Like all good events, Toronto Comic Arts Festival begins and ends before and after the event itself. For me, TCAF 2019 began on Thursday when I got a message on the way to the hotel. Wait, let me tell you about my magic power – I fall through the cracks all the time. So when I got a message that said, “Oh no, we forgot to tell you that you’ll be on stage tonight at the Japan Foundation,” it was a total Erica moment.  ^_^

But before anything, I wanted to go to the Toronto Reference Library to visit the 100 Years of Yuri exhibit. They had set it up beautifully, with cutouts of lilies and scattered fake flower petals, it looked terrific.

Thursday night my posse and I headed over to the Japan Foundation for a reception welcoming Junji Ito-sensei and Hiromi Takashima-sensei, both of whom are delightful. I managed to speak semi-coherently, so phew! (YMMV. I basically made everyone tell me I did well, so I might have actually sucked.)

Friday was a light day for me, which was mostly taken up with eating food and seeing friends. But in the morning, as I went to fix a small thing in the exhibit and found that a framed piece of art had broken a glass shelf. Nothing was hurt, except RIP glass shelf. There were shards everywhere. So the entire thing had to be broken down, cleaned out and reset.  There will be glass in some of those books forever. ^_^; But as you can see, the exhibit is up again. And people do seem to be taking a look, every time I walk by.

I was very lucky to be able to accompany comics journalist Brigid Alverson to her interview of Takashima-sensei, and I learned a lot about her. She is a thoughtful and intelligent woman and gave her all in answering questions put to her.

Saturday was my big day here. The morning began with a standing room only 100 Years of Yuri panel, at which Takashima-sensei had a few moments to talk about her perception of having her work dissected. ^_^ After which the absolutely lovely folks at the Japan Foundation once again hosted Takashima-sensei, myself and, I do not want to forget the star interpreter we had, Mimmy Shen. My very real thanks to Mimm, for doing the heavy lifting.

Honestly, I’ve sat through a bunch of interviews with mangaka and done some and wow, was Takashima-sensei one of the very best. She was funny and charming and inspiring. It could not have gone any better. Then she did book signings until the sold out crowd and all the folks who lined up were full of squee.

This completed the work part of my day. I met a few folks , had lunch with translator Jenny McKeon, we *finally* walked around the very crowded sales floors, and my day ended up having dinner at the most massive buffet I have ever seen, which included a robot making “hand-made” noodles. Thanks to Erik for that feast for the senses

Today I have a spotlight with Emily Carroll, whose work I already love and more food!