Japan 2007: The Final Two Days

On Friday, we spent the morning in our hotel room. The typhoon had blown through Tokyo in the early morning hours, leaving both clear skies and a wild wind whipping through the city streets. But because of reports that rail service had been disrupted, we opted to spend our last full day in Ikebukuro.

The effects of the winds (shown in one of my previous posts) were evident on the buildings around our hotel. The first "a" on the "animate" building sign was clearly damaged.



Amy explored "Kinkado By Hand," a crafts store that included quilting patterns and supplies. I, meanwhile, set off for some of the remaining anime/manga stores in the neighborhood (of which there are several) that we hadn't yet visited.

Both Ikebukuro and Akihibara have tons of anime and manga stores. The primary demarcation, according to our guide from Tuesday's tour, is that Akiba mainly appeals to boys, and Ikebukuro to girls. That was evident when I visited Mandarake in Ikebukuro.



Mandarake specializes in doujinshi. Doujinshi are creator-published comics. Some feature original characters; some are based on Western properties, such as Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings; but most are unauthorized manga versions of copyrighted anime and manga characters. Further, many (not all) of them envision romances between the characters. Now, such fan-created fiction also exists in the US, and has flourished on the Internet. But doujinshi are sold for profit. Indeed, some creators make a living from selling them. And they are not sold quietly. Mandarake had racks and racks of them, organized by subject matter; and was stuffed with female fans buying and reselling them by the bushel. Further, Comic Market -- a twice-yearly event in Japan -- is attended by hundreds of thousands of folks who come principally to buy and sell doujinshi. The idea of an unlicensed, fan-produced, adults-only X-Men, Batman, or Star Wars comic book being sold openly in the US, in numbers high enough to be profitable, beggars the imagination. Yet in Japan, it's reality.

As noted, the customers at the Ikebukuro Mandarake were almost entirely female; and the doujinshi tended primarily (according to the covers I saw) toward stuff appealing to those customers. On the other hand, one of the many storefronts of K-Books, a block away, featured doujinshi aimed almost entirely at male customers.

Other K-Books storefronts had tons of remaindered and used anime dvds and premium goods. In one of them, I scored my favorite acquisition of this trip: A complete set of dvds of the first season of CAT'S EYE, packaged with a memo pad set, a mouse pad, and the first part of a paper version of the larcenous ladies' coffee shop. (One apparently gets the second part by buying the second season box set.) As the photos show, the paper coffee shop's interior is quite detailed; they include all of the house's bathrooms.





I got the box for less than half of the retail price. I may never open the box, or put together the paper house; but having it is cool enough.

On Saturday morning, the sky was the clearest it had been during our trip.



We checked out and stored our baggage with the hotel. We then set out on our last Tokyo field trip. We had heard that on weekends (primarily Sundays) teenagers in costumes flocked to Harajuku. We therefore hopped a train over there. Although it was Saturday (with some schools in session), and blazing hot, we managed to find a few dedicated cosplayers in front of the Meiji shrine.





We then took the train back. Our last trip through Ikebukuro confirmed that the Japanese merchandising industry was putting its full, awesome strength behind the Evangelion franchise. Not only did a pachinko parlor, across the street from the theater playing the Evangelion movie, blast the TV series opening theme into the street over and over again (I'm sure the workers there are thoroughly sick of it), but department stores had opened "Evangelion Stores" where they sold models, t-shirts, plastic figures, designer ties, yukatas with Eva prints, and, yes, Evangelion Doritos, coffee and cookies.






After we got back to our hotel, we took the limousine bus to the airport, and winged our way back to the states. As usual, the long flight passed surprisingly fast. I watched the third "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie (which, on a tiny screen, was probably far less impressive than it was meant to be), read half of a GHOST IN THE SHELL manga collection which I had purchased during our last trip to Japan, and edited a chapter of the law book manuscript I'm working on.

We managed to slog our way back to our house, using a hard-of-hearing cabbie. (I told him as we left the airport that I was going to pay by credit card. When we got to our house, and I pulled out the card, he yelled at me, "Why didn't you tell me that at the beginning?") At that point, although we had left Japan at 5:25 pm Saturday, it was 12:30 pm Saturday. We had traveled back in time. We took the extra hours given us to sleep.

Nippon 2007: Last Two Days; On to Tokyo

Sunday and Monday, the last two days of the Worldcon in Japan, were activity-packed for the two of us. On Sunday morning, we blew off most of the con programming, and walked around downtown Yokohama. The weather cooperated; the sun showed itself for the first time during our vacation, and the temperature wasn't too hot. During the walk, we noted the cicadas' song. In anime shows set in Japan during the summer, you will inevitably hear the cicadas chirping in the background. It's one thing to hear it in a fictional, animated show; and quite another to hear it in person.







After we got back, we hied ourselves down to the convention center for the masquerade. This was billed as the first westsrn-style convention masquerade ever held in Japan; but in reality the one at AX Tokyo takes that honor.





We scored places in the photographer's area, where we and a few others took pictures of the costumes as they came off stage. Although there were only 15 entries in the masquerade, the costumes showed an impressive amount of variety and ingenuity.







Unfortunately, one of the masquerade contestants was a visibly inebriated British man in a Japanese schoolgirl's outfit. The stage manager of the masquerade and another man escorted the cross-dressed gent into the photography area, apparently with the idea that taking a few photos of him would keep him mollified. Alas, he took the opportunity to swig booze and make obscene commments about a female contestant. (Fortunately, she only spoke Japanese -- or at least acted like she did.)

After the photos, we headed out to a pier for Donburo-con, a dinner cruise on Yokohama Bay for con goers. Our embarkation was delayed by a medical emergency (fortunately not ours), but after that we had a pleasant moonlit cruise around the harbor, sailing under numerous bridges. I stood on the aft observation deck next to artist guest of honor Yoshitaka Amano as seagulls frantically kept pace with the ship, perhaps sensing the food scraps that would soon be theirs.



And after that, we headed over to the Cosmo World amusement park next to the convention center, and rode the humongous Cosmo Clock 21 ferris wheel
, probably one of the biggest in the world. The wheel turns so slowly that it does not stop to take on passengers; folks just step in and out of the moving gondolas. The ride was smooth, and the view spectacular.







Among the other rides we noticed at the park was a shooting ride, where the passengers shot light beams at targets. The poster showed folks riding by a mermaid -- and shooting at her, as she apparently shoots back. ("Wow, look! A mermaid!" "Oh no! She's packin'! Waste her!")

On Monday, we packed up our goodies, checked out of the hotel, grabbed a soba-noodle breakfast at the nearby train station, visited a 100-yen discount store, and hit Worldcon in time for the very emotional closing ceremonies. Then we boarded a bus and headed over to Tokyo. More specifically, our destination was the Prince Hotel in Ikebukuro -- the same place we stayed during our 2004 visit to Tokyo. As soon as we had checked in and dropped our bags off at our room, we grabbed lunch at the same corner cafe where we ate breakfast on our first morning in Japan, over three years ago; and then hit one of the Meccas of anime shopping, the nine-story Animate shop across the street from the hotel. Several hours later, and several yen poorer, we struggled back to the hotel with our heavy bags; grabbed an Italian dinner at the mall attached to the hotel; and then turned in. Whew.

Once again, photos can be found here.

Nippon 2007: Day Three

What if you threw a Hugo Awards ceremony, and nobody came?

That's not exactly what happened at last night's (Saturday's) Hugo ceremony. The audience was full, and numerous SF writers and artists were present. Yet, likely because of the remote location of the convention, almost none of the actual Hugo winners were present to receive their awards. Naomi Novick won the John C. Campbell award for best newcomer, and she was present; but alas, she lost out for best novel (that went to Verner Vinge) and thus missed the chance to be the only major winner present.

The co-MC for the Hugos was George Takei; and a major theme of the awards was the 40th anniversary of one of the seminal Japanese kid-vid superheroes, Ultraman (as is reflected in the design of the statutettes' base).



I videoed the extensive Ultraman throw-down that started the show, and I'll try to get it up on the blog sometime (it's eight minutes long).

Also on Saturday, we attended a repeat showing of STAR TREK THE NEW VOYAGES: WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME. This was the latest of the Star Trek videos that are non-profit, fan-created, and completely unauthorized; yet which feature professional special effects and participation from Star Trke writers and actors. This one was written by genre TV veterans Michael Reeves and Marc Zicree (who attended and introduced the video); directed by Zicree; and starred original Trek stars Takei and Grace Lee Whitney. The story (which came up with a great excuse to feature Takei in addition to the far younger fan actor who plays his STOS-age character) was well-written, featured excellent acting from Takei and a couple of other people (the fans playing Kirk, Spock, McCoy, etc. were not quite up to tv-acting standards), and overall far more entertaining than the last several Paramount Star Trek TV and movie productions.



Photos from the third day are up here.

Domo Arigatto, Chibi Roboto

Another reason Japan is the perfect place for a Worldcon: Robots!

A fan running one of the doujinshi/fanzine tables on the first floor had this remote-controlled robot.

One of the other guys at his table muttered in Japanese. A third translated: "He says he wishes the robot had a self-explode switch."

Nippon 2007 Day Two

Day Two: More panels,more dealer's room, some parties. Photos are here.

In the dealer's room, Michael Whelan, Bob Eggleton, and a third artist held a paint-off.






Some of the Japanese fan costumes weren't necessarily politically correct. For instance:



Others were just silly fun.



Highlight of the day: A panel celebrating "The Dirty Pair." Although this series of SF novels about two female troubleshooters in space who always end up causing more death and destruction than they prevent is only now being translated en masse for the American market, the anime adaptations of the novels have long been popular here. The panel featured writer Haruki Takachiho (also known as the author of the "Crusher Joe" series), left, and illustrator Yoshikazu Yazuhiko (a gifted painter, manga artist, and animation director, best known in the US and Japan for his characters designs for MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM and his direction of the "Crusher Joe" animated movie), right.



Another highlight was attending a reading by Naomi Novik, whose novels of dragons fighting in the Napoleonic wars have fascinated Amy. This photo is from her subsequent interview.