![\"Comiket](\"http:\/\/gallery.darkmirage.com\/2007tokyo\/comiket-part3\/IMG_6690.JPG.php\")
<\/a><\/p>\nBecause Japanese are completely asinine about getting their photos taken, and because the Comiket committee has my URL and I don’t want to get blacklisted, I went through the trouble of mosaicking all the faces.<\/p>\n
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The Queues<\/h3>\n
Queuing is Japan’s national pastime. In fact, you can say that going to Disneyland in Japan is about the same as going to Comiket. It all boils down to about two hours of queuing for a few seconds of gratification. Unless you go for the rides that no one wants to touch with a 10-metre pole, like “It’s a Small World”.<\/p>\n The queues for popular booths are so long that the end of the line is generally in a totally different part of Japan from the actual location of the booth. This makes it a huge challenge for people who are rushing to queue for goods that are limited in numbers. Finding the booth itself is easy if you follow the maps, but by the time you get there the queue is already in Hokkaido. You have to anticipate where the queue will be by the time you arrive and head for the queue instead of the booth.<\/p>\n It’s like that Space Invaders episode in Futurama<\/strong>: shoot where he is going to be instead of where he was.<\/p>\n At the end of every queue is a guy holding a sign with the booth number that says \u00e6\u0153\u20ac\u00e5\u00be\u0152\u00e5\u00b0\u00be to tell you that it’s the end of the line for that circle. Usually the guy holding it is the last person in the queue, so it’s common courtesy for you to take over by saying “mochimasu<\/em>” if you join the queue.<\/p>\n Did I mention how asinine Japanese are about photos? I did? Well I’m going to say it again: Japanese are completely asinine about photos. Despite having a press pass, I have to ask permission from every single booth that I want to take pictures of. This quickly bored me, so I ended up taking very few pictures. I don’t even know why they bother to give out press passes.<\/p>\n Interestingly, most people are more willing to have their pictures taken if you tell them that you are from overseas. According to the two cosplayers above, it’s because they don’t want to be recognized by their friends.<\/p>\n The 0verflow<\/a> guys asked me for my website before letting me take a picture. I gave them my name card. Woot. 0verflow has my name card now! Anyway their C73 stuff wasn’t very interesting so I didn’t buy anything.<\/p>\n You can find more pictures of the commercial booths over at Danny Choo’s<\/a> C73 coverage.<\/p>\n For some reason, I took a ton of picture of random crowds. I guess it’s because I was always rushing to my next destination and there wasn’t much else to take on the way.<\/p>\n Canon 400D’s internal flash can only sync at a maximum shutter speed of 1\/200, making it way too slow to take anything in direct sunlight without serious overexposure, so I had to make do without flash. The resulting pictures are terrible due to the shadows casted by the the setting sun. Oh well.<\/p>\n Thanks to the uneven lighting, everything is either overexposed or underexposed. I really need to get a proper flash.<\/p>\n You can find much better cosplay pictures from C73 on Moeyo!<\/a>.<\/p>\n There were fewer Caucasian foreigners at Comiket than I had expected. I counted three or four groups in total after wandering around for the entire day. I bumped into a group from a Canadian radio station and talked to them for a bit. I think they were quite freaked out by a random Asian boy walking up to them and interrogating them in English. Ops.<\/p>\n There were plenty of Chinese around, in fact, quite a number of doujin circles were Chinese. But since we Asians pretty much look the same it’s kind of hard to keep count. <\/p>\n Comiket was pretty fun, but I think all that queuing took a few years off my life span. I think I’m going to need a long rest…<\/p>\n This Comiket coverage was made possible by Danny Choo<\/a> and Akihabara News<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m back in Singapore. I had fever yesterday. Gao. Anyway, I sorted through my photos and I realized that they were quite shitty. I blame it all on the lighting. Because Japanese are completely asinine about getting their photos taken, … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nEnd of the line for T2 Art Works<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nAlmost there!<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nThe Booths<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nThis appears to be some 3D game with characters from CLANNAD, D.C. and SHUFFLE!<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nNice boat.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nThe Crowd<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nThe Location<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nSee the orange cones? That’s where the Type-Moon<\/a> queue was<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nThe Cosplay<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nThe Misc<\/h3>\n
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\nThe press gets a pink armband; Comiket staff gets a red one<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nPlease rise for the Welsh anthem<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nIt’s Shingo<\/a>!<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nA bunch of Australians who were holding Shingo’s book<\/p>\nThe Conclusion<\/h3>\n