Comiket Day 3 was a short, to-the-point shopping day. Day 3 at Comiket is always ero-day and, as a result, the lines are longer, the crowds are bigger and more claustrophobic. I tend to think of it as a ride made out of people. ^_^ Pro tip: At winter Comiket, the smell is less AND winter coats provide padding to ward off bruising.

We headed straight for Atelier Myabi, because a year without a Fujieda Miyabi calendar is a sad year. The wife commented that the dining room just wouldn’t look right without one. We threaded our way through the East Halls until we reached our only other objective, Junk-Lab and Raku-gun. This year’s Junk Lab doujinshi is, according to the note in the back, the last. With three pro gigs, Takemiya-sensei just doesn’t have time, I bet. Good for her. And we stopped by Himekawa Akira’s table in order to meet the artists for the Arabic-language manga, Gold Ring. That was very lovely.

We lunched with Ana and Kazami Akira-san, a very nice gentleman who follows the North American anime and manga markets for Japanese readers. The conversation covered how much Comiket has changed since we first were there ten years ago. Even on Day 3, there were many women this time. And people chatted on line, which they never used to do. We saw more cosplay just walking around. And, most striking, we saw people reading doujinshi in public. When we attended in 2002, Rica and I discussed how that was not done. She asked me for a doujinshi and sat on the train reading it openly, just because she’s like that. This time, we saw people doing that.

The biggest change in ten years was this. Ten years ago, if you asked me what Comiket was, I’d have told you it was a place to be alone in a large crowd. Now, it’s much more of a social event. As you can imagine, I think that’s a wonderful thing. We even saw a couple or two there on dates to Comiket. It was very cute. He had his circles, she had hers…but they were clearly together.

New Year’s Day in Japan is a great time to visit temples and shrines. The wife and I have our particular favorites. We actually managed to hit all of them today. At the Zojoji, which is a very popular temple/shrine complex that belonged to the Tokugawa family, we traditionally eat our New Year yakisoba. After paying our respects to Buddha, I pulled a fortune and got “excellent luck”! That was cool, and we headed around the corner to visit a small Benzaiten temple I very much like. We then went to the Toyokawa Inari shrine for the wife, where I discovered I had lost a glove. On the way back to the subway, I found the glove. See, excellent luck after all! ^_^ (I really like these gloves….)

We’re back in the room eating exceedingly unhealthy snacks and planning on heading over to Fuji TV tonight, perhaps, or maybe something else.

I hope you all have excellent luck in the new year. ^_^

Postscript: We did get to Fuji TV, where we found Hello Kitty’s roger ala One Piece, Hello Kitty dressed as Chopper and funniest of all, Chopper dressed as Hello Kitty. Then we wandered over to Aqua City Odaiba for food. Without fail, it was the most depressing place I have ever been to in my life. For a fashionable hotspot, it was dreadful.