I'm not in any of the media classes, but several friends are, so I tagged along. To experience the culture, of course, and not because I wanted to pick up anything for myself. (I certainly did not buy four comics and two sets of stationary either.)
It was a kind of low-key affair. I don't know if this had been running on Saturday too, but it was very quiet even for the amount of people that were there. Cosplay (dressing up in a costume) was not allowed, and neither was photography. You see, this time, it wasn't my fault that there were no pictures -- I had brought my camera and everything, ready to show everybody this side of Japanese culture.
In any case, we wandered around looking at all the different types of comics. Certain series are incredibly popular, while others are definitely less so. I was surprised to find out that the silly Saturday-morning cartoon my host niece (Asa-chan) likes, Precure 5, has quite a fan following itself. Not surprisingly though, the fans didn't focus on the five main characters as much as the two adorable sidekicks who happen to turn into boys every now and again. I was amused.
Oh yes, if you were to go there intending to find anything other than romance stories between two characters (usually male) you'd be out of luck. There were maybe one or two stands selling something other than that. One was the hilarious Doraemon gag doujinshi, in which Doraemon acted very much like a pedophile old man. (Which is probably an improvement on the series -- how many chapters of some stupid kid messing things up can anybody take?)
Aside from all sorts of interesting comics that you wouldn't show your kids (or take back to the States, apparently) there was also a small area where they sold hand-made accessories. I thought that was kind of interesting, considering that it was a comic convention. I wonder how much business they make. Some people sold stationary, and that's a lot more useful, I think -- I bought two sets (One of CocoNuts, from Precure, to share with my host niece; and one that was just plain pretty).
I'm not sure I'd go to a doujinshi convention again, although if there was a big anime convention I'd like to see how those differ from the ones in the States. (Yes, I'm a big nerd. :O But you all knew this.)
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The weather has been amazing here lately. So amazing, it makes one not want to go home and study or blog or anything. On top of that, last week was midterms (I did well on all of them, thank you) so that's my excuse for leaving everybody "in the dark" for a week.
Aside from midterms though, a few fun things happened.
I went to Kyoto on Friday evening with some friends. It was the only really terrible day last week, the weather was incredibly awful. Rain, rain, and more rain. My shoes got soaked. And to top it all off, I was promised Mexican food but we ended up going to a pizza place instead. However, this pizza place was AMAZING -- all you can eat for around $8, nice. Not all you can drink, but we can make do with water. So it was good.
Saturday, my host mom took me along on a shopping trip with her friends. As my host sister put it it, it was "baba bakari" -- only old women. It was fun though, and I got three keychains out of the deal. Or cell phone straps, whichever. The shopping we did was some sort of store leftovers sale; everything was slightly used but very cheap. I got a traditional Japanese umbrella for only 1000 yen, when usually you pay somewhere between 5000 -10 000 yen.
After that, we headed to a Tsukemono restaurant. Tsukemono are pickled items which you eat with rice. Pickled eggplant, pickled cabbage, pickled cucumbers. However, I was told that it's not actually made with vinegar. The vegetables in question are covered in salt and all the water is pressed out of them, until a later date when you add liquid back. Or something like that. I'm not sure I completely understood, just that vinegar is not involved. (Doesn't change the fact that it tastes like pickled vegetables.)
Of course you can't enjoy lunch without a coffee afterwards, so off we went (four old women and me) to find a cafe. It turns out that cafes try their hardest to discourage old women to eat there (or so they joked). Every one we found was too full for five people.
While searching, we went down a street that had a store/restaurant(?) called, I am not kidding here, Cabbages & Condoms. ..... Was it a love hotel? Was it a restaurant? Was it a two in one? I might be better off not knowing, but I fully intend to stop by there again just to take a picture of the sign.
Also: nothing brings a halt to righteous rage like flattery and praise. I was expecting my Japanese teacher to tell me to pay more attention to the listening comprehension, and then I was gonig to reply with "I think that is complete bullshit," but instead he just said I was doing well adn that I just needed to study my vocab more. BAH, nice people.
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For anybody who's seen Japanese TV, you know that it's not quite the same as in the States. They love variety shows and their weird as heck comedy stars.
One such comedy star is Kojima Yoshio. He shows up in a speedo and does a hilarious little song/dance number. XD Even without understanding everything I'm sure he's funny. (LOTS more on youtube.)
And then, there's Billy Blanks. I'm sure you guys have heard of him, at least. He's got a series of tae bo excercise videos. They're actually really hard to do; you get a real workout.
But for some reason, he's not just "known" in Japan. He's BIG. There is a Japanese song about him. He got imitated on the imitation show last night (=people dress up at famous stars). I have no idea why, especially considering how just ONE of his workout videos costs like $100 here. O_O I wish I could find a video of the song I saw the other day, it was hilarious.
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My prediction came true. Crabby Houdini was found dead this morning. Old age? Malnutrition? Only an autopsy can tell.
........ actually, now I kind of do want to autopsy him. Hmmmmm.
AND, so that you have something fun to think about! When I first got to Japan and was doing some grocery shopping, I discovered a product with this label on it:
ミルクレープ
.... D: What? Yeah, I know.
Okay, for those who didn't have the same reaction as I did. Basically it says Mirukurehpu there. Miruku = Milk, rehpu = rape. So my mind boggled. Milk rape?
Until I thought about it a little bit more, and realized it was supposed to be split up as Miru Kurehpu = Mil-crepe. So, a meshing of milk+crepe. I still say it sounds wrong though.
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