TAF 300 Brick

Today we went to the Tokyo International Anime Fair (TAF) at Tokyo Big Sight, which is like unlike anything I have ever seen. To say the venue is massive is an understatement. The area that contained the Fair would be at least the size of a football (Rugby) field, and that was just one side of one wing of the centre!

The only other anime fair I have attended was the first SupaNova in Brisbane back in 2003. No comparison can be made between the two. TAF was an assault on the senses, I had never seen so much anime in one place before, and everything was trying to get your attention. To get an idea of the size, check out the list of exhibitors and a floor map.

We arrived at Tokyo Big Sight (TBS) around 8:50am as we were meeting up with an internet friend at 9am. The entire open area in front of TBS was empty except for maybe 15 people off to one side and a bunch of event organisers yelling out something I couldn't understand. Just after 9am a line started forming, so we were near the front of the line. By the time they started leading people into the event centre, the line had completely filled the TBS foyer area and had overflowed back down the overpass. I will post a small movie later that I took of the crowd.

I took a lot of photos that can be seen in the gallery, half of which are probably booth girls (and a pair of booth boys, PChii was happy). At the end of the day we had a acquired a tonne of loot (handouts etc..) heres a look at what we got.



After a long draining day at TAF we met up with Beardedgeek at a nice little place called "300 Bar" where everything costs 300yen ($3.30AUD). You purchase tickets which you then exchange for each item you want. You get a bonus half price ticket when you buy 10. The bar was warm, which was far more welcoming than the bitter cold wet street, and small with only a handful of people. We used up all our tickets and headed off to find another place to try out. We were just moments away from giving up when we were welcomed into a bar called "Brick". Again we ended up downstairs in a small cozy bar that just oozed character. We were in for a treat when Beardedgeek ordered a drink that the new bar maid didn't know how to make, soon after she went running out the door upstairs she returned with the man that had welcomed us into the bar. The 3 of us watched intently as he created the drink without the use of any measuring aides and with stylistic precision. I highly recommend that if you're ever in Ginza to check these two places out.