Moé Moé Rabu

One of the greatest things I consider about being an otaku is making a trip to Japan and living it up in terms of spending, eating and seeing the sites. Last time I got to goto Comiket69 and that was a surreal experience. This EPIC trip also includes Comiket74 but take that one extra step further. We decided to head to Summer Wonderfest 2008. Many have seen photos of all the figures and resin kits that are available but don’t actually know what it’s like to be there. Well hit the jump to read on more about my experience of Summer Wonderfest 2008

Like any event that I attend, I’m usually quite prepared. I’ve done some research and heard experiences from people who have previously attended but of course information like that can only take you so far. All I can say was that I was pretty unprepared for what I was going to experience. Firstly I had underestimated the Japanese summer and didn’t actually realise how much I would be sweating it out. Australian summers have less humidity but are much more dryer where as Japanese summers are more humid. Though luckily for me the humidity had helped clear my blocked nose which I got from before leaving Australia.

The route to the Tokyo Big Site was simple and thanks to the help of Roobar’s friends who live in Japan, they were able to find the shortest route for us basing on where we are staying at in Japan. We took the monorail and arrived at the Tokyo Big Site at around 6:30am and discovered how long the line was. Once buying our ticket/guide and upon settling at the back of the line, I met up with fellow good friends of Tamarket who were only a good 4 metres behind us. Being veterans to the whole Wonderfest experience, they showed us how well prepared they were compared to the 4 of us who decided to wing it. So next time I now know to bring a lot more water, a towel, ice packs and a small chair.

With the help of experienced people, we worked on a battle plan and decided to help out Tamarket in acquiring goods for their online store. For me, most f the places that they were visiting were the same as mine, so we all pretty much stuck together. The line started moving at around 9am and it moved fairly quickly. We got through the door at around 10:10am and headed straight for the first store, which was Movic/Solid Theater. There we acquired the limited edition Dark Saber and each of us grabbed 2. 6 people, 2 Sabers…yea that’s a lot of Sabers. I gave one to Tamarket and kept on for myself. Next up was Good Smile Company/Max Factory and this is where the items I really wanted were. Joining the back of the line it took us roughly 1 hour and 40 minutes to get through and just as we joined the last leg of the queue once inside, we saw the sign behind us saying some items are already sold out. Of course this is only an indication point of where they estimate certain products would be sold out. Once trough I pretty much grabbed two of every item for myself. These items you will see in a separate post.

Once through we all went our separate ways. Me being a photographer I was hella excited about taking photos. But I have to admit something. My feet were killing me before I got to walk around myself. This was due to the walking I had done the day before Wonderfest so I was practically walking on blisters. So I only managed to walk through about 70% of the entire Wonderfest despite it being rather small in itself. Just goes to show that I’ve become fat and unfit. Ah such is the life of a programmer. I missed out on a lot of things due to my aching feet, but I did manage to purchase some extra items and take photos of some of the kits that were on display. After walking around and resting my feet 4 times, I meet up with my comrades at around 3:30pm and headed back to the hotel. Having some rest for an hour we headed out once again to Akiba to meet up with Tamarket to do more shopping and to help them carry stuff. The plus side is that I get to see the difference in buying based on otaku passion and buying for a business. It’s HUGE. And although I said I wouldn’t buy anything, within 20 minutes of meeting up I was down a few thousand yens already, lol.

This a combination of our personal purchases and Tamarket purchases. Keep in mind this is only 10% of what we bought.

Afterwards we headed off to dinner in Shibuya, played some games at a game centre and went our separate ways. With it being only 3 days in Japan, it felt like I’ve been here for nearly a week. And already after 3 days, 7.5 hours of sleep and some blistered feet, it’s been great. At times I do kind of regret that I didn’t get to explore all of Wonderfest, but that is purely my fault for getting sore feet. However knowing that I’m here and have experienced Wonderfest, it was all worth it as it’s something not a lot of western otakus can experience.

As for my photos of the actual kits and figures for Wonderfest, I’m deciding not to post them as I really don’t want to spend so much time going through them all. Check out Danny Choo’s coverage and the related links there.