sized equivalent of Tottenham Court Road. "Akihabara has pretty much everything you need if you are into electronics or cosplay, so if you have only one day to be a geek, this is where to head. Within minutes of the station there are dozens of huge gadget stores, anime models and bookshops and manga cafes."
Choo, however, likes to hang out in a few of the less predictable parts of the city. "There's a place called Nakano Broadway. It's a very old place and like a huge shopping centre. The second and third floors are crammed with gadgets, figurines, posters and a ton of other otaku gear. It's got more rare stuff than Akihabara."
Shibuya, famous for the world's biggest (six-way) pedestrian crossing, is Choo's own back yard. In the Shibuya 109 shopping centre we found video glasses, watches with video shooting and playback capability and a fabulous store called Chiara offering bling for every electronic gadget imaginable.
It was in Shibuya that Choo shot to fame with his dancing Stormtrooper act. "People got bored of a walking stormtrooper, so I started dancing. And that brought in a lot of traffic, features on CNN, lots of magazines, even the official Star Wars blog, which is quite nice," he laughs. "This year I'm planning to do some short movies for online and for mobiles where the stormtrooper becomes a Japanese salary man. The Death Star blew up and he had to go looking for a job. He starts as a toilet cleaner then works his way up through the ranks."
It's easy to see why Choo's peculiar style has rock-star appeal. Surely the Hollywood deal cannot be far off.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
