29th March 2008 - Anime Fair!!

Woke up early and was out of the hotel at 9am..took the train to the Tokyo Big Sight, which is the Tokyo International Exhibition Center. Reached there around 10.30am, we were happily walking towards the exhibition center when we noticed a long queue going into the building..though we got a hunch that its for the anime fair, we still went to check with the information counter..sure enough it IS the queue for the fair. So we made our way out to find the end of the queue..and guess how long it took us to reach there? 20mins!!! There queue was ridiculously long!!..there were stairs, downslope, upslope etc along the way, I was dumbfounded when I see how long the queue stretches and still see no end to it..I've never seen such a long queue before lor, scary..can tell there are really a lot of anime-lovers in Japan.. =s

Luckily the queue wasn't very slow, so it took us about 1.5hrs to get into the fair..relatively fast for such a long queue..quite an experience as I would never get to queue in such a long line here in Singapore..hehe..and the weather was pretty alright too, though there's a bit of sun but with the cool air, its not a big issue..hehe

1. When we were at the end of the line, see how far the queue is (arrow)?
2. Taken after we moved a distance, still see a long stretch of queue in front (arrow).
3. Finally the building is in sight, but still quite far away.
4. Closer now, see the line of pple up the stairs?
5. Almost there..
6. We're inside the building but still quite a long distance to walk to get to the exhibition hall.

Finally, we are in..yay!!

There are really a lot of pple inside, both local and overseas..seems that some pple actually came all the way to Japan juz for this event, really 'pei fu' them..hehe

There were a lot of girls cosplaying to promote upcoming animes/mangas..they even give out nice paper bags for free! =D

Most of the figurines we saw there are only for display, more for promotional purpose..so can't buy them even though we were very 'gian'..hehe..there were other stuff like towels, pillow cases for sale too but didn't buy any of them coz don't have any of my fave characters..so we were basically juz there for the experience and to take the free goodie bags..haha!! =p

We were there for about 2 - 3 hours, and then made our way to Shibuya. Was a big mistake coz the place was very crowded since its a Saturday, and we were carrying those big paper bags from the Anime fair, had problem making our way through the crowds..The crowd is very bad in Shibuya, almost everywhere we went, we gotta squeeze through pple..scary..

That's the Hachiko Statue in the picture.

More info: ''Its a statue of a loyal dog named Hachiko. According to a famous story, the dog waited for his master every day in front of Shibuya Station, and continued to do so for years even after his master had passed away. It is one of Tokyo's most popular meeting points.'' (from japan-guide.com)

And it is really a popular meeting point coz it was blocked by so many pple that we had difficulties finding it..we were about to give up when we finally spotted it before we head off to an underground food-fare nearby. Kelvin had to squeeze pass all those waiting pple juz to take a picture of it..hehe..

We just shopped in the Shibuya 109 shopping complex where I bought a pair of shoes and to the food-fare to get dinner before heading back to the hotel as there were juz too many pple to shop at ease. >_<

That's Day 3 for us =)