Lisa Katayama created a video about the proceedings and the wedding:

Katayama links Sal9000's actions to a fringe group of Otaku concerned with what they call 2-D love.

Writing for the New York Times magazine, Katayama explains what differentiates 2-D men from other Otaku:

Like most otaku, the majority of 2-D lovers go to work, pay rent, hang out with friends (some are even married). Unlike most otaku, though, they have real romantic feelings for their toys. The less extreme might have a hidden collection of figurines based on anime characters that they go on "dates" with during off hours. A more serious 2-D lover, like Nisan, actually believes that a lumpy pillow with a drawing of a prepubescent anime character on it is his girlfriend.

According to many who study the phenomenon, the rise of 2-D love can be attributed in part to the difficulty many young Japanese have in navigating modern romantic life. According to a government survey, more than a quarter of unmarried men and women between the ages of 30 and 34 are virgins; 50 percent of men and women in Japan said they were not "going out with anybody." One of the biggest best sellers in the country last year was "Health and Physical Education for Over Thirty," a six-chapter, manga-illustrated guidebook that holds the reader's hand from the first meeting to sex to marriage.

Katayama then introduces 2-D guru, Toru Honda, a man with an interesting view of what it means to be in a modern relationship:

A few years ago, Honda, a college dropout who worked a succession of jobs at video-game companies, began to use the Internet to urge otaku to stand with pride against good-looking men and women. His site generated enough buzz to earn him a publishing contract, and in 2005 he released a book condemning what he calls "romantic capitalism." Honda argues that romance was marketed so excessively through B-movies, soap operas and novels during Japan's economic bubble of the '80s that it has become a commodity and its true value has been lost; romance is so tainted with social constructs that it can be bought by only good looks and money. According to Honda, somewhere along the way, decent men like himself lost interest in the notion entirely and turned to 2-D. "Pure love is completely gone in the real world," Honda wrote. "As long as you train your imagination, a 2-D relationship is much more passionate than a 3-D one." Honda insists that he's advocating not prurience but a whole new kind of romance. If, as some researchers suggest, romantic love can be broken down into electrical impulses in the brain, then why not train the mind to simulate those signals while looking at an inanimate character?

Honda's fans took his message to heart. When he admitted to watching human porn at a panel discussion in Tokyo in 2005, several hundred hard-core 2-D lovers in the audience booed with shock that their dear leader had nostalgia for the 3-D world. Later, in an interview with a Japanese newspaper, Honda clarified his position, saying that he was worried 2-D love was becoming an easy way out for young otaku, who might still have a shot at success in the real world. "I'm not saying that everyone should throw away hopes of real romance right away. I am simply saying that guys like me who have gotten to a point of no return can be happy living in 2-D."

Indeed, many of the stories shared reveal men in various stages of arrested development, making the choice to move to an imaginary world due to real or perceived strikes from the real world.

[38-year old businessman Ken] Okayama has turned to 2-D for all his emotional needs - the desire to buy new anime helped him get through a period of unemployment in 2003, and his body-pillow girlfriends, whom he dates two or three at a time, consoled him when his first real-life girlfriend dumped him in 2007.

"I was steps away from getting married," he explained earnestly when prodded about his experience. "You have to make sure you don't hurt a real person; you have to watch what you say, and you have to keep your room clean. In Japan, it's not O.K. to like another person if you're already with somebody else. With an anime character, you can like one character one day and a different character the next."

Okayama's flings were unconsummated, but for others 2-D love is a full-fledged alternative sexual lifestyle. Several hours after parting with Okayama in Akihabara, I met Momo at a fan convention. Momo, who makes X-rated body-pillow covers and sells them through his one-man club, Youkouro, which translates roughly as Furnace of Child Love, was there on business. The convention was being held inside a stuffy warehouse filled with boxes of 8-by-10, pamphlet-style, home-brewed manga and swarmed with thousands of anime fetishists, mostly men. Many 2-D lovers are unsatisfied with what the market has to offer, so they custom-make their own fantasy goods and come to conventions to barter and socialize with the like-minded.

In the context of a rejection of the real world for a more complete fantasy world, one could imagine that Sal9000 is just an early adopter. While some of the commentary surrounding the Sal9000-Anegasaki wedding focuses on "wacky Japanese!" stereotypes, reading through some of the writings on 2-D brought to mind another subculture driven mostly by men: the RealDolls.

BBC did a documentary on the phenomenon, called "Love Me, Love My Doll' focusing on the dolls themselves and the lives of men who become devoted to their plastic partners.

An article in Salon also explored the life of Davecat (pictured above) and his doll-companion Sidore, showing how even outside of an otaku-context, people are trying to bring their fantasies to life with the help of simulations:

Davecat keeps a picture of his girlfriend in his wallet. She's pretty, with long black hair, an alluring mole under her left eye, and glossy red lipstick. Her sheer tank top shows off her full breasts and the hoop through her left nipple.

Ask Davecat about Sidore — pronounced She-doh-ray — and he'll tell you she's everything that turns him on: beautiful, loyal, a great listener. Si-chan, as he affectionately calls her, is half British, half Japanese, which is nice because he's always had a thing for both British and Japanese culture. Even their clothing style and taste in music is simpatico — they're both Goths.

Like many born in the sun sign Cancer, Sidore is a homebody, but then, she couldn't leave the comfort of the bed she shares with Davecat even if she wanted to because Sidore is a 100-pound solid silicone Real Doll.

Go ahead. Flinch at the notion of a man having sex with an imitation woman and classify him: lonely loser. Pathological creep. Misogynist. Potential rapist. Sicko. True enough, some men who have sex with Real Dolls are creepy, the kind of guys you wouldn't want to be alone with. But not all. Many are simply lonely — some tragically so. Others are disfigured or infirm. Some are oddly sweet, like Davecat, for whom a Real Doll is a "teddy bear with benefits." And others proclaim their normalcy and defend their Real Dolls as no different than a 3-D version of a Playboy centerfold.

Many doll lovers — or "iDollators," as some of them call themselves — participate in a confusing online subculture where the lines between art and pornography, the ludicrous and the tender, and fantasy and fetishism blur like watercolors. Spend time talking to Real Doll aficionados as I have over the past year, and you come to understand that behind every Real Doll is a man with a reason.

Over at the RealDolls website, some interesting modifications have emerged since the stories about Real Dolls were published back in 2005 and 2006. For one thing, you can now order an elf-ear modification for the dolls. For those of us with Tolkien fantasies, perhaps? Another newly offered modification is blue skin - perhaps to appease fans of the video game franchise Mass Effect? (See one the blue skinned female aliens from the game, above.)

Why are so many men looking for satisfaction in fantasy items and inanimate objects? Is it a symptom of our culture's increasing dependence on technology? An unanticipated side effect of a global marketing culture dedicated to presenting a perfect fantasy life, which is only available through purchases? Or is this just a long-needed outlet for those who never felt comfortable engaging in personal relationships?

(Image via Boing Boing)

Video: Man In Japan Weds Anime Game Character [Boing Boing]

Related: Love Plus Has Your Virtual Girlfriend Experience Covered [Kotaku]
Love in 2-D [New York Times]
Of "Wacky" Japan and the Myth of the Other [Racialicious]
Love Me, Love My Doll [BBC America]
Just like a woman [Salon]
Official Site [Real Dolls] [NSFW]

Under the image of a woman in profile with her mouth wide open, staring blankly at something in the distance above an approaching seven-inch burger, the ad reads:

Fill your desire for something long, juicy and flame-grilled with the NEW BK SUPER SEVEN INCHER. Yearn for more after you taste the mind-blowing burger that comes with a single beef patty, topped with American cheese, crispy onions and the A.1. Thick & Hearty Steak Sauce.

This ad does not just hint at sex, it bashes you over the head with lame puns and heavy-handed double entendres worthy of the Todd. To make matters worse, the woman about to receive the "hot beef injection," as one commenter here put it, is made up to look like a blow-up doll. She is expressionless, a blank slate on which we are supposed to project our (assumed to be masculine, of course) desires. Unlike the "2 Girls 1 Sub" video from Quiznos, which is its very own brand of nasty, or the new Burger King ad with Audrina Patridge, or even that Carls Jr. ad, the woman here is not excited about the giant sandwich looming near her face. She is empty and submissive, as pliable as a plastic doll. Strangely enough, it doesn't make us very hungry.

The association of meat and sex is nothing new of course, as feminist vegetarian theorist Carol J. Adams has shown time and again. In an interview published on her website, Adams says,

Everyone is affected by the sexual politics of meat. We may dine at a restaurant in Chicago and encounter this menu item: "Double D Cup Breast of Turkey. This sandwich is so BIG." Through the sexual politics of meat, consuming images such as this provide a way for our culture to talk openly about, and joke about, the objectification of women without having to acknowledge it. The sexual politics of meat also works at another level: the ongoing superstition that meat gives strength and that men need meat. There has been a resurgence of "beef madness" in which meat is associated with masculinity.

Adams' argument applies on several levels here. The ad displays both the meaty sandwich and the female body as objects ready for masculine consumption. The woman in the ad is not meant to enjoy the burger, for this is not about her. Like the meat, she is a thing to be consumed, a thing that will provide the viewer with a hearty dose of masculinity and virility. In an interesting twist, this ad, which is clearly intended to sell a piece of meat to straight men, also presents the phallic stand-in as something desirable. Men are supposed to see this image and think something along the lines of: "I like BJs and burgers, cuz I'm a real man. I need some BK," yet the ad makes the meat into a sexualized, fetishized masculine object.

Several other blogs have weighed in on this particular ad. Copyranter says:

Well, this ad via Singapore for the BK Super Seven Incher is the new leading "most overtly blow-jobby ad" I've ever seen, surpassing this one, this one, and even this one. Nice misogynistic touch making the woman look like a fucking blow-up doll. Note the Photoshopped-enhanced creamy white mayo.

A debate has sprung up on Flickr about this image, with one commenter being labeled a "annoyinghypersensitivefeministbitch" for failing to understand that the ad is actually "funny and sexy." Commenter "photo.envy" responds:

Sexy is a state of mind. There's a difference in being sexual and being used as an object of want to sell burgers. Objectification is the difference.

Fast Food News doesn't like it much either:

We've seen more suggestive advertising, to be sure, but this one just seems to be poorly executed AND in bad taste (and probably tastes bad, too).

We're not convinced about that last part, but if showing a sandwich dripping with mayo aimed for the mouth of a lifeless woman isn't in bad taste, we don't know what is.

The New King of Blow Job Ads [Copyranter]
Copy Conundrums: BK's New Ad Hints At Fellatio [Media Bistro]
How Many Cliches In One Ad? I Think We Can Do Better [YesbutNobutYes]
It'll Blow [Flickr]
BK's Suggestive 7 Incher Ad [Fast Food News]
Audrina Patridge Gives Good Burger In New Ad [People]
Carol J. Adams [Official Website]

Related: Quiznos Wants People To Associate Their Sandwiches With Poop, SpongeBob Meets Sir Mix-A-Lot In New Burger King Ads

First off, I know (and have known) many people in non-traditional relationships with non-vanilla sexual interests who have perfectly happy, loving relationships that incorporate each person's (usually complementary) fetishes in a supportive and open way. Sometimes, they have met through the Internet, sometimes through organizations designed to cater to their needs, sometimes through happy accident. But, as I have previously noted, for some fetishists, the fetish can serve as a pretty effective barrier to having an actual relationship with someone, which involves having to open yourself up to both positive and negative emotions. Walker lines up 4 examples of the latter type, with an asexual man and a charming older women who likes younger men (not a fetish!) seemingly the most well adjusted.

First up is "James," who loves his Real Doll like she's an actual person. He admits, like most serious Real Doll fetishists, to unspecified problems in having and maintaining relationships. Like his compatriots in this article, he hasn't told a soul about his fetish or the "woman" he loves and has sex with. He also prefers having sex with the doll to that with actual women, calling it "a lot easier and more pleasurable than the real thing," you know, where he'd have to take the needs of another person into account. But this, perhaps, is the money quote:

perhaps it's the power thing that appeals – being in control of every aspect of her.

Perhaps? I'd say that's exactly it.

Next up is the sex addict, "Simon," who cheats on his wife regularly with any NSA sex partner he can meet on a site designed to help spouses cheat. It's not that he doesn't love his wife, see, it's just he needs more sex than she can give him, and 12 years is a long time to fuck the same pussy! Of course, he could be single, or he could have an honest open relationship with his wife, but that's, of course, not the attraction. He only sleeps with married women, so they won't tell his wife, and says,

I know so many men who say things like, "Oh my wife wouldn't cheat on me," and I laugh and think, OK, whatever, mate – she probably already has, with someone just like me.

Except his wife, of course. She's the perfect wife. I don't know that Simon deserves to be categorized as a fetishists — if he and his wife had a legit open marriage, he might have been — but he's still a prick.

Onto "Gemma," who likes swinging and having sex with others watching. Having taken her last boyfriend to a sex party — where he watched her have sex with another dude (which is the point of a sex party) and didn't like it — she'll never tell a potential lover interest about her sexual interest out of fear that he'll leave. She will, of course, continue to go to sex parties and orgies and will never tell a soul about it because they'll think she's a slut. Naturally, she also doesn't think about dating anyone in the scene because, you know, they like to have sex with a lot of people.

Last on Walker's list of fetishists is "John," who has a fetish about playing at baby, which might (or might not) be related. But rather than continue to seek out relationships with women who fulfill his sexual fantasies and older-woman urges, he gets right on the Internet and orders himself up a wet-nurse and diaper-changer.

I realise that it sounds weird, but it gives me some sort of comfort at the same time as addressing my sexual needs. The fact that it's all done anonymously through the web provides me with extra privacy, too.

Basically, he went from having nominally-healthy relationships with older women that he cared about to having completely anonymous fetish sex with women he knows nothing about and ho know nothing about him.

Luckily, Walker interviews two people that really aren't technically fetishists — "Miriam" and "Mark" — who don't make all people with supposedly alternative lifestyles look like they are embarrassed about their life choices, selfish, controlling and/or sort of creepy. Miriam is a divorcée with grown children who dates younger men she meets on the Internet. That's about it. That's her "fetish." She thinks they're more fun in and out bed and, after a long marriage, ugly divorce and depression, she's just having a good time right now and isn't ashamed. Mark is an asexual, who just simply isn't interested in sex of any sort and never has been. He's open about it to at least some members of his family, has tried to find partners and belongs to an Internet of like-minded individuals who make him feel less alone in the world. He actually seems completely well-adjusted, and has an active social life with ongoing relationships with people, unlike the doll-guy or the diaperman.

Look, most people don't run around talking about their sex lives to a ton of people, which is totally fine (and a way to make holiday meals far less uncomfortable). But there's a difference between thrusting your sex life in people's faces and never having anyone that you're not sexually involved with (possibly anonymously) know who you really are. If a guy who likes to wear diapers and be breast-fed can't even tell the woman at whose teat he suckles his real name, he's not quietly living out his sexual fantasies in an emotionally healthy way, he's walling himself off from relationships that can fulfill him sexually and emotionally. And that sucks — for him and for the women who are potentially interested in both parts of him.

Modern Sex: Catherine Townsend Logs On To The New Revolution [The Independent]

Earlier: If You Always Like The Emotionally Unavailable, It's Because You Probably Are, Too
Why Am I Supposed To Date Older Men, Again?

Sure, everyone gets involved with an emotionally unavailable guy once. They can be so charming! You know there's more to him! He'll realize that you're special! And so you putter around him, a perpetual motion machine of awesomeness in which you minimize your flaws and maximize your coolness factor, acting loving but aloof enough not to scare him at the same time, after which he inevitably fucks someone else or you get hurt by his actual aloofness or worn down by pretending to be some perfect version of yourself to convince him get emotionally invested. Then you learn not to do it again and go find someone that thinks it's funny or even endearing that you talk too loudly when you drink or sing really bad karaoke or have a weird bellybutton and hopefully you open up and let him get to know that person you are when you're not trying so hard to be liked.

On the other hand, some of us keep doing it. Your life becomes an endless string of dudes that don't allow you to get too close or bail before you can get too invested or force your hand into bailing because you're just not going to take that shit from some guy. And you get to feel the butterflies, and you get to know you can still feel by being in just enough pain when it ends that you notice and maybe it will wring some tears out of you, but, really, when he's not letting you get that close, you're actually not that close. Since you can't get close to him, since you're spending your time trying to be so cool or not being upset about the aloofness and the lack of emotional intimacy, you're not letting him in anymore than he's letting you in.

So, yeah, it's weird that some dudes would rather have an expensive doll than try to have a relationship with a person, or that a woman would love the Berlin Wall and not an actual man, but it's no weirder than convincing yourself that you're in love with some dude you don't really know and who doesn't know you. It's all just one of a myriad number of ways to protect your most fragile bits because if someone doesn't know you, then it isn't gonna hurt that bad when they don't love you back.

People In Love With Objects [BoingBoing]
Japan Makes Robot Girlfriend For Lonely Men [Reuters]

Related: Objectùm-Sexuality Internationale

Please know that from here on out, most links will be NSFW, as are the images after the jump.

So that picture of me above with that sex doll? That's a knock-off of a Real Doll. They are $5,000 (about $1,500 less than a Real Doll), and it's really obviously a jankier version. Some random dude walked over to us as I was feeling her up and he said, "Looks like my ex-wife. She couldn't cook, but man could she fuck." And then he walked away. I'm thinking those sort of one-way, TMI conversations with strangers is fairly commonplace here.

The lady working the booth wouldn't let me touch the doll's face, but I touched its "breast" instead and found out that it's made out of sticky material. (Either that or someone's already had their way with her). After we walked away from that booth, Jonno pulled out some Purell and I thought, "Oh, damn, good idea."

We turned the corner and saw the real Real Doll booth. The skin on the samples they had around were much smoother. It's kind of amazing to see them in real life, because they're just too realistic. Even the half-body versions were confusing me in my peripheral vision; I kept thinking they were people staring at me. And this display caught my eye:

You can swap out the peens for different lengths and girths, depending on your mood, I guess. When I saw all of them together I couldn't help but think about how everyone always raves about the buffets in Vegas.

Oh and this is the face of the doll that was featured in Lars and the Real Girl. (Not to be a square or a whatevs, but that poster of Ryan Gosling did a lot more for me and my vagina than anything else I'd seen on the floor today.)

There isn't much of a gay presence this year at the convention (or says Jonno, my tour guide), but I did meet these dudes from Naked Swords, an on-demand video site. Check out that bulge in the pants of the tan dude on the left.

Oh, so I've only got one toy so far. They wouldn't give it to me for free to test and review, but I got one for wholesale. It's called the Fukuoku Five-Finger Massage Glove. An older woman dressed as a cop with a badge that read "Sexy" used it on my back and it felt like heaven (I'll let you know how it feels on my vagina as soon as a I get a minute alone), while an older dude dressed in hospital scrubs was demonstrating an electric toothbrush vibrator on my neck and arms. He was a close talker. Oh, and then I caught what his hospital scrubs said:

That's "pussy shaver" in case you aren't able to make it out.

We didn't do the whole floor today, since we still have all day tomorrow. We were kinda exhausted and hungry and had a bit of mall head. But just outside the convention center, in the hallway, I saw these women, who were AWESOME.

They aren't working a booth or with any company. They independently put out a DVD, the name of which I never caught. And they were a lot of fun. I went to take a picture of them, and some hotel security woman came over to me and was like, "No pictures in the hallway." The girl on the far right was like, "She can take a picture of me if she want. Go 'head, baby. Snap. Snap-snap. Snap it, girl."

Tonight we're going to a Village Voice/Babeland party, so I'll be reporting back from that. I'll also be posting some fashion galleries tomorrow. I'm praying that I get into some major shit tonight. I'm thinking it won't be too hard to achieve. Anyway, this is just the introduction to my Vegas Diary. Now that I've got all the boring shit out of the way, we can delve into the debauchery tomorrow.

Oh, and as I sign off, here is the view from my room:

Rita Rudner! Her eyes are freaking me out.

Earlier: All Dolled Up With No Place To Go

My Fake Baby: Living Doll [Channel 4]

Earlier: All Dolled Up With No Place To Go