YOKOHAMA, Japan — Masa sits on the couch in his apartment with his arm around Konoha's shoulders, gently brushing her hair away from her bright blue eyes. Iris stands behind them, decked out in a frilly dress.
Masa speaks warmly to Konoha and Iris, greeting them brightly each morning and when he returns from work, but they never answer. His companions are life-sized dolls.
Konoha is his favorite. "She doesn't have to talk, because I enjoy her as a doll, not as a substitute for a person," said Masa, 32, a computer engineer who asked to be identified only by a shortening of his first name.
A grown man living with two nearly 5-foot-tall dolls in his apartment -- and dozens of smaller figurines -- would seem bizarre anywhere. Indeed, Masa keeps his full identity hidden and his curtains drawn to avoid ridicule by outsiders.
But he is part of a billion-dollar "Nerd Culture" that has grown so enormous that it has taken over an entire neighborhood in Tokyo and is making inroads into the mainstream.
The culture is firmly rooted in Japan's enduring fascination with "manga" comic books and animation that have won fans and critical acclaim worldwide.
But Masa and others like him -- known as "otaku" -- have taken that trend to another level by collecting dolls like Konoha and Iris or flocking to cafes staffed by waitresses dressed as comic book maids. They stock Web pages with photos of their dolls "posing" along country roads or taking a dip in hot spring baths.
The growing popularity of otaku culture has transformed the Akihabara neighborhood in downtown Tokyo from the city's main electronics district into a magnet for 20- to 40-year-old men looking for comics, videogames and anime DVDs. Figurines of all sizes of sexy doe-eyed girls in miniskirts are big sellers. Maid cafes are on every block.
Although part of the appeal of manga and anime figures is pornographic, an Internet survey of Japan's doll collectors indicated that most buy the figures only to dress or photograph them or simply to show them off.
The otaku -- overwhelmingly male -- have long been considered social misfits who soothe their loneliness with fantasy. But the runaway success of a movie last year about a nerd who falls in love, "Train Man," has helped make otaku tastes and aesthetics more widely embraced in Japan.
