(no subject)
UPDATE TIME!!!
I went to Tokyo in August.
I took a night bus from Wakayama to Tokyo Aug. 11th and arrived the morning of the 12th. I didn't get a lot of sleep on the bus. T_T. Traffic was bad (Obon season). The bus would stop, I would wake up, the bus would be stopped long enough for me to drift off, the bus would start again, I would wake up *repeat almost all night*. I think there was a big accident in on the highway somewhere in Shiga and that's what really slowed everything down. We heard a lot of sirens as well :/.
The night bus left 10:30pm and arrived around 7:00am-ish. I was tired but excited. Let me tell you dear readers, lugging around a suitcase around Tokyo station trying to find your train and then up and down the stairs to various platforms at 7:00 am with little sleep is not so much fun.
I met up with my friend Molly (UT anime club!) at Minowa station and we walked together to the hotel. Yaay~
Tokyo was boiling hot and after a few minutes of walking I felt completely wilted.
This was the day before Comiket started so we had stuff to do to prepare / do non-Comiket related things.
First on the agenda was the Pokemon Center in Hamamatsucho. Hamamatsucho is a very businessy district so it's a little off putting with all the screaming children running around in paper Pikachu hats mixed in with the office workers heading to lunch/wherever.
It's a store with all the Pokemon related merch and omiyage you can imagine. From the obvious toys and school supplies to the Pikachu head cake trays and other cooking stuff. They had demos of the yet-to-be-released-at-that-time Pokemon Black and White, but the line was super long so Molly and I gave up on that. I got some omiyage for coworkers, (chocolate pikachu cookies in a bright red box with Pikachu and balloons on it!!), and a largeish Pikachu plushie with a Dittoface.
After that it was off to Akihabara to get the catalog for Comiket. Comiket is a free event but people usually purchase catalogs of all the doujinshi circles that are going to be there so they can find what they want in the huge event halls.
Akihabara has kind of changed from being the huge nerd mecha that it once was. That anime/manga/game/culture is still there and it's still a big part of what Akihabara is...but some of the smaller independent stores have been pushed out by the big electronics stores and even some mainstream clothing stores, (Muji and Uniqlo etc).
We headed for the enormous Yodobashi Camera. It's 10 floors, 6 of which are electronics, a bookstore/Tower Records floor, a restaurant floor, and a golf school on the top floor. It's huge. We found the catalog I needed..it was sooo heavy. Looked around a bit and then we went our separate ways because I was meeting my friend Liz and her boyfriend for dinner in Ikebukuro.
We met up at some family restaurant and we talked about UT and other stuff. It was nice to see old friends again.
The next day was the first day of Comiket. I felt completely overwhelmed that first day. I couldn't take any pictures because of the mass of people. You had to just keep moving. If there had been a place to sit down I might have just sat down and cried. I have been to anime cons before. I have been in really crowded places before. But I've never experienced anything quite like Comiket.
The catalog just made me confused the night before. You can only look things up by circle of artists, not by series. So unless I knew of the group of artists making a doujinshi about a series I liked, there was no way to look up what I wanted to find. In that case I was completly unprepared.
We split up and decided to meet up by some lockers at the same time every hour if we wanted to meet up or something. Molly has an iphone and it works when she has wireless, but in Big Sight it didn't work.
I spent pretty much the whole day in the West hall just looking around. (There is a West and East hall as well as an industry hall and a cosplay area) So I really only saw half of the convention the entire day. There was so much stuff I didn't even see everything.
Molly and I kept missing each other and we had lunch separately. I left the convention center and got a sandwich at some outdoor stand. It was still pretty hot but it was just nice to be out of the crowds and sit in the shade. It was almost like everyone else at Comiket had the same idea. There were loads of people all around carrying Comiket bags even pretty far from the con. I went back, wandered some more and met up with Molly again. The whole meeting every hour thing didn't really work out, we just kept missing each other.
Then it was back to Akihabara...We went to the Tokyo Anime Center which is pretty tourist trappy and pretty much only has some displays of about current popular anime, some upcoming stuff, and an overpriced giftshop. It's free and I think they have events going on so it might be worth a look if you find yourself shopped out in Akihabara.
On the 2nd day of Comiket I was feeling a lot better and was significantly less overwhelmed. I had circled some of the comics I was interested in and found out where they were. Even though the entrance to the East hall was so crowded I thought I might pass out, I got through it and got what I wanted.
(*Aside* I have no idea how Japanese women can walk around a convention center as big as Big Sight in their high heels. They are either crazy or badasses. I was wearing sensible sneakers the whole time and I almost felt like crying at the end of the day.)
I realized that I felt much better when I just hung out and took pictures of the cosplayers outside. By the way, at Comiket you can only take cosplay pictures in the designated cosplay area. I saw some amazing costumes within the halls (like the medicine seller from Mononoke) but I couldn't take their picture at the time.
That day was the only day that I could meet up with another UT friend Hiro. He was in the cosplay area at the same time and even after 30 minute of telephone tag we couldn't find each other. There were soooo many people. We eventually met up at the entrance. Then we went to out to a Korean BBQ place with his boyfriend and friend. We all probably ate and drank waaay too much but it was a great time. It was almost a sports bar atmosphere with a baseball game being projected onto a giant screen. Good times were had by all.
Phew. That's not all. I think I'm going to go ahead and post this and do the rest a little later.
I went to Tokyo in August.
I took a night bus from Wakayama to Tokyo Aug. 11th and arrived the morning of the 12th. I didn't get a lot of sleep on the bus. T_T. Traffic was bad (Obon season). The bus would stop, I would wake up, the bus would be stopped long enough for me to drift off, the bus would start again, I would wake up *repeat almost all night*. I think there was a big accident in on the highway somewhere in Shiga and that's what really slowed everything down. We heard a lot of sirens as well :/.
The night bus left 10:30pm and arrived around 7:00am-ish. I was tired but excited. Let me tell you dear readers, lugging around a suitcase around Tokyo station trying to find your train and then up and down the stairs to various platforms at 7:00 am with little sleep is not so much fun.
I met up with my friend Molly (UT anime club!) at Minowa station and we walked together to the hotel. Yaay~
Tokyo was boiling hot and after a few minutes of walking I felt completely wilted.
This was the day before Comiket started so we had stuff to do to prepare / do non-Comiket related things.
First on the agenda was the Pokemon Center in Hamamatsucho. Hamamatsucho is a very businessy district so it's a little off putting with all the screaming children running around in paper Pikachu hats mixed in with the office workers heading to lunch/wherever.
It's a store with all the Pokemon related merch and omiyage you can imagine. From the obvious toys and school supplies to the Pikachu head cake trays and other cooking stuff. They had demos of the yet-to-be-released-at-that-time Pokemon Black and White, but the line was super long so Molly and I gave up on that. I got some omiyage for coworkers, (chocolate pikachu cookies in a bright red box with Pikachu and balloons on it!!), and a largeish Pikachu plushie with a Dittoface.
After that it was off to Akihabara to get the catalog for Comiket. Comiket is a free event but people usually purchase catalogs of all the doujinshi circles that are going to be there so they can find what they want in the huge event halls.
Akihabara has kind of changed from being the huge nerd mecha that it once was. That anime/manga/game/culture is still there and it's still a big part of what Akihabara is...but some of the smaller independent stores have been pushed out by the big electronics stores and even some mainstream clothing stores, (Muji and Uniqlo etc).
We headed for the enormous Yodobashi Camera. It's 10 floors, 6 of which are electronics, a bookstore/Tower Records floor, a restaurant floor, and a golf school on the top floor. It's huge. We found the catalog I needed..it was sooo heavy. Looked around a bit and then we went our separate ways because I was meeting my friend Liz and her boyfriend for dinner in Ikebukuro.
We met up at some family restaurant and we talked about UT and other stuff. It was nice to see old friends again.
The next day was the first day of Comiket. I felt completely overwhelmed that first day. I couldn't take any pictures because of the mass of people. You had to just keep moving. If there had been a place to sit down I might have just sat down and cried. I have been to anime cons before. I have been in really crowded places before. But I've never experienced anything quite like Comiket.
The catalog just made me confused the night before. You can only look things up by circle of artists, not by series. So unless I knew of the group of artists making a doujinshi about a series I liked, there was no way to look up what I wanted to find. In that case I was completly unprepared.
We split up and decided to meet up by some lockers at the same time every hour if we wanted to meet up or something. Molly has an iphone and it works when she has wireless, but in Big Sight it didn't work.
I spent pretty much the whole day in the West hall just looking around. (There is a West and East hall as well as an industry hall and a cosplay area) So I really only saw half of the convention the entire day. There was so much stuff I didn't even see everything.
Molly and I kept missing each other and we had lunch separately. I left the convention center and got a sandwich at some outdoor stand. It was still pretty hot but it was just nice to be out of the crowds and sit in the shade. It was almost like everyone else at Comiket had the same idea. There were loads of people all around carrying Comiket bags even pretty far from the con. I went back, wandered some more and met up with Molly again. The whole meeting every hour thing didn't really work out, we just kept missing each other.
Then it was back to Akihabara...We went to the Tokyo Anime Center which is pretty tourist trappy and pretty much only has some displays of about current popular anime, some upcoming stuff, and an overpriced giftshop. It's free and I think they have events going on so it might be worth a look if you find yourself shopped out in Akihabara.
On the 2nd day of Comiket I was feeling a lot better and was significantly less overwhelmed. I had circled some of the comics I was interested in and found out where they were. Even though the entrance to the East hall was so crowded I thought I might pass out, I got through it and got what I wanted.
(*Aside* I have no idea how Japanese women can walk around a convention center as big as Big Sight in their high heels. They are either crazy or badasses. I was wearing sensible sneakers the whole time and I almost felt like crying at the end of the day.)
I realized that I felt much better when I just hung out and took pictures of the cosplayers outside. By the way, at Comiket you can only take cosplay pictures in the designated cosplay area. I saw some amazing costumes within the halls (like the medicine seller from Mononoke) but I couldn't take their picture at the time.
That day was the only day that I could meet up with another UT friend Hiro. He was in the cosplay area at the same time and even after 30 minute of telephone tag we couldn't find each other. There were soooo many people. We eventually met up at the entrance. Then we went to out to a Korean BBQ place with his boyfriend and friend. We all probably ate and drank waaay too much but it was a great time. It was almost a sports bar atmosphere with a baseball game being projected onto a giant screen. Good times were had by all.
Phew. That's not all. I think I'm going to go ahead and post this and do the rest a little later.