Well, A-Kon 17 is over and done, and all the fans have gone home. Tomorrow the J-List San Diego staff, aka the J-List Away Team, will start their long 24-hour drive home, while I (bastard that I am) fly out, since I’ve got to get back to Japan. As usual, this has been an incredibly fun weekend in which we met a lot of our customers, took pictures of a lot of great people in anime costumes, and breathed in the great culture that the 12,000 or so fans at the show had helped create. If you were among the many who came by to say hi to us, thanks for stopping by!
It occurs to me that not everyone reading this will have had the fortune of attending a really good Japanese animation convention, so I wanted to give you my own take on, say, a show like A-Kon, which is the oldest anime convention in the U.S. I’m a really old school fan, having been around when the first anime clubs in universities were organizing back in 1985. Back then, anime was so “edge” that practically no one knew what it was, and there certainly were no products available in English — to be an anime aficionado back then was to be at peace with watching a video and understanding 0-5% of what was going on. When we stroll the halls of the convention and see all the changes that have taken place since then, we feel a bit like shepherds walking amid our flock, secure in the knowledge that we have, in some tiny way, helped bring about a healthy shift in the ecosystem of young people in the U.S., making them a little more open to ideas they wouldn’t have encountered otherwise. We always love to hit the dance floor at a good anime convention, although one girl (dressed like Rei Ayanami) had the audacity to actually tell us we were too old to be there. Other fun things to do at a good convention include hitting the 24-hour anime rooms, trying your hand at some karaoke, or going to the anime game room (with plenty of good old games from bygone eras). We had a lot of fun at this A-Kon, and learned a few things too — ramune soda and vodka go pretty well together, after all. We’ll be back next year!
The eyes of most of the world are on Germany for the World Cup, and Japan is a country that really appreciates a good soccer match (yes, they call it soccer in Japan, not football). Japanese fans are getting very excited at their upcoming first game against Australia. Japan’s head coach is the famous Brazilian Zico, regarded by Japanese fans as the “God of Soccer,” who came to the country in 1992. While I’ve not always been a fan of Zico, mainly for his appearances in those awful high-interest loan ads on late-night TV (“I did it all by myself!” he says, showing how easy it is to use a faceless cash machine to borrow money at a 30% interest rate), he has done good things for the Japanese national team. Stars on the Japanese team include midfielders Nakata (a great player who speaks Italian fluently), Ono (known for his passing, he’s played in the Netherlands), and Nakamura (he didn’t get on with his manager because he’s a “team player” but Zico prefers “creative players” who take more initiative). About the only time I see real patriotism and pride in the Japanese is during international sports events, and I think it’s very healthy for the country to cheer their national team. We hope they do well!
