love a good metaphor.

What Yuka actually means is that I’m going to be immersed allegorically inside the culture of modern Japanese technology. Or I’m going to be given a gun so I can fight aliens and vampires. Or I’ll be scanned into a green screen so that in post-production I come out looking like a computer character. Or…

Or…

Nope. Yet again, I have literally no idea what Yuka’s talking about.

Yuka, my grandmother and I walk through the immense building. The arcade is huge and heaving with people, and every square metre of it is beeping and flashing. The first floor is filled with hundreds of computer games: boinging and clicking and peeping. The second floor has things you can shoot and smash and bash and smack. The third floor is lit up by tiles being manically danced on and more photo booths crammed with squealing girls. The fourth is buried in soft toys. And the fifth appears to be a bowling alley.

At one stage, I see a game featuring live lobsters and a large foam bottom being smacked by a pair of teenagers. A yellow mist hangs in the air, the walls are flashing bright red, and the pale, blank gazes of gamers are everywhere, like zombies.

It’s not unlike a sort of twenty-first-century high-tech version of Dante’s nine levels of Hell. Except with much better refreshments and clearly marked exit signs.

By the time we make it to the sixth floor, I’m so disturbed by some of the things I’ve seen that I’m genuinely relieved to be pushed back into a giant cupboard. Except that this one has no chocolate in it and smells quite strongly of cleaning materials.

Bunty follows me in, then sniffs the air, pulls a face and heads straight back out.

“Sweetie pies,” she says. “I’m far too old to get into a dark box voluntarily.” She turns round and spies a food counter. “Ooh!” she says. “Slush Puppies! I must go dye my insides into a rainbow.”

If Annabel isn’t a persuasive argument for nurture versus nature, I don’t know who is.

Apart from me, obviously.

“Umm, what should I do now?” I politely ask Yuka.

“Exactly what I tell you, Harriet,” Yuka says, as in troops her team of stylists and hairdressers. “Do you think you can manage that?”

Here are some interesting facts:

• Manga is the Japanese word for ‘whimsical picture’.
• The Manga industry in Japan is worth 420 billion yen every year, which is two and a half billion British pounds.
• It has been a style of Japanese art since the nineteenth century.
• People in Japan consume more paper as Manga than they do as toilet roll.
• Pink lace really itches.

I know this because I’ve just been turned into a Manga Girl. And also because I asked the stylists and the internet a lot of irritating questions.

My face has been bleached out with bright white foundation, and then given rosy cheeks and dark brown painted freckles. My eyes have been made cartoon-enormous with clever application of eyeliner and fake eyelashes and electric-green contact lenses significantly bigger than the pupil they’re stuck to. I’m wearing a pale pink waist-length shiny wig with a shiny fringe that skims my eyebrows, and my dress is pale pink lace covered with hundreds of pink ruffles and bows and diamanté and ribbons and beads and feathers.

There are diamonds and pearls wrapped round my neck and wrists, and on my feet are little lacy white socks with baby blue shoes covered in sparkly silver stars. I even have frilly knickerbockers on, which reach nearly down to my knees and make me look like a Victorian lady at the seaside.

There’s no doubt about it: I’m as kawaii as a human gets. Rin would be so proud.

Yuka makes a few last-minute tweaks, adjusts my wig and then stalks back out of the makeshift changing room to where Bunty is leaning against a wall with a laser gun in her hands. Bunty’s missing every single vampire target, and when I raise my eyebrows she says, “I’m a pacifist, darling. The fact that these poor creatures do not happen to be real is neither here nor there.” Then she grins. “Yuka, how lovely and talented you are. It looks like you’ve been having an immensely good time with a glue gun.”

In fairness, I do look like a massive Blue Peter project. My outfit is phenomenally heavy. All I’ve done is walk through the door and I’m exhausted.

I really need to start doing some proper exercise. It’s not a good sign when a dress wears your muscles out.

Haru and Naho are waiting in the corner, where six or seven huge lights have been set up. Everything’s pointing towards a large glass and metal case, with buttons and a silver metal claw hanging from the ceiling. The whole thing has been painted bright pink, like the world’s most girly Tardis. It’s what Dr Who would travel in, if Dr Who was also Barbie.

As I get a little closer I realise with a start that the case is full of hundreds and hundreds of tiny dolls. Every single one has pink hair and freckles. Every single one is wearing a pink lacy dress and pale blue shoes. Every single one has massive, staring green eyes.

It’s intensely creepy.

“Oh,” I laugh nervously, trying not to notice that the eyes of the dolls are following me when I move. “That’s me. In the arcade game. I see what you mean.”

“Do you?” Yuka says. “Excellent. Now get in.”