Sep '16 06 - 18:03media immersion

There's this incredible thing they have in Japan...

called media immersion pods-- In Tokyo, the New Trend Is 'Media Immersion Pods' New York Times May 14--where you go to a sort of cyber cafe that has little private or semi-private cubicles filled with  limitless pop culture i.e. comics (manga), videos, DVDs, high speed internet, porn etc. and you just go there and zone out.  The Times article couches the phenomenon in vaguely new age tones but from what I can tell these pods are basically isolation tanks for bingeing and numbing out. What's interesting is that that not only are they acceptible, these cyber/porn/comic book pods are considered cool. And parents are OK with their kids spending the night at one of these things.   
Japan, for all its repression, is somehow able to accept and embrace the fact that its citizens need a safe place to go and temporarily lose themselves. Ironically you can also have sex at these places. Isolation breeding togetherness.