by YUKINO Yoshi (02 April 2007)

Ah, springtime in Japan! Time to bring out the sake, find out a nice spot under the cherry blossom tree and you drink in the atmosphere Or perhaps settle into your couch and catch up on a bit of Senbatsu high school baseball on television.

But if you live and breathe anime, you'll probably be on a train down to Tokyo Big Sight in Ariake, ready to indulge yourself silly in anime for the next few days.

That's preciesly what this writer did, spending four days hanging around crowded exhibition halls, jostling for event seats, lugging bags of pamphlets and stuff, gulping down complimentary bottles of C.C. Lemon--and generally reminding myself of the otaku I deny being....

IF ITfS SPRING, IT MUST BE ANIMEc AND TOKYO INTERNATIONAL ANIME FAIR!
This year's Tokyo International Anime Fair 2007 (TAF2007) was held 22nd and 25th March, at Tokyo's Big Sight. The 6th of this annual four-day event, this isn't the only anime event this year. But like the Tokyo Game Show and Tokyo International Film Festival, it has become the biggest--and most international--one for its industry. The number of visitors have been rising steadily each year, and an estimated 98,984 people reportedly came for last year's event (TAF2006); among these figures 21,699 were trade visitors, with 9.5 per cent of them from overseas. This year, as many as 250 companies were represented, and these included companies representing countries like the US, China, Taiwan, Korea and Thailand.

The first two days were for trade visitors and press while the weekend days were opened to public. And the contrast couldn't have been starker. Corporte people gave way to more cosplaying booth girls handing out goodies. Meanwhile, the even booths go through transformations, turning from meeting rooms into mini-stages. Over at Studio Pierrot and Media Works, the anime merchandise are out en masse.

It's when you mingle side by side with both otakus and families with kids that you fully comprehend just how much anime (and its related industries like manga and gaming) means to the Japanese. Some of of us see it as a subculture outside Japan--even a deviant one to some--but here, you have find a young girl happily posing for a photo with a lifesize heroine from Pretty Cure Five while, just metres away, hordes of otakus are just as happy snapping pictures of a sexily clad booth girl.

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