Tokyo Game Show

So I went to the Tokyo Game Show this weekend, though it is not exactly in Tokyo (in Chiba, which is another prefecture). It was my first convention/show of any kind and it was pretty fun. Met up with Jamie and two of his friends there and it was nice getting to know a bit about the life of JET, which I was so close to getting.

Let's see, I got to TGS early on Saturday so I decided to stop by the local pro baseball stadium (Chiba Marines, managed by local legend Bobby Valentine, kudos if that made any sense to you). There was a game later that day so there were a bunch of people outside. There was a show/performance of multiple cheer/dance groups, at least that is what I thought it was. Pretty interesting to see, but I didn't actually get to see the game. Something I hope to do sometime in the future. Oh, and you know how people dress up as mascots? There was someone dressed up as a cockroach there, haha. To be fair, he was with someone dressed up as bug spray, but I still though it was hilarious. Pics up later.

Later I met up Jamie and co. What I learned from TGS is that there is a lot of waiting at game conventions. Everyone wants to play the newest games and some lines took almost 2 hours. In fact, I did wait over 100 minutes to play Okamiden. The hottest games were coupon-only and it was impossible to get them. I arrived on Sunday 15 minutes after opening and they were already out of tickets for FFXIII. I'm happy about my souvenirs though, decided to splurge on Square Enix products. =P As for pictures, sadly, you were not allowed to take pictures of the games or live performances. That only leaves the booths and the very popular booth girls. Whenever the girls posed there would be a huge crowd of people surrounding them taking pics. It is actually kind of creepy sometimes as some of these people brought professional quality cameras in order to get pics of the girls.

Hmm... it was nice overall but it was kind of tiring. Not being fluent in Japanese was a minor problem too. Unfortunately, the big shows in the US are not open to the public.