just prior to my japan trip, i exchanged a couple emails with this guy shibs, who runs a site hosted on neocities called uchuudenpa. i originally reached out because he had a post on his site about travelling in japan that resonated with me, i was trying to approach my upcoming trip with a similar attitude (and haven't really pulled it off so far lol). once i actually arrived in the country, the possibility of a meetup naturally arose in our email chain, which according to shibs could only be in one place: akihabara.

despite the general perception among "serious" otaku that akihabara has fallen off in recent years, ceded to the hordes of tourists and casuals that have overwhelmed the district, shibs is still akihabara's strongest warrior. for example, prolific otaku essayist and theorist nyalra has largely abandoned the district for nakano broadway, he recently revisited and wrote a very measured take on the "fall" of akihabara here (original japanese version), he thinks of it more as a passing of the torch from japanese otaku to foreign weebs, the prospects of whom he's generally optimistic about. but there certainly have been many concerning developments lately that have had a visible effect on the character of the district: arcades are closing or replacing game cabinets with claw machines and gacha, iconic stores like toranoana have closed or downsized, the remaining stores increasingly stock only merch from the most popular series aimed at tourists or casuals. even six years ago during my last visit to japan (right before covid dealt a death blow to many spots just barely clinging on, like the wonderful eternal amusement that had an unparalleled selection of retro rhythm games), it was clear to me that akihabara was in the process of being hollowed out, its soul in retreat to nooks and crannies.

truth be told i wasn't especially eager to go to akihabara, on this trip i've been somewhat-obsessively trying to break out of old habits from past trips and try new things, and one thing i did a LOT on past trips was visit akihabara. i've probably been there over twenty times, spending hours crawling through shops looking for the best deals on used and rare nendoroid figurines, mostly for savings that were not at all worth the effort. there was also the fact that on this particular trip i had already been to akihabara once, accompanying my friends to the good old honey toast cafe that they really wanted to try after how much i'd talked it up over the years. afterwards we browsed used computer stores on the sidestreets for a desperately-needed upgrade to the panasonic let's note laptop i had purchased in the same place six years ago on our last trip, among the dozen other annoying broken things about it i was especially convinced to replace it by my friends' recent complaints about the high-pitched whine it gives off, they would wince every time i pulled it out in front of them. then, i finished up the visit with some nostalgic nendoroid hunting, managing to wrap it up in a fraction of the time it used to take me. i found five out of six of the nendoroids i was looking for at reasonable prices within an hour, the new amiami figure tower helped greatly as it has an entire floor dedicated to nendoroids at only modest markups (the exchange rate also helped soften the blow)i miraculously found the remaining one the next day almost immediately upon wandering on a whim into the shinjuku marui (O|O|) annex surugaya store.

during my brief visit, i did notice some of the changes people had been talking about. many shops had shuffled around to different buildings or closed some of their extra locations, when i went looking for the original amiami store i discovered that there was nothing there except an empty lot, the whole building had been demolished. there were definitely a lot more foreign tourists around than before and many looked like boomers or frat boys, out of place in a district that was supposed to be dedicated to nerdy pursuits. the good old radiokaikan was a disaster area, there was a line far out the door just to get on the escalators going up, and the narrow aisles in the shops on the first couple floors (k-books and amiami) were so clogged that it was impossible to browse comfortably. outside, the edge of the sidewalk beside chuo-dori was lined with touts in all sorts of elaborate frilly outfits, some enthusiastically greeting passersby and handing out chirashi, others holding placards with an advertisement up to their faces so they can use their phones behind them. there has been some turnover in the popular franchises, kancolle was huge six years ago but now it's been relegated to the discount bins, the new darlings are blue archive and vtubers, neither of which existed back then.

still, i was curious if shibs could show me that rumors of akiba's death had been greatly exaggerated. i also had a good excuse for a return to akiba this trip: the new volume of made in abyss had just come out, and if purchased at the melonbooks main store in akihabara it comes with a bonus clear file featuring the cover art. so, i agreed to meet shibs one early evening at akihabara station's fabled "Electric Town" gate. i admit i had a bit of initial apprehension meeting someone who's a shameless self-professed akiba fanatic, there's definitely an elevated risk they could be a certain... type.

fortunately, shibs was on the opposite end of the "spectrum", the well put-together "hidden power levels" type that can effortlessly blend in to polite society. upon meeting we got right down to business, chatting as he guided us towards melonbooks, which i'd actually never been to before. it was secreted in a basement right at the heart of akiba, accessed via a staircase at the end of a hallway beneath the hirose entertainment yard (HEY) arcade. despite the somewhat secluded location there was a steady stream of traffic flowing in and out, like a nondescript alley or storefront that receives a suspicious amount of foot traffic. turns out that was a fairly accurate description of the store as they were indeed distributing a large amount of what could be considered contraband, maybe 90% of its cramped basement floorspace was given over to pornographic doujinshi and allied erotic arts like dakimakura covers, all except for a small pedestal at the foot of the descending entrance stairs that contained an offering of freshly-released manga, including made in abyss vol 14 (which if you look beneath the dust jacket isn't that out of place among the rest of the selection at melonbooks). maneuvering to the check-out was a bit difficult because the store was absolutely stuffed with people (almost exclusively japanese men), but before long i managed to take my place in the check-out line flanked by hentai tankoban, and upon paying at the register i eargerly accepted my bonus clear file from the cashier.

after fighting our way out of the packed basement, we went up to the arcade and made a brief unsuccesful search for a pop'n cab, though i noticed they certainly had a good selection of vintage arcade cabinets. we didn't really know what to do next, then shibs recalled he'd seen me express interest in visual novels on my site and suggested we go look at some stores that sold them. that ended up turning into a store crawl across all of akiba visiting nearly every store that sold used or new visual novels, going from trader to lashinbang to mandarake to surugaya to the second trader store under the sobu line train tracks, where they had an impressive display for the brand new subahibi 15th anniversary edition, retailing at 25k yen)though it comes with a nice kimika tapestry. the vn department in stores (commonly labelled "PC Software" or the like) was almost always on the age-restricted top floors, even key vns with no sexual content like summer pockets got lumped in up there with the rest. having always associated vns with online downloads or torrents, it was interesting finally seeing them incarnated in their "physical" form, for some reason they almost always come in these oversize (for DVDs, at least) boxes. it made sense for special releases that have bonuses like extra cds of ASMR and artbooks, but even barebones standard editions came in similar-sized boxes, i wondered what was up with that.

over the course of our crawl i managed to find a physical copy of nearly every vn i've played (or heard of), frequently at outrageous prices (the curse of trying to play only kamige). the main issue i ran into was that i didn't really want to buy any vn i'd already played because it would just be an expensive souvenir for my shelf, but i also didn't have any unplayed vns in mind to look for on the shelves. in the end, i accepted a recommendation from shibs for hatsuyuki sakura (recommended to him by his own senpai), which looks like the exact kind of moege i used to play a lot of. it also helped that copies were available at very reasonable prices, and i purchased a one at our final store stop at trader below the train tracks, right at closing time.

⊕for only $90 and 20 hours of skipping through dialogue to get to where i was, i could read the vn i'm currently going through "legit"

⊕good of them to put the two best girls on the cover

most other stores closed around the same time, so it was time for some nightlife (drinking). first stop was a favorite spot of shibs' a few blocks away, a saké bar. their gimmick was that they had a wall-length fridge filled with hundreds of different bottles of saké, from which you could pick three bottles to make your own flight. i'm a sucker for food variety and love samplers and flights, so it was perfect for me. plus, they had a "pay-by-the-cup" model that meant you could sample expensive for relatively cheap. i have to admit i never really liked saké that much but this place almost singlehandedly changed my view on it, the three bottles we chose nearly at random (including a meme "cum shot" sake) were all excellent. in retrospect, perhaps the issue is that i've only ever had cheap saké, my average saké experience is dipping into the sho chiku bai cooking saké ($8.99 at the local grocery store) in the fridge when i need a little pick me up after running out of wine too early in the evening (also, i once had some disgusting homebrewed saké my friend's older brother made).

while we sampled the selection, shibs complained about how young people aren't drinking anymore, he couldn't go out with any of his friends who visited him in japan because somehow none of them drank. i spun up some theories about the decline (at least in the US), like that maybe everyone is just smoking weed now, though i think i forgot to mention that it could also be because alcohol has gotten way too expensive, the average drink in japan was on average a quarter of the price of its equivalent back home. i also assured him that he could rely on me, so far on the trip i had been having minimum two strong zeroesevery foreigner calls it that because it’s the only prominent english text on the can, but i believe the actual name is "-196" (イチキューロク)a night. the saké bar didn't really serve food and we were getting hungry, so we moved on to shibs' other favorite joint, an izakaya beneath the sobu line tracks that had a gimmick where you could roll two dice for bonus pieces of food. we got karaage and gyoza, and i successfully rolled us a feast of eight extra karaage and ten extra gyoza. they also offered a highball you could double in size by winning rock paper scissors with the waiter, we both managed to win. at some point shibs mentioned that Comiket (the legendary doujin event that has become the world's largest fan convention) was tomorrow and that if i wanted to get online AM tickets i should do it right away before they sell out. when shibs had asked if i was going to comiket in an earlier email it had been news to me that comiket was happening while i was in japan, for some reason i had been under the impression it takes place earlier in the summer, in june or july. in my email reply i had been noncommital, it's not like i follow any doujin artists and have my eyes on their upcoming comiket releases (though it would certainly be an interesting experience regardless), however i can be convinced to agree to pretty much any sort of future trip or outing while drunk and immediately pulled out my phone and card to buy a comiket ticket for the following morning, condemning my future self to an early 9am wakeup after a little night out. it helped that it was pretty cheap, about $8-9 for the day, much better than anime cons in the west that feel like they're now pushing $50-70 per day, and what's even crazier is that shibs told me comiket admission actually used to be free before covid.

as we were struggling to finish our massive pile of karaage, the izakaya looked to be winding down for the night, so we made our way back to akiba's main strip where it was still pretty lively. we stopped at an arcade briefly because i INSISTED i had to play some pop'n music, we also went upstairs and against my better judgmenta couple days before i had twisted my ankle drunkenly stumbling home from karaoke and my entire foot was still swollen and mostly purple played a credit of dance dance revolution together. then we went over to the HUB bar, an infamous japanese chain of british pub-themed bars, and i remarked that even the shitty japanese chains had way higher effort interior decoration/theming than even "good" american bars. shibs offered to buy me a drink and i selected a cocktail called the "salty dog" because the name sounded amusing, no idea what was in it. they also had the world's tiniest water cups, barely bigger than a shot glass, and i complained bitterly aboyut how the japanese LOVE to talk a big game about heatstroke (熱中症) prevention and then going around distributing water in homeopathic doses.

unfortunately, that particular HUB was in the foyer of some big building that meant it had to close early, so we went somewhere else, which ended up being lawson's convenience store to get some strong zero. we cracked open the cans and walked around late night akiba, along the way discovering there's actually a SECOND hub pub in akihabara that stays open until 4 am that we probably should have been at all along. we finished the strong zeroes at the "Akihabara Public Park", basically a paved square with like three trees, then headed back towards the train station at the perfect time to catch the very last counter-clockwise yamanote line train of the night at 12:30, arranging to meet up the next morning at 10:00am at the train station outside the tokyo big sight convention center comiket is held at.

when i woke up early the next morning to head out to comiket, my roommate in the airbnb decided to tag along despite lacking a ticket, by then they were sold out online just as shibs had warned, though there was a possibility of getting a PM admission ticket at the venue. i stopped by 7-11 to grab a 2 liter water and a sandwich for breakfast before getting on the subway, where the car was plastered in travel ads for hawaii, i groggily considered how much it must suck to travel there as a japanese tourist on the unfavorable end of the current exchange rate, on top of hawaii already being expensive in the first place. changing to the rinkai line train that stops outside tokyo big sight, i expected it to be absolutely stuffed and it ended up not being too bad, less than half full, though every single person on board got off at the same station. crowd control operations were in full effect at the station, and just outside we sat down at some benches to wait for shibs, who was running late. it gave me a good chance to eat my sandwich, at least, i'm fairly certain trying to eat it while in line would have been considered a faux pas.

once shibs arrived we went over to redeem our online tickets for official comiket wristbands, the online tickets seemed mainly targeted at foreigners and they had a little booth set up for them staffed with people who spoke pretty good english, my kudos to the Comiket Organizing Committee for the consideration. then it was time to join the line, finding the tail of which involced marching in formation on a circuitous route all around the area, directed by arm-banded staff members stationed along the path. there was some starting and stopping along the way to wait for crossing lights on nearly empty roads, i was surprised they hadn't just closed off all the roads in the area for such a huge event. after walking maybe a kilometer or two getting further and further away from the convention center, shibs remarked "oh no, we're headed for the bridge of dreams", which i suppose signified a long wait.

the bridge of dreams was a wide pedestrian bridge leading to the next island over, and it really looked like we might have to go all the way across before turning around and joining the line proper. luckily, we were just over the peak of the bridge's arch when we finally turned around and got in the line heading back towards the convention center. on the bridge, the line split in two, the right for people with AM wristbands like us and the left for people looking to buy PM admission, and shibs and i split with my wristbandless roommate.⊕

the line proper was quite a sight, a sold rectangular mass of people some forty fide wide extending off into the distance, marshalled by arm-banned staff members that kept the column dense by instructing people to take another step forward whenever they spotted any gaps. at one point it started sprinkling rain so in unison a roof of umbrellas sprouted above mass of people, it felt like a bit like being in one of those roman phalanxes with shields raised above. we were marching to assault the enemy fortress (Tokyo Big Sight), to plunder their loot and ravage their women (buy doujins). the weather was pretty miserable, hot and humid, the only saving grace being that the sun was mostly obscured by clouds. my shirt (a tasteful aloha shirt subtly incorporating megumin and yunyun into the pattern) was getting soaked in sweat but it wasn't particularly embarrassing because you'd look around and see everyone was in the same boat. the line (if it could even be called that, it was more like a human river) flowed surprisingly quick and we kept up a lively conversation throughout, so it wasn't long before there was nobody standing in the way between us and tokyo big sight's iconic inverted pyramid centerpiece. although we technically had AM tickets, we stepped across the threshold a little bit after noon, having spent about 1.5 hours in line.

in a way there wasn't a whole lot to do at Comiket compared to western anime cons, the whole event was split into just three main sections. there's the doujin marketplace that's the main draw of the event and takes up by far the most floor space (pretty much a gigantic version of "artist alley" at anime cons), there are the corporate booths where companies sell official merch and promote new products (equivalent to the industry or vendor hall at anime cons), and then the cosplay areas. there's pretty much nothing else, no panels whatsoever, no "guests of honor", no autograph signings (though i did see one guy going around having his favorite doujin artists signing a paper), no performances or demonstrations, no gaming lounges with arcade cabs or game consoles, no card game or tabletop areas.

for those unaware, "doujinshi" (or "doujin" for short) are japanese self-published fan works similar to zines, although they generally have far higher production values and come in a larger print format. doujins are often created collaboratively in named groups called "doujin circles" (typically shortened to just "circle"), and the doujin as a whole will usually be credited only to the circle. however, there are also many solo doujin creators that credit their work to their own "one-man" circles too, using the circle as a sort of pen name. circles usually distribute their works by selling them at doujin conventions, the largest of which is (of course) Comiket.

unlike the "artist alleys" at american anime cons where the fan works artists sell are mostly individual prints or little trinkets like pins or acrylic stands, at Comiket the focus is squarely on selling doujinshi, most circles exclusively sell doujinshi and the ones that do sell other types of fan goods usually do it on the side while still keeping the focus on their doujinshi. the quality of the art is generally higher than you see in the west (or maybe i'm just not a big fan of the tumblr/deviantart-poisoned animesque fusion style that's developed in the community abroad), though i was surprised to see that there was a couple circles trying to sell doujinshi with embarrassingly bad art, much worse than the worst i've ever seen in an artist alley. i guess comiket is big enough that anybody can slip in if they're shameless enough. there are also some circles that try to sell pretty low-effort stuff like collections of rough sketches or doodles, or you have to watch out for the doujins that start out strong and then degrade to rough storyboards in the last couple of pages, as the comiket deadline loomed for the artist. generally higher quality art can demand higher prices, the guys trying to sell their rough sketches have trouble moving copies even at prices like 200 yen ($1.25).

though the words "doujinshi" or "doujin" have acquired a connotation that the contents are pornographic (especially in the west) and certainly a large majority are, they do not necessarily have to be pornographic, nor do they even have to be derivative (fan) works. i went into comiket expecting it to be wall-to-wall porn and was surprised to see how many completely SFW doujinshi were being sold. it was almost a little heartwarming going up to the two circles repping hidamari sketch and finding out that both of them were selling SFW doujins, one was a fanart compilation and the other was fan-made 4-koma. some other examples of doujin diversity i saw:

• a japanese lady selling a thick compilation of her schizo Lain theories for a thousand yen, it was filled with complicated diagrams illustrated with irasutoya clip art and at times looked like the printout of some sort of presentation
• there was a guy selling a doujinshi compiling his reviews of various anime. i could do this...
• one booth had a whole line of travel guides for visiting real-life locations anime are based on (in otaku culture this is referred to as 聖地巡礼, “holy site pilgrimage”), they had absurdly high production values with professional-looking graphic design, photography, and tons of content, they basically looked like actual travel guides except with anime screenshots thrown in. there were also two circles for last season's travel show zatsu tabi, both of them were selling trip reports to destinations from the show reminiscent of the stuff i write about on my blog...
• some doujinshi had nothing to do with anime at all, one booth was selling a doujin about the history of BMS (a fanmade simulator for the arcade rhythm game beatmania iidx), another booth had a full line of doujins about various vintage computers. apparently most of the non-anime/game-themed (though often still illustrated with anime girls) doujins on topics like militaria or trains are sold on day 2 of comiket that i didn't attend
• a guy in a baseball cap and jersey was selling a doujin about sabermetrics that detailed his strategies for betting on baseball
• by far the weirdest part was an entire couple of columns in the middle of the east halls that was basically a miniature arts and crafts fair within comiket, the vendors were selling jewelry, little crochet critters, and all sorts of other little trinkets that had absolutely nothing to do with anime or video games

inside the marketplace halls, they achieved a significantly denser packing of vendors than you see in the US by using way tinier tables, maybe 1/3 the size of tables you normally see at convention centers in the US. they were just big enough to perfectly fit two folding chairs laid flat on them end to end, which is how vendors left their stations after packing up for the day. the standard table setup was a tablecloth over the table printed with some design, doujins for sale stacked on top, and then behind the person sitting at the table a stand with a printed poster hanging that identifies the booth owners or advertises their newest doujin (often both). some setups were more minimal, just a little stack of doujins on a bare tabletop, others were more elaborate, constructing displays using the metal grating that you often see at booths in artist alleys in the west.

a circle's table position could be located using a complex coordinate system that looked like this: 東5ア52ab - hall east (東) 5, column katakana "a" (ア), position 52ab. i'm pretty sure shibs told me tables are sold by halves so "ab" indicates the whole table and just "a" or "b" the halves, but since the tables are really small i don't recall seeing anyone use only half. many circles included their table "address" in their displays to help people get around. table positions were not assigned randomly, they were based off the franchise the circle was participating in, circles in the same franchise would be next to each other and in close proximity to circles from similar franchises. however, besides the largest franchises that had their own dedicated areas like hoyoverse or blue archiveat comiket 106 blue archive was by far the most popular franchise with over 2,000 circles participating, there were like 2 entire halls and part of another that were exclusively blue archive. though blue archive is supposedly some kind of popular gacha game, i'm not entirely convinced anybody actually plays the game, to me it seems like a rootless engine that produces characters for masturbation material (and of course to be used as the basis for an endless array of chracter goods). every couple of years the otaku community collectively designates a new franchise to be used as the basis for all porn, in the distant past it was touhou, five years ago it was kancolle or something, currently it's blue archive, and who knows what franchise will be nominated in another couple years when blue archive loses the Mandate of Gooning. if i were a japanese otaku i think i might feel a little ashamed that the community has been completely taken over by a chinese quasi-gambling game, it was much more respectable when touhou was king of comiket. then again i suppose comiket participants have never been too concerned about shame, after all the primary purpose of the event is openly buying and selling porn., the official categorizations referenced in signage were quite vague, several halls were given over to the "game" category with no further subdivisions besides "gacha/mobile game" (which took up about half the space, if not more). if you knew your stuff, though, you could move through hall and feel out the contours of the clusters within: gacha games were neighbored by the vn section, which then gave away to rhythm games and fighting games, and so on down the hall until you finally arrive at pokemon on the edge of the hall.

fortunately, shibs was a gentleman of taste and culture, so we were in agreement over skipping everything gacha or vtuber-related. that narrowed the selection down significantly, we managed to at least pass by almost every non-gacha circle at the convention in just the four hours we had there, it's difficult to rush through because you have to constantly fight the crowds, though funnily enough the sections housing less popular franchises are noticeably less congested. shibs was mainly looking for stuff from amagami, which was celebrating its 15th anniversary and that i had coincidentally watched the anime adaptation of just a few months ago. we found the amagami circles pretty easily because the vn section was the first one we ended up in since it bordered the gacha games. there were four or five of them and shibs made a couple purchases, though along the way trying to pick up a new release at one booth we learned an important comiket vocabulary word, 完売かんばい, "sold out" as part of comiket's generous accomodations for foreigners we had also received a paper guide to the event in english that came with a little "phrasebook" of useful expressions in japanese and then translated into a bunch of other languages, e.g. こちらを購入したい/I want to buy this/chinese translation/korean translation/etc., which you could use to communicate by pointing to the appropriate expression. the circles were generally very understanding of our broken japanese and frequent retreats to english, and come to think of it i was surprised to see quite a few fellow foreigners around. there were many who looked about how you'd expect somebody who might attend comiket on their trip to japan (maybe it was even their motivation to come in the first place), but by far the weirdest and most unexpected attendees i encountered were two separate white tourist families of four (two kids aged 8-12) walking around bearing looks that were some combination of daze, awe, and slight confusion. how did they even find their way to an event where people are openly selling porn? i wonder if comiket somehow ended up on some website promoting "Fun family events in Tokyo this weekend!" or something.. comiket releases are printed in very limited quantities so it's common for doujinshi to sell out if you don't come in early enough, noon is usually far too late for to pick up any semi-popular artist's hotly-anticipated new release.

after finishing up browsing the doujin marketplace, we made the long journey over to the corporate booths hall, joining the heavy traffic flowing through connecting passageways like liquid in a pipe. along the way, we passed by the rear of one of the outdoor cosplay areas, the only glimpse of them i ended up getting. the girls in cosplay (it was all girls) were lined up in a long row against the barriers separating them from the flow of traffic to the corporate hall, 15-20 feet apart from each. in front of each girl there was a line of 20-25 guys with huge cameras, each waiting for their turn at the front to snap a few pictures before getting in line for the next girl. in my memory the photographers are all dressed in the same standard salary man uniform of white dress shirt and dark trousers like some kind of paparazzi army, though i'm not exactly sure that image is accurate. so basically, the whole cosplay area was just waiting in a bunch of lines to take pictures of girls in cosplay... it might have been so bad except that you had to wait the whole time in a huge crowd outside in the direct sun, and according to shibs' report from the second day you're not allowed to use umbrellas or parasols to shade yourself in that areai wonder why they hold comiket during the most miserable weather of the year, maybe it's a holdover from before the convention was so big you had to wait an hour outdoors to get in, maybe it's intended to be during the obon holiday season so people have time off and convention center space is cheaper, who knows.. might as well skip it and just admire the cosplayers from the hundreds of pictures all those pro photographer guys are definitely posting online...

now, i thought i had seen some crowds earlier, but that was all NOTHING compared to the corporate booth halls. imagine the same density as tokyo's infamous sardine-tin rush hour trains, where white-gloved station attendants have push people in so the doors can close, except instead of a train car it's throughout the entire floorspace of an 80,000 square foot convention center hall. it felt like diving into a human ocean, to get anywhere took enormous effort because you'd have to swim against the sheer weight of the crowd and fight currents dragging you in the wrong direction. the goal was to make it to land, the booth displays rising up over the undulating waves of heads like the steep shores of a volcanic archipelago. depending on weather and tidal conditions, it could take as long as ten minutes to make it 25 feet over to the next booth, so we weren't able to visit very many of them.

i tried to steer us towards booths that looked like they sold merch for shows i liked, the only problem was that none of what they had for sale really interested me. it seems like they've settled on a template for a lot of merch: start with one key visual or a set of illustrations of the characters with some theme (during summer swimsuits are popular), then slap the art onto the set of standard merch formats: acrylic stands, tapestries, pins, maybe a t-shirt or coffee mug if you want to get fancy. at comiket vendors are limited in how many different products they're able to stock, so you can infer which girls are most popular from a show by looking at what merch they choose to stock: one booth had eight pieces of konosuba merch and seven featured megumin, the same one had only four pieces of made in abyss merch and all were nanachi, bocchi the rock does a little bitter featuring all band members but bocchi is the only band member who has any merch featuring her solo.

one booth that caught my eye near the end of our grueling swim was the little kero q/makura booth promoting the "sakura no uta" vn remake, we fought our way over so i could have a look. they were mostly selling goods based on sakura no uta, which i have not yet played, however i almost fainted in astonishment when i saw that they were ALSO selling the subahibi kimika full graphic shirt. i had completely forgotten about it, i had seen it a few weeks ago online and wanted it badly, i even downloaded a picture of it, but i had resigned myself to never having it after finding out it was a comiket exclusive. suddenly, things clicked in my mind: wait a second, i am CURRENTLY at comiket, the place the shirt is supposed to be sold, so of course they are selling it here. without hesitating a moment i walked up to the register (the benefit of having taste is that there was no line at all) and immediately purchased the shirt from the cashier, who was cosplaying yuki.

⊕I Braved The Crowds At Comiket And All I Got Was This Epic Kimika Shirt

after buying the shirt i had gotten exactly what i had unknowingly come for, so i was about ready to wrap things up at comiket. plus, it was close to closing time, and we'd seen pretty much everything except for the halls dedicated to blue archive and friends. shibs did want to take one final quick peek in those halls to see if they had any good kancolle stuff, but by that time a significant proportion of circles were either packing up or had already left so it was slim pickings and he left empty-handed. after that, we miraculously found a little outdoor area with some seating to rest after something like six straight hours of continuous walking or standing, shibs announced that we had taken over 15,000 steps, not too shabby on my bum foot still both half-swollen and half-purple. while still seated, we made sure to participate in the ceremonial clapping that marks the official end of the day for comiket... but comiket had one final gauntlet for us: how were we going to get out?

even though we hadn't eaten all day, shibs proposed we hold out a little longer and try to put some distance between ourselves and the crowds before finding a restaurant, exactly what i would suggest doing in this situation (and usually i'm foiled by whoever i'm with insisting they gotta eat NOW, and so we end up waiting forever to get into some nearby restaurant slammed with people, and the service ends up being horribly slow and the food mid because restaurant staff are stretched so thin). the area around tokyo big sight after comiket was a mess, neither of us had any idea what we were doing besides a vague plan to try and take the area's "yurikamome" people mover thing to its western terminus at shimbashi. but of course there was a hideously long line just to get into the tokyo big sight yurikamome station, it would have taken an hour minimum to get in. then, i proposed that we try walking 5-10 minutes over to the preceding yurikamome station to see if the situation is any better over there, and it turns out that was definitely the right move because somehow the preceding station was almost a ghost town in comparison, we walked right up to the platform and easily boarded the next mostly-empty train to arrive. we even ended up getting much-needed seats after strategically planting ourselves in front of a group of tourists that got off early, i wonder what it must have been like knowing nothing about what was going on in the area and seeing the train suddenly fill to bursting with people.

in shimbashi, shibs suggested all you can eat yakiniku, which sounded great after not eating all day. we headed to, of all places, a gyukaku location, the same chain whose US locations i unsuccessfully tried to get people to go with me to for YEARS, i guess there was some kind of curse on me because only after i stopped suggesting it did other people suddenly start spontanously bringing up going there. we made sure there was something constantly on the grill for all ninety minutes and devoured a pile of kimchi, which was hitting really hard that night for some reason (perhaps because hunger is the best seasoning). then, we got some fancy imported beers at a bar down below before parting relatively early for the night, as shibs was going in for day 2 of comiket the next morning and i had plans (that i ended up skipping due to fatigue) to meet my friends at an onsen.

the next day, my friends wanted to go to the damn honey toast café in akiba again, continuing an annoying trend of me introducing a couple of them to some place and then them wanting to go back right away with everybody who hadn't been there yet. i tagged along, but on the train there i declared that i was actually going to get off early at ueno to try and find some cheap sunglasses in the ameyoko shopping street (which i remembered from mitsuboshi colors). naturally, everyone ended up following me off the train in ueno because it turns out nobody really wanted to go to the honey toast café that badly, it was all part of some kind of mass hysteria, the second any other option became available people dropped out one by one like dominoes. we browsed for a while but i didn't find any sunglasses to my liking, they all looked terrible, turns out they don't call the expensive ones "designer" for nothing. people started getting hungry so we stopped in at this okonomiyakisoba (you heard that correctly) joing, then started drifting off towards akiba as if drawn by some mysterious force. i know i said earlier i was done going back there, but i still technically had unfinished business, i hadn't purchased a new laptop yet...

as soon as we reached akiba everyone scattered, and i found myself wandering alone aimlessly through the akiba cultures zone building. curious, i made my way up all the way to the uppermost shop, TrioDX. it was supposed to be a specialty store for kpop and idol goods, but i made an incredible discovery: for whatever reason there was a random corner where they sold old B2-size promotional posters for anime releases. not only that, the selection was bizarrely skewed towards just a few franchises i happen to be interested in, about two-thirds of the posters were from either the monogatari series or gochiusa, and in the remaining third i found a random hidamari sketch poster mixed in with a bunch of stuff i didn't recognize. the best part was that the posters were cheap too, only about a thousand yen each, way less than you'd pay for smaller posters or tapestries sold as "official " merch. i packed out the choicest posters from both the monogatari and gochiusa sections, grabbed the hidamari poster, then went to the register.

next i went down the side street past mandarake until the anime shops thinned out in favor of used computer stores, determined to finally purchase a new laptop. at this point my "old" laptop purchased in the exact same area six years ago was so obsolete that not a single store was selling it anymore, you couldn't even find one in hard-off's famous discount "junk" section. to be fair, at the time i bought it that laptop was Akiba's Cheapest Laptop (that's why i bought it) and already not too far off from being retired from the stores. but thanks to the relentless march of technological progress (and some assistance from the favorable exchange rate), you could buy a lot more Laptop for the same price i paid for Akiba's Cheapest Laptop six years ago, and the reigning Akiba's Cheapest Laptop was quite a bit beefier too. i went into nearly every shop i saw to get a feel for the current market and what i saw looked quite promising, even if i decided to cheap out and purchase Akiba's C⊕oh yes, almost forgot to mention i popped into hard-off too, but only to buy character goods, a rubber charm of their absurdly cute and enthusiastic about obsolete used electronics mascot "junko-chan" (ジャン子ちゃん)eventually, i wandered into one of the last stores on the street, which had a great selection at reasonable prices that i spent some time carefully inspecting. the store appeared to be run by one japanese guy leading a posse of four pushy pakistani store attendants, one of whom had been hovering near me the whole time. as i headed for the door, he pleaded to my back "wait, don't go, we give discount!" i continued out the door, but what he'd said intrigued me. i don't think you're supposed to haggle in japan, however there was a chance the pushy foreign store attendants were open to it. i rounded the block and popped into sofmap briefly to check some prices, then headed back to that store.

when i returned, the store attendants greeted me with a "welcome back", and one of them immediately attached himself to me. i played hard to get, looking at the let's note selection again while frowning, asking if they have any with disc drives (pretty much only so i could use it to play that vn i bought), insisting i HAD to get a panasonic let's note, then complaining that the only one they had with a disc drive was too big. the store attendant appeared to be growing increasingly impatient with my apparently-unreasonable demands for a tiny let's note with a disc drive, but he still continued to oblige me by disappearing in the back room to look for one for ten minutes. unfortunately, he returned emptyhanded and tried once more to sell me on the bigger laptop, i wasn't having it and started making motions to leave, thanking him for all his help and saying it was a shame things didn't work out. suddenly, one of the other store attendants came running out of the backroom with a laptop crying "i found one!", and indeed it was exactly the laptop i had been looking for. still, i held back my enthusiasm and insisted upon a thorough inspection, plugging it in and booting it up. finally, i asked the price, 27.2k yen. upon hearing it, i grimaced as though i'd just caught a whiff of something unpleasant, then countered perhaps a bit too quickly with "can you do 22k?". this time it was the store attendant's turn to grimace, he responded "oh, for this laptop that is very difficult...", so i asked "how about 25k?" he accepted, and so we headed over to the register to officially bring my laptop purchase sidequest to completionso far i cannot be more satisfied with my purchase, though it's likely most of it is just because my old laptop was so awful in the first place. it had the aforementioned annoying incessant high-pitched whine, there was some weird glitch where it would not stay connected to a wifi network after being closed, the battery could hold a charge for all of an hour, the left/right click buttons were gummy, the keyboard plastic had turned a sickly yellow color, it only had a single tiny speaker on right right side that was barely audible on max volume, the screen had a slightly blurry bright white flourescent glow that was uncomfortable to look at, and the whole laptop was covered in scratches with dirt and grime in various ports from the previous owner. meanwhile this new laptop has a much crisper screen, an actual battery life of five hours or so, speakers on BOTH sides, and it's also in almost pristine condition, silver finish gleaming unblemished..

laptop in bag in hand, i headed back to the main strip, crossing the street and taking a peek in donki to see if they had any sort of carrying case for posters. i have to hand it to them, they did a good job catering the store selection to the area, though i didn't find what i was looking for (if only i had been looking for a steins gate and monogatari crossover-themed bucket!). i continued down towards the station, and stumbled upon a building advertising a summer pockets/key pop-up shop on the top floor (the perks of being into at least one currently semi-popular franchise).⊕it is of course manufactured in collaboration with the prominent japanese coffee company called "key coffee" yet again, i discovered something incredible for sale on the top floor of a building in akiba: they were selling actual "real-life cans of "key coffee" canned coffee that appears in several scenes in the summer pockets anime, i had even screenshotted several of them. i passed on an expensive full-print ao shirt because it was expensive (and thanks to comiket already had at least one of them), but the canned coffee was an easy buy since they were only 200 yen apiece. almost everyone else in the store (all 20-something japanese guys, the main demographic for visual art's/key's chaste heart-wrenching romances) picked up at least one with their purchases, for the true freaks there was even an option to purchase a full case of 30 cans.

continuing my mosey down the street, i decided to have a quick look in Volks Hobby Paradise, which had moved from its iconic corner location to a new building in the six years i had been away. volks is one of the best stores in akiba, basically the closest thing there is to an otaku department store. they take things extremely seriously, they have a lot of exclusive releases, stock supplies for niche hobbies, sell character goods from relatively obscure franchises, and they don't even offer tax free, it is NOT a store for tourists or casuals. i was already thinking "hmm, volks is even more based than i remember" when i saw they had a huge yuru yuri section, but NOTHING could have prepared me for going around a random shelving unit and discovering that the ENTIRE opposite side was dedicated to tsukumizu goods. somehow i'd completely forgotten that volks has been doing an annual event called "akiba simulation" where they sell a bunch of goods with original art by tsukumizu based on shimeji simulation, and even months later they were still selling some of the leftovers from the event. i fell to my knees, weeping, and individually kissed each piece of merch, crying out "WE ARE SO BACK! AKIBA IS SAVED!" (this scene has been dramatized in order to better convey the emotions i felt at the time). in that moment i realized that perhaps shibs was right, the true spirit of akiba is still alive in volks hobby paradise (2), in top floor event spaces and pc-soft departments, in the melonbooks basement, in COSPA's outlet store, in AKIBA-HOBBY's sixth floor touhou specialty shop, in the retro arcade floor of HEY (which i later discovered actually does have pop'n music in a remote corner, right next to a vintage PACA PACA PASSION cab in fact!). at the same time, i also thought "coming here was a mistake, i'm going to go bankrupt now" as i grabbed a shopping basket and loaded it up...