おたく/オタク (otaku)

At first, I thought that "otaku" was the direct equivalent to the English terms nerd and geek. But I've since heard it used in other contexts. For example, I was team-teaching a conversation class in a high school, and the textbook unit was about music. It offered several photographs and challenged students to find the appropriate genres to match the pictures. Among the genres were: pop, rock, rap, country/western, and classical. As we went through the genres, I tried to think of a few examples from past and present for each genre. When it came to rap, I mentioned some of the old school Def Jam artists (Public Enemy, the Beasties, LL Cool J) in addition to some of the newer faces. My team-teacher, by way of teasing me, whispered "Otaku!" to the class. She meant that I was into the genre more than the average, or perhaps normal, person would be into it. (I am not a hardcore rap fan, but I like a lot of the old school and some of the new.) According to Wikipedia, otaku is "a Japanese term used to refer to people with obsessive interests, particularly (but not limited to) anime and manga." The article goes on to explain the word's origin as "derived from a Japanese term for another person's house or family (お宅, otaku). . .often used metaphorically, as an honorific second-person pronoun. In this usage, its literal translation is "you". For example, in the anime Macross, first aired in 1982, Lynn Minmay uses the term this way." For people of my generation, this might seem like news; in America, Macross was the first of three generations in the cartoon called Robotech (which was adapted from three different anime series). This is from Macross, the Japanese movie: I thought about putting some pictures or video of "otaku" dudes, but I'd rather not contribute to stereotypes. Not that people who strongly resemble such stereotypes don't exist; I see them pretty frequently. (The legendary Akihabara, with its many maid cafes, is supposed to be the mecca of otaku culture.) I'm sure Google and YouTube have millions--millions!--of links for you to check out, if you're interested.