Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
LR samples Japan with Otaku Takeout
Deep in the heart of the Outlets of Little Rock shopping center resides a store that transports you, figuratively, to the Land of the Rising Sun. The name of this store is Otaku Takeout, and this weekend, starting at 7 p.m. today going through Saturday night, is their second annual Cherry Blossom Festival.
After hearing about the festival and having several people, mostly anime fans, recommend the store to me, I decided to head on down to the shopping plaza to take a peek at what this little piece of Japan on the edge of Little Rock was like.
I made my way through the labyrinthine plaza, until I noticed the Otaku sign at 11201 Bass Pro Parkway, which consists of some Japanese text and an aggressive looking smiley face. As I walked through the door, my senses quickly became overstimulated.
To my left, a pile of hundreds of Pokemon plushies. To my right, anime-inspired clothes and figurines. In the middle of the store, a slew of parasols hung, suspended above a giant wooden picnic table where a few teenagers were playing some foreign card game. On the walls, at least five mounted TV screens broadcasting a Super Smash Bros. video game that a trio of young adults were playing somewhere in the store.
I was quickly greeted by the store’s manager, Landon Crawford, who was quite the peppy young man. He led me to the back of the store where there was a self-service ramen bar that was decorated like a Japanese street market, with yellow and red lanterns hanging from the bar’s awning. Crawford introduced me to the giant wall of ramen, dozens upon dozens of noodle packets, all in a language that I couldn’t make heads or tails of. At least most of the packets had different anime characters drawn on them, each character’s face a different shade of red denoting how much heat
and spice to expect.
Crawford directed me to the more mild noodles and showed me the four-step process of the self-service ramen bar. As I sat at the bar, slurping my noodles and imitation octopus meat, Crawford played the part of bartender and gave me an in-depth description of the Japanese beers and sake the shop had available. While listening to Crawford describe the differences between soju and sake, I kept thinking to myself just how much this store feels like a Japanese Willy Wonka. I honestly was expecting Crawford to break out into song with “the sake-man can.”
Eventually I was escorted to one of the two karaoke rooms where I was to meet the owners of this establishment, Gwendolyn Herzig and her brother Jesse Pruitt. The room was decorated in a traditional Japanese style, complete with shojis painted with cherry blossoms. I had to sit cross legged at a table that
was only inches off the floor. I felt like I was in a movie.
When Herzig and Pruitt finally arrived, I had a million questions for them. The first one being, what exactly does Otaku mean? Pruitt described it as being a rough translation for the word fandom. Just like there are comic book nerds who like to argue over Marvel and DC or sports fanatics who memorize individual players stats from decades ago, there is a seemingly growing number of people in Arkansas who are obsessed with Japanese culture, and this is pretty much the only store in the state that can satisfy their obsessions.
How did a brother and sister, both of whom are pharmacists, end up creating such a unique store? Herzig explained that it all started a few years ago at the Park West Pharmacy. Pruitt joked with his sister about adding a Japanese gumball machine, called a gashapon, to the corner of the store. The next day Herzig announced to her staff that the pharmacy would be turning Japanese.
One gashapon machine
slowly turned into a whole section of irresistible Japanese snacks that generated additional revenue for the pharmacy. And then about a year and a half ago, the duo opened up Otaku, with its two karaoke rooms, a full fledged Japanese arcade, skill-based claw machines, the aforementioned self-service ramen bar and four festivals a year. Herzig agreed that the store does feel very Wonka-ish. She went as far as saying that if her brother is the Wonka of the pair with his crazy colorful ideas, then she is the Slugworth where she makes all his ideas practical. And they both hinted at the fact that there’s even more growth and wonderfully unique, Japanese ideas to come.
Otaku’s second annual Cherry Blossom Festival starts at 7 o’clock tonight with a cosplay competition and continues all day Saturday with all sorts of traditional Japanese games and prizes, as well as a jazz band that’ll be playing music inspired by video games. For more information on the event go to otakutakeout.co.