Worldcon Dispatch #6

[annathepiper]

Originally written 9/5/07 5:39pm, transcribed 9/15/07 11:53am

In which we have Worldcon party fun on Saturday evening and head to Tokyo on Sunday!


This being the entry for going to Tokyo to look at nifty stuff!

Sunday the 2nd; but first, at least briefly, more on Saturday the 1st: I forgot to mention that on Saturday night, after we had dinner, I went with solarbird and spazzkat at least for a little while to the room parties. (They had quite a bit of fun at Friday night's parties, which I wound up missing--so I wanted to see at least some party mileage.)

The first party we tried to hit was the one being held by the Norwegians (yay for some of the people of janne and ravyngyngvar!) and Swedes. But we could barely make it in, it was so crowded.

We tried Comiket next. They're the folks who apparently hold a Japanese comics convention that totally puts Comicon to shame, size wise. The three of us wound up clustered in the corner of their Japanese-style suite, sitting as best we could on the tatami mats and trying to make sense of what was going on around us. The party hosts were extremely friendly to us, though. :) They kept offering us both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks as well as some snacks that kind of took us all aback when we realized they were made of carp! Mm, carp. (Not half bad, to be fair; just a little startling when one is expecting a tasty sweet Japanese snack!) It must also be noted that the Kirin cider they gave us was very light and very tasty, some kind of pear cider maybe.

Not long after that, though, Paul and I both got maxxed out on the noise and the people and the heat. So we retrieved our shoes from the huge pile everyone had left by the elevator. Or tried to, anyway. We had a bit of elevator tango getting down to the lobby; on the way down, I had a random brief encounter with David Brin, who sheepishly confessed that he'd left something on the party floor. But he also asked if I was having a good convention, and I told him I was and wished him likewise.

Now I can write about Tokyo!

Sunday the 2nd, this time for sure: Didn't do a damn thing related to the con on Sunday, because we were too busy taking the train to Tokyo to look at stuff! I'm a little sad that we missed the Masquerade, but they scheduled it at a weird hour--3pm on a Sunday--and I'm told by another con attendee who's also on the tour we're taking that Japanese fandom doesn't really do Masquerades. So the one they put on was not particularly large or elaborate by Worldcon standards, with only twelve entries. The half-time act was apparently very cool, though--the sword-fighting team that worked on Kill Bill.

But anyway, Tokyo. We took the train in to meet up again with Mariko, who brought a friend with her this time. Naka didn't have as solid a grasp of English, but we wound up having pleasant chats with her anyway. When we learned she was going to Canada soon, we helped her pronounce "Calgary", and explained that Canadian winters, for her, are going to suck. But I did also of course mention the three vital words anyone going to Canada should know: Great Big Sea. :)

First we went to Aki-habara, a.k.a. Electric Town, which was packed full of an amazing array of shops selling electronic goods from cellphones clear up to full-fledged computers. As with Chinatown, there were ads everywhere, as well as people on the streets, seemingly every few feet, handing out promotional fliers. Or in the case of SoftBack, packets of tissues--useful, that, when you have a cold. (Perhaps one should thank Cameron Diaz for that; according to the billboards, anyway, she=SoftBank. Hee. Spotted ads with Brad Pitt for cellphones and Orlando Bloom hawking something called Uno.)

Second, we went to Harajuku, where we were hoping to see some of the funky outfits that are popular to wear in that area. We wound up not seeing many oddly dressed folks, but then, the tight little lane we followed was so well-packed that looking at individual people was kind of hard. I did find funky Kit Kat flavor #2, though: kiwi! Much tastier than the orange chocolate, it turned out.

Back to Shinjuku, then, where we went and had extremely tasty ramen for lunch. I'd never had real ramen before. The cheap packaged stuff they sell in stores in the States does not compare. In the slightest. And after ramen, ice cream!

We stopped at a Tower Records where Dara and Paul both got CDs; I thought about looking for something involving shakuhachi or taiko music, but we never found the non-J-pop floor. Note that it was weird in general to be buying anything at a Tower Records, since they've gone out of business in the States!

When we found the Kinokuniya bookstore (a much larger edition of its lesser cousin in Seattle), though, it was my turn to get stuff. :) They had a surprisingly decent selection of English SF, but what I really wanted were English translations of anything by Sakyo Komatsu. (I figured, hey, if he was the Japanese author GoH at the very first Japanese Worldcon, I wanted to read some of his stuff.) Sadly we didn't find any of his works, but I did pick out a couple other translated works, though, which I've already started reading. Maybe I'll have whipped through them by the time we fly home. :)

Last but not least we headed for the huge central square in Tokyo, sort of the Japanese answer to New York's Times Square. And I mean, damn. I'd already seen that Tokyo is a hugely crowded city, but the number of people moving through that square was staggering. There were at least seven different streets opening into the place, and tidal waves of people flowing along the crosswalks every time the lights changed. And Mariko told us that for her boyfriend's birthday, she'd registered to have a special message for him run across the biggest of the electronic billboards. Very cool.

By then we were running out of steam, though, so we hopped on the trains at last to head back to Yokohama.

And now, off to dinner. More later.