Otaku Heaven

[rachelmanija]

I am sitting in a manga kissaten (manga cafe), side by side with telophase, bravecows, and sho_sunaga, all of us typing away on our respective LJs. It is a great moment in the history of geekdom, especially since it is the culmination of a day which also included manga-shopping, doujinshi-shopping, and a dinner in which we regaled each other with tales of how we discovered slash, fic, and fandom.

Meeting bravecows and sho_sunaga was definitely one of the best bits of Worldcon for me. I think some of you know the former already, but the latter is newish to LJ; she is a Japanese fan who is into manga, SGA, Supernatural, Sentinel, Star Trek,, and fic.

Today, after a brief stop at an English used bookshop, Good Day Books in Ebisu (where Stephanie was briefly trapped in the elevator), we met up at the statue of Hachiko the loyal dog at Shibuya station, along with approximately one thousand others attempting to meet friends at the same coordinates.

We went to a bookshop, where I bought several copies of Saiyuki Gaiden 3 and was irritated that many of sho_sunaga's favorite manga have not yet been translated into English, and where telophase bravecows bought bilingual Tale of Genji manga.

Then we went to Mandarake, a massive doujinshi shop, where bravecows talked me into buying a mysterious doujinshi with the subtitle "The love between an animal and a plant," from the RPS section-- I think it might be Russell Crowe/Paul Bethany. telophase made an astonishing find, detailed on her LJ.

Then we proceeded to an izakaya, where I had a lychee soda, and we all had a fantastic appetizer of Vietnamese/Japanese/California spring roll sushi-ish thingies, before proceeding to sashimi, fried chicken wings, soup with noodles and cabbage, and oyakodon (chicken and egg over rice). It turns out that me and both had original Trek as one of our first fandoms, and discovered slash when searching for it online. bravecows, the baby of the group, began with Hanson fic at the tender age of ten!

sho_sunaga showed us some downloaded manga she can read on her cellphone (which also connects to the internet.) When it gets to the rape scene, the phone vibrates!

Comments

Soo Tokyo Touristing a la "Lost in Translation" Style?

[sho-sunaga.livejournal.com]

Oh no... I hope you are feeling OK. I just got back from work and just sent you an text mail (right term?) from my cell to astolat at lj.com with my cell number. I hope that was the right thing. I would sincerely love to get together with you. Please call me in the morning or at night(if you are still awake..)

Re: Soo Tokyo Touristing a la "Lost in Translation" Style?

[astolat]

Hey -- the text message didn't come through alas and I don't want to post my cellphone # in lj, as it's my permanent one, but julad's temporary cellphone which should work is 090 1767 9667 -- we are heading out now, but call us if you are free. :)