Ikuzo!

Welcome to Otaku on a Budget! My name is Paulo. I am at the moment, 28 years old, married with no kids. I work as a programmer and earn a decent wage, just enough to keep me and my wife relatively comfortable...ergo the “on a Budget” portion of my blog title. But what’s an “Otaku”, you might ask? Here are a few excerpts from Wikipedia and Urbandictionary:


Otaku (おたく / オタク)

            “In modern Japanese slang, the term otaku is most often equivalent to “geek". However, it can relate to a fan of any particular theme, topic, hobby or any form of entertainment.^”

“…refers to someone who has a devotion to a subject or hobby (not necessarily anime) to the point of not leaving home.”

“…his/her social skills have atrophied or never even developed, due to their manic involvement in their chosen fandom.”

“…someone who only leaves their home to eat or shop, if at all, with an overwhelming and unhealthy obsession about something.”

“…otaku is also used to refer to a nerd/hacker/programmer.”

So now that we’ve established what it means, you can pretty much guess what kind of things I’ll be blogging about. I have been an otaku of many things in the past, including but not limited to the following:

-       Anime (Dragon Ball Z, Ghost Fighter, Slam Dunk, KO, Naruto, Bleach, etc.)

-       Trading Card Games (Magic: the gathering)

-       Game Consoles (Nintendo > MegaDrive > Playstation 1 & 2 > Xbox)

-       Role Playing Games (Diablo 1 and 2)

-       First Person Shooters (Half Life, Counterstrike)

-       Bass Guitar

-       Massive Multiplayer Online Games (Ragnarok , RF, 12 Sky)

-       Android OS

-       Graphic Novels aka Comics (Sandman, Lucifer, Y the last Man, Chew, etc.)

-       Exotic Pets (Monster fish, Tarantula, Scorpion)

…and recently: Gunpla!

For those who do not know, Gunpla (ガンプラ, Ganpura) refers to the practice of building Gundam models. My brother-in-law introduced me to exotic pets and gundam modeling.   He is therefore also an Otaku by definition (although he still has a social life, while I do not.).

I am starting this blog because I want to share my experiences and vent my frustrations as an otaku on a budget…after all, it isn’t easy keeping a hobby when you have limited time and resources – it’s like having an itch that you can only scratch once a month!

The first few posts will probably be about stuff I’ve done in the past. Later on I’ll be organizing the posts into sections like ‘Work in Progress’ and maybe put up a gallery for easy access to pics. I don’t own a proper camera though so forgive me for uploading crappy pictures…it’s probably for the best anyway because my Gunpla skills are still developing and the low quality images help hide the imperfections J.

Don’t forget to bookmark this site! See you soon!