In Japan, avid readers of a particular genre of media, such as manga, anime or computer games, are known as otaku. They have constructed a culture for themselves, which is referred to as otaku culture. The principle members in these cultures are young people, ranging from teenagers to people in their thirties. Accordingly, otaku culture is an important sub-culture within Japanese youth culture. This paper reports on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at a particular literary club where most of the members were otaku girls.

 Specifically, the study focuses on conversations that took place within group interviews. The principle participants in the study are eight junior high school students. They are all female and members of the literary club at a junior high school. Six of the participants described themselves as otaku girls. The participants were informally interviewed by the researcher, who is also a member of the otaku community. The 45-minute conversation was tape-recorded for subsequent analysis. The researcher also took field notes. In addition, coterie magazines produced by members of literary and comic drawing clubs were employed as data sources.

 Ethnographic analysis was conducted in order to describe how the otaku girls create meaning in reading/writing stories, and how they read/write stories in their daily practices. The results indicate that it is importance for teenagers to have their own safe place. Moreover, reading/writing stories is one strategy for creating such a place and of protecting that space against adult, paternalistic intervention.

 The findings suggest that we should not consider teenagersʼ literacy practices from a perspective of secondary reading that positions such practices as being intermediate. Rather, we should them from an adolescent literacy perspective that investigates new literacy education based on adolescentsʼ vernacular practices of reading and writing.