Surprisingly enough, I did not actually buy a single thing for myself while I was there although I did pick up a couple things for friends. At the same time, I did receive some goodies from circles I knew which was certainly appreciated. Overall, I was impressed with what I saw at a lot of the events and all in all I was able to get to the circles I wanted to hit without the need to try to break the rules and camp out at night.

Please note, if it isn’t obvious enough already, some of the circle links beyond this line may have some NWSF material. You view it at your own discretion.

Comic1☆4

Among all the events I went to, this was the most important one. Comic1 has quickly grown into a sort of “easy mode” before diving into the madness that is Comiket. With many of the big circles in attendance, it was certainly worth the effort.

The battle plan was simple. As per the previous iteration of Comic1, the objective was to beat the first train from Shin Kiba station to Kokusai Tenjijo station, which is the closest stop to Big Sight. My starting place was in Ochanomizu at the Hotel Mystays Ochanomizu which put me in proximity to the Tokyo Metro Marunouchi subway line which would be the quickest path to Tokyo station. Normally, this was the path taken from my starting location:

Hotel Mystays Ochanomizu -> Tokyo Metro Marunouchi subway line (Awaji-cho) -> JR Keiyo (Tokyo) -> TWR Rinkai line (Shin Kiba station) -> Kokusai Tenjijo station

In order to further optimize time, the group I was with decided it would be best to hop a taxi at the first stop to Tokyo, take the Keiyo line to Shin Kiba and from Shin Kiba take another taxi to the closest stopping point for the lines to Big Sight. Though this worked out well in the past, it didn’t work as well given that the taxi driver, thinking he knew where to drop us off, ended up dropping us off near the bus transit area on the ground floor of Big Sight. Despite the 10 minute hustle to get from that point to the front of Big Sight, we still managed to beat the first train in by over 15 minutes. The difference was a couple thousand person advantage. Not too bad of a start.

Once everything got started, I made a mad dash for Suzuya’s booth as a friend in my group had requested the tapestry that was for sale at that booth. Fearing the worst given that it was a shutter circle (ie. a circle who’s booth faces outward to allow for longer lines that snake through the outside perimeter of Big Sight) I was surprised to see that the line moved briskly and the prize was acquired.

Most of the rest of the time was spent hunting around for nice Touhou Project doujinshi and goods and there were a lot to be found especially in terms of stick posters. Another notable circle I stopped by was Carnelian’s booth which had Ｂenigyokuzui Vol. 26 and accompanying game featuring Honoka-chan, an original character created by Carnelian and plenty of love-love time no doubt in the game. The doujinshi itself is a design book from the game that…well hints at that much.

Super Comic City 19

Moving on to Super Comic City, the team shrinks down to just me as only I have any reason to go to this event which is more of a BL fest than anything else. Having gone to this event a few years back, I was well aware of what I was getting myself into. Granted, I suppose I held out hope given the cover of Day 1′s catalog compared to Day 2′s catalog.

Maybe the gals on the day 1 catalog are traps...

It certainly wasn’t the case although there was some normal stuff in between the wide swaths of BL on the floor. As for the circle who did the cover, Kimi to Boku no Labyrinth, they do have some moe-tastic images and works completed although you may not see that from the get-go without some searching on their site.

Given that there was less a reason to rush for the event, I took my time getting up in the morning and skipped the taxi and just took the route as is. I got in about an hour after opening and the place was a mad house. I believe some estimates pegged each day’s attendance to be around 80,000 people each day. Given double the attendance of Comic1, it was no surprise that cell phone coverage was rather spotty through each day of the event.

One major stop was a visit to a joint circle that a friend of mine was part of. The circle, Shiro☆Fura, had put together several…ahem, interesting compilations of doujinshi featuring the cast of Watchmen. My friend, who is a big fan of all things involving American comic books, is also a fan of Ironman and had requested that I bring her several cans of Dr. Pepper that featured characters from the recent Ironman 2 film. In return, I got some fabulous BL. \o/

Perhaps realizing that this wasn’t exactly my thing despite my amusement a friend of hers, Higenashi, who was also a recipient of a couple cans of Ironman 2 cans gave me some of her doujinshi which thankfully were not BL-related.

In the pile I received her Comic1 doujinshi and some past titles as well. I was particularly fond of the Love&Muscle doujinshi which featured the Russian loli, Kudryavka and the muscle, Masato from Little Busters. Now, I don’t know a lot about this particular visual novel, but I wonder if Masato has Ryouga (or Ranma 1/2 fame…didn’t think I’d pull that one out eh?) syndrome as he goes lost for a year trying to find Kudo who gets captures by nefarious forces. Their reunion is rather heartwarming despite everything. If nothing else, Masato looks rather badass after his many adventures fighting street gangs, fighting in a war zone and even going toe to toe with what appears to be a shaolin monk. And at a year older, you can’t go wrong with some slightly more mature waffles if you know what I mean.

Finally, before leaving my friend’s booth I spied of all things…a BL doujinshi of the G.I. Joe ninjas Storm Shadow and SnakeEyes from the movie version. With nary a thought, I was gifted this as well. Well, this is certainly more BL than I bargained for!

On day 2, I was busy hunting heaps and heaps of Hetalia, but needless to say…well there was really nothing else to say about it. Moving right along before this turns into an entry ONLY on BL…

Comitia 92

Knowing what I knew about Comitia, I knew that it was also an event to take it easy in. Joined by a couple extra comrades, we journeyed once more to Tokyo Big Sight. As with Super Comic City, I wanted to visit a couple circles but other than that it was an easy day of walking around and taking in the sights and sounds on the event floor.

My first stop was over at Nogami Takeshi’s booth. Some of you may know him for his works on various Strike Witches related materials and probably more so for his open letter to CNN after they decided there was no new news to report but the need to re-open the story about the “controversy” over Illusion’s eroge, Rapelay. I’m not going to bother going into much detail about this topic as it has been beaten into the ground enough times already. Well…maybe another time.

In any case, I had met Mr. Nogami at a function a month before and we had kept in touch since. We chatted about a few things, mostly in regards to the recent attempt by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to put a law on the books to ban fictional works that involve minors drawn in sexual situations. More on this can be found on Dan Kanemitsu’s rather exhaustive guide on his website. Before parting ways, he gave me his latest doujinshi including his new release from Comic1 which I had forgotten to pick up. I was rather happy about his gift and I really must find a way to repay him the next time I am in Japan.

World Witches, The Witches of the Sphinx Vol. 01 covers the North African campaign during the invasion of the Neuroi. The other doujinshi, The Azure Century Chronicles Vol. 10 is the latest in a series of books covering the naval exploits of an all-female crew in the Japanese Navy in an alternate universe 1930s-1940s period. Both of these books are also translated into English by Mr. Dan Kanemitsu. The World Witches volume and other Strike Witches universe doujinshi by Mr. Nogami are also available for international order from Manga Pal.

There was more madness to be had at Comitia and elsewhere, but that will have to wait for now. As it stands it is nearly 2 AM and I have a plane to catch in a few hours for Toronto and Anime North. Assuming I am still awake when I touch down, perhaps I will finish this. Until then…

Now then, I note my room as an “otaku” one but be prepared to be moderately surprised for mine is not typical of ones you may see on other blogs. Though I profess to have otaku interests, I prefer to try to keep my place looking as relatively normal as possible. It is perhaps just “how I roll”.

Without further ado, here are some pictures of my room plus some moderate banter to go with it.

Given the angle in which one would enter my room, the only obviously out of place item you see would be the rather large banner advertising of, Nobunaga’s Ambition Kakushin above my bed. I received this from a store in Nakano, Japan many years ago who probably intended to just throw it out with the trash once the newer iteration of the game came out. I’ve never played any of the titles in the series before, but I had to admit it was too random to pass up on.

Next up we have the center of operations, my desk. Given the rather perfect weather in San Diego, I tend to leave my window open year round. Darkness is all fine too but sunlight can be nice I can assure you. I try not to spend too much time on the computer, but you know how effective that may be.

Here, the inner otaku comes out in the number of items strewn on my desk. There are the Lucky Star Nendoroid Puchi figures of the cast which a friend of mine picked up for me at a New Year’s event in Washinomiya back in 2009, the wood burn of Yukino from Yakitate!! Japan on my side shelf from a friend, the Z’Gok and Master Gundam (MG grade) striking a pose on my CD shelf and so on. It’s hard to see but half of that CD shelf is filled with game OSTs which are the big must collect type of items for me. Unfortunately, due to monetary constraints earlier in the year I’ve sold off nearly half of my collection. For those curious, I am selling the rest of them through VGMDb’s Marketplace here.

A close up of my desk. I’ll leave it to you, the reader to pick out the other obvious tell-tale signs of otakudom.

More random stuff here. This shelf is a culmination of my “normalcy” if you may call it that. With the exception of the top of the shelf, I have mostly normal things in my shelf. You can find a slew of my old political science texts, Japanese language study books for the JLPT, some programming books and literature.

The shelves on the back wall are where things stop being normal. Here I store most of my comics, games and other miscellaneous items. I can assure you that the presence of that tissue box is ENTIRELY coincidental.

A closer look at the back shelves and their contents. The bottom shelf on the left is filled with my doujinshi collection that I have picked up over the last few years. Quite a few of these were actually gifts from friends and circles. Perhaps I will get around to sorting these one of these days…

Some more interesting stuff here. On the wall is a framed print of Bleach’s Ichigo as drawn by Alpha Gamboa, an artist I met at Sakura-Con many years ago. My calendar on the wall has a schedule of events for the month of April and early May and as per my entry on doujin events, I am hoping to catch a number of these events when I am in Japan.

Well that is that. As I am pressed for time, I’ve left off noting the many things that were in my pictures. I suppose for the few people who read this, you can spend some time and hunt around yourself. Think of it as an odd version of Where’s Waldo perhaps.

In any case, unrelated to my economic mishaps, I’ve decided to get involved with doujinshi translation. There are already a number of groups out there who do a rather good job in this endeavor, but every year thousands of doujinshi, manga etc. are produced and certainly there’s plenty out there that fall through the cracks which people may choose not to translate but have a loyal following nevertheless.

Firstly, a bit about my background. I have studied Japanese for approximately 2.5 years (1 year at a junior college, half a year studying abroad in Japan, 1 year at university) and have lived in Japan for a year after college teaching English in Okayama. My work sends me to Japan frequently where I am constantly in touch with locals and proving to everyone that yes, “gaijins” can speak Japanese.

I figure for starters, I might do a few random translations to show that I am actually going to do something. If anyone has suggestions on what I should work on, do not hesitate to throw them out. Of course, there are some things that I will not work on: Anything involving shota, loli, guro or other extreme fetishes. That last note is vague, but I figure once I get this ball rolling it will be obvious enough.

According to Japan Guide, Golden Week will have an isolated holiday (Showa Day, 4/29) followed by a 5 day weekend. Of interest to otaku perhaps, is the tendency for stores to go completely out of their way to offer discounts and otherwise try to get rid of stuff to perhaps take advantage of the absurd influx of people going around doing a whole lot of nothing. Outside of “day 4″ of Comic Market (aka Comiket), expect to see Akihabara absolutely flooded with people. Of certainly greater interest are the large number of doujin-related events happenly in Japan during this time.

Comic1☆4

First up, we have Comic1 on April 29th. Comic1 has been a surprise, given the size of the event despite it’s young age compared to venerable events such as Sunshine Creation. Comic1 draws in around 25,000 people at each event which would really put it on par with some of the largest anime-related conventions in North America. Certainly, doujin events are a different beast from the anime conventions, but I will leave that for another time when I feel like talking about anime conventions. Anyhow, Comic1 is considered the successor to the older Comic Revolution that was held in Ikebukuro. Given the size of the World Import Mart building in Ikebukuro where Comic Revolution, Sunshine Creation and even Reitaisai was held, it is probably a good thing that Comic1 is held at Tokyo Big Site.

Those of you who may be considering making the journey to “Mecca” ala Comiket, may want to consider doing a warm-up for the big one by attending this event. For one thing, it is a sizable event that also occupies the same building as Comiket does. Thus, one can get used to the joys of preparation such as waking up at the crack of dawn and hopping the first train into Odaiba or braving the cold night and camping at Big Sight. However, given past history, I would suggest against camping at Big Sight. Honestly, there are better things to do with your time. Consider Comic1 as normal mode to Comiket’s lunatic mode.

Another bonus to attending Comic1 are the large number of major circles who participate at the event. With the exceptions of Tony, who is probably too busy to even bother, expect to see circles such as Fujitsubo Machine, Joker Type, Cut a Dash, and AMR to aim a few. As always, it’s good to grab a catalog and F5 the circle webpages to verify that they are in fact attending.

Super Comic City 19

Fans of everything BL will want to look into this event which rolls into Tokyo Big Sight on May 2nd and 3rd. As you can imagine from this advert, Super Comic City is all about boys love and more or less nothing else. Granted, that is not entirely the case as folks interested in hunting down non-adult doujinshi can occasionally find some great stuff here. I’ve attended the event once many years ago and I was surprised to find quite a number of fantastic non-BL Fire Emblem doujinshi which in general are fairly hard to come by. That, and I suppose if you are looking to pick up on some fabulous fujoshi, there are plenty around.

Comitia 92

Comitia falls on May 4th and is also held at Tokyo Big Sight. The Tokyo edition of this event is held 4 times a year and features entirely original works. By original that means materials that are not based off copyrighted material unless of course they are materials created by the artist themselves who are participated in the event. Certainly, there is great opportunity to find a lot of new stuff. I originally had not put a lot of thought into attending this event in previous times but a comrade did recommend it as a good event to look into.

One of things I noticed when I attended Comitia 89 last August was that there was, of course a lot of the same circles who attended both Comitia 89 and Summer Comiket 76. Given the smaller attendance, this basically meant that it was possible to pick up books from circles who might’ve sold out at Comiket but printed more books for sale at Comitia. Given the frenetic pacing of Comiket, it was nice to attend an event where I could pick up stuff I missed while also being able to take my time going through the aisles. Another interesting aspect of the event was the music that was played in the hall. Other than Comiket and Reitaisai, I’ve never been to an event that had music being played over the PA system. I don’t recall 100%, but I believe the playlist had a number of 80s American pop music tracks. Different, but interesting no less.

Expect to see circles such as AB, Pasta’s Estab, Yellow Tag, and Ryusuke Works in attendance. Again as mentioned above, often times the crowds are not too bad compared to Comiket which also leaves the opportunity to chat with the artists. Practice that Japanese and take it easy!

M3

To finish off Golden Week, we have M3. M3 stands for Music + Media Mix Market and is an event that covers doujin/indie music. This is an event I’ve wanted to attend in the past but have never had the chance to do so. The event is held at the Tokyo Ryutsu Center which is located on the Ryutsu stop on the Tokyo Monorail. Assuming I have the chance to attend this event this year, I will definitely have more to write about it.

And there you have it. Nearly a full week of nothing but doujin events. Should you find yourself in Tokyo during Golden Week with nothing better to do, why not hop a train and take in an event or two?

Now certainly I have no beef with ORD or Chicago at all. Chicago is a fabulous place to travel (that deep dish can’t be beat) to and in general OHare International is very easy to navigate. However, when weather is less than normal, one only needs to look at the airport monitors and see yellow smeared all over, indicating gate changes, delays, and the dreaded cancellation. My flight last night was delayed by many things, although the story seemed to change as the hours went by. First, I was told that the plane was indeed at the gate but was awaiting equipment of some sort. Then later on I find out that the flight had transferred to another plane that was yet to arrive from somewhere else and was of course delayed. Upon arrival, there was more waiting and upon boarding there was much deicing to be done. After sitting on the plane for about another hour, we were in the air…about 2 hours later than expected.

For someone like myself who can easily duck off into an airport lounge and at least relax while awaiting updates on a delayed flight, the wait isn’t really so bad. I feel more for the folks, especially those with family, who are anxiously waiting for more information while effectively given…not so much. Sometimes you just want to be on your way whether it is to get home, get on with a vacation, or a myriad of other reasons. I will certainly give travelers props for not outright flipping out when these kinds of delays happen. Given how much the airline industry as a whole has been whining about losing money and needing help to get back on their feet, it is a shame that they are spending more time trying to nickel and dime travelers for just about everything on top of offering less than normal service. That’s not how to run a business.

For more interesting reading, take a look at this interesting article from the Wall Street Journal about the current trend of airlines padding their time schedules to appear on time. Reading this made me realize exactly why American Eagle claims that it takes almost an hour to fly to LAX from San Diego.

In any case, I am going to make an attempt to make more use of this blog. I do have many ideas I’d like to run with for the sake of having this in the first place. For one thing, I am still getting used to how WordPress works so I imagine things will look a bit out of place at times as I tinker with the code and whatever else I can use. Let’s see if I can keep this a bit more consistent then eh?

Let us hope he gets things done. Good luck, Mr. President.

Why don’t we start off with my thoughts on 2009? 2009 started out with much of a bang in many different ways:

The conflict in Gaza reached new heights of insanity as Israel continued to pound the crap out of this dense Palestinian enclave. As usual the world condemns Israel’s actions, Israelis cheer the military on, and nothing changes. Despite the tragedy of the situation, one perhaps cannot help but laugh somehow at how history seems to just repeat itself. Will something let up this year or will we be reading similar news in 2010 and beyond?

Stocks took off like proverbial soaring birds as the world felt hopeful things would not suck as hard as it seemed. The yen/USD exchange also improved to the tune of 93 yen to $1 USD. And much like how things were going, stuff went to hell quickly as the market took yet another nosedive and the exchange rate dropped down below 90 yen to $1 USD yet again. Good times I tell you.

So I am looking at the situation at hand and figuring that perhaps 2009 will probably suck.  Let’s hope I am wrong here.

…oh and the Chargers dropped it again. That and the Celtics lost 3 in a row?! What the hell is going on???