1998.08.31 MON

James and I just realized how far we had traveled today. The Kintetsu train system is a network of train lines that crisscrosses central Japan - it spans from central Osaka to Nagoya in the east. This afternoon, we were at the eastern terminus of the Kintetsu railroad network - tonight, we were at the western one. About five and a half hours, roughly twenty dollars.

Of course, the way there was a lot more expensive. I had thought that it would only cost 1850 yen to travel from Tsuruhashi (in eastern Osaka city) to Nagoya by the quickest train, 'Limited Express'. Turns out it WAS 1850 yen to travel that far, but a seat on that train costs about 2100 yen. Not fun, especially since we told our friend Tomohiro we'd be arriving in about 2 hours, and we'd be taking the Limited Express. So we ended up spending about 2000 more (each) than we budgeted for our trip...

But in any case, it was fun. Tomohiro took us to the local Animate store - same store chain, yet another city. Well... he took us there after we met up with each other. Once we arrived at Nagoya, we found ourselves at the more inconvenient of the two ends of the Kintetsu station. Tomohiro and his friends were waiting for us at the other end for about an hour and a half, but even though James and I kept scouting around the station to see if we could find the others, we didn't find them for quite some time.

Afterwards, though, things went great. Tomohiro and his friends are REALLY big on anime, so we had a pretty good time - saw a bunch of stuff taped from TV that I haven't been able to see, what with me being stuck on this receptionless mountain, and we got to talk a bunch. Tomohiro's family was incredibly nice to James and me - we never went hungry, and we always had SOMETHING to talk about.

Tomohiro's sisters were so embarassed though - we didn't even see their faces the first night. They were in the living room watching TV, and they kept covering their faces with pillows. It's weird, though, James and I played UNO with these same two girls about two years ago, so it's not like we were strangers. We didn't get mad or anything though, it was just amusing. The next day they were a bit more relaxed and started talking with us, so everything turned out okay :)

Tomohiro still wouldn't tell us why he invited us over this weekend though, even by Friday. He told his mom, though, right in front of us in rather fast Japanese, so we managed to figure out MOST of it - but I'll tell you all in a minute, so you can be just as confused as we were about what we were doing.

The day after we got there, Friday, Tomohiro brought us to his friend Yusuke's house. It was pretty cool - Yusuke claimed the second floor of his family garage and made it into a comic lab, basically. With all sorts of drawing tables and copying machines and just about EVERYTHING, Yusuke had a real operation going. And for some reason, Tomohiro and Yusuke kept telling us to draw. Draw what? Doesn't matter, just DRAW.

I'm still not sure why me and James were drawing, all I know now is that the others were drawing up little cards with anime characters on them. You see, the next day was a big comics convention - with a very different twist from all the conventions I went to back in the United States. Everyone at the convention on Saturday was a fan. Probably 20-30,000 people were all gathered in the giant Nagoya International Event Hall, with about 2,500 tables or so set up. Each table had its own pair of fans selling their own artworks, most (if not all) of which were NOT published in any of the major comics magazines. It was pretty impressive to see that many people at an event, much less one where there weren't any professional guests!

Most of the people there sold artwork of other professional artists' characters, like CLAMP stuff and Pocket Monsters stuff, for example, but quite a few went off with their own characters, or even comic adaptations of pop music idols like GLAY and T.M. Revolution. It was just amazing to see so many different representations of the same characters, the same people, the same THINGS. People even dressed up in costumes based on these characters, it was just really mind-boggling. American conventions might be a little strange, but there's no way American fans can compete (at least from what I'd seen of them) from what I saw of the energy and creativity of what I saw this weekend.

If nothing else, now I'm really charged about art and learning Japanese again. After that convention, we pretty much slept, as Tomohiro and Yusuke had been working on their cards all night and hadn't had any sleep recently. Found out later that this was the first time they had had a table at such a convention... the cards didn't sell too well. I think I might work on something to send to them for the next go-round, even though my art isn't near as good...

Sunday we stopped at the Tokugawa Art Museum, which was basically a big collection of art from the Tokugawa daimyo (I think a good translation would be something like 'ducal family') which was in Nagoya. Pretty interesting, especially the sixteenth-century firearms and the BIG stages. I also didn't know that they had a big reaction to the traditional overblown indoor tea ceremonies, and the feudal lords wanted some more 'natural' scenery so they made tea houses outside. Pretty interesting.

Anyways, it was lots of fun. We had to come back today (or, as I write this, yesterday) because the high school summer vacation just ended. School starts back up this week for high school, and for us I think it starts back up next week. I only have about four more weeks here - I've only been here three months so far but it seems like I've been here a lot longer... x.x;

Mmph, I'm tiiiired. Night everyone...