Pictures for day 5.
I got up around 08:30 and took care of the hotel's checkout. Luckily I could store my backpack behind the front desk, because there was no chance in hell that I'd drag that huge thing around the whole day. Speaking of the hotel: I took my breakfast there (as opposed to getting a
pizza pan from 711 again) and I have to say that I really like the classical, Japanese breakfast.
My plan was to visit the
Tokyo Big Sight, to attend day 2 of
Comiket #73. This day revolves around manga drawn for the female audience, which are usually the stories I like a lot. There's something about the characters and stories that is more attractive to me.
Comiket, for those not in the know, stands for
Comic Market. It's a huge convention, focused completely on amateur and semi-pro comics. Over the course of three days, about 35.000 groups of artists sell their manga to over 500.000 visitors. The event is spread across four square kilometers of convention space, bound together by a few kiloms extra of hallways.
I wanted to visit Comiket at least once, just to see what it's all about. I'd heard a lot about it and it really is quite an important event for otaku in Japan. Of course, it also featured prominently in one of my favourite anime,
Lucky Star. So far I'd only seen dutch doujinshi and this's made me very curious about how things are done in Japan. I'll discuss that a little more in-depth in the next blog post.
In the meantime, let me say that the Japanese are the masters of crowd control! At no point in time were the crowds forced to a standstill, there was no shouting and shoving and there were no accidents. In general, everyone was disciplined and well behaved :) It's amazing to seen about 10.000 people, crammed into a square kilometer, without any crap breaking out.
A lot of Comiket's visitors come there with a plan. A few weeks before the event, their catalogue (about the size of a phonebook) is printed and people decided on which artists they really want to visit. This usually leads to big checklists, with exact "addresses" in the convention halls. It's all quite efficient :) Armed with checklists and shopping trolleys, these hardcore fans race across the festival, to ensure that they get everything they wanted.
I on the other hand went in there with only one plan:
there is no plan :D
I'd decided for myself that I'd spend no more than Y10.000 (62 euros) and that I'd leave once I'd done so. Stats at the end of the Y10.000:
* I'd visited 1 row of clusters in 1 of the halls. This relates to about 1/12th of the whole con space.
* I'd spent about 3 hours circling that single row of clusters.
* 1 cluster consists of about 28 groups and one row of 15 clusters. This means I visited about 420 artists.
* I'd bought 23 doujinshi, ranging in price between Y100 (62 cents) and Y1200 (~7.5 euros).
Because my trip "home" was bound to be a long one, I'd decided to skip the rest of Comiket. I even skipped taking photos of all the cute/sexy/cool cosplayers.
Ah! A tip, if you're ever in Tokyo and have an hour or two of free time: ride the
Yurikamome line back and forth, from Shimbashi station. This "train" (though it's more of a bus on a guided track) will take you past some awesome architecture, with the prettiest buildings in Tokyo. It'll also give you a great look at the Tokyo skyline, as seen from the bay.
Before heading to the Shinkansen, I'd lunch at
Coco Ichibanya Curry, which is a chain of restaurants that I would heartily welcome in the NL. ^_^ Their curries are awesome, though I will never take anything about heat level 2. I think that my buddy
Edmond (who usually puts tabasco on anything he eats) would stop around level 3. It's scary to think that things can go up to level 6. o_O;
The Shinkansen ride back to Shin-Osaka was comfortable, yet very busy. It was the day before New Year's and everyone was going back home for the holiday. Tokyo station was loaded with people and It was getting quite hard to move around. And yet again the Japanese shone in their displine! Travelers waiting for their trains were neatly lined up at the tracks and again there was no pushing or shoving. Very nice.
I got "home" around 20:30, had dinner (takeout udon noodles from 711) and had a chat with my roomies. Today (the 31st) I'll stick around Osaka and tonight I'll celebrate New Year's with some of them. Mostly, I'll be resting up a little bit :) the past five days have been very busy!
Posted in:
comiket
,
comiket #73
,
osaka
,
shinkansen
,
tokyo
