Post
by Herms » Sat Sep 27, 2008 7:45 am
So I didn’t get to see the Jump Anime Tour today. That’s the short story.
The long story
So I didn’t get to see the anime tour. Not that I didn’t try, although I was seriously considering just staying in bed today. As my current “location” text indicates, I’ve been kind of sick for the past few days. My right ear has had some kind of infection, and today when I woke up, not only had it not healed, but my left ear was a little sore as well. However, I figured I couldn't just throw away this chance that so many people would love to have, so I got out of bed and got on the train.
Let me explain where I’m located in Tokyo a bit first. For my junior year, I’m studying abroad at Sophia University. While Sophia is located in Yotsuya, right in the middle of Tokyo, my dorm is in Koganei, which is basically a suburb town of Tokyo located way to the west of the main city. This means that every day when I go to school, I have to ride the subway for about half an hour (classes haven’t actually started yet, but I’ve already had to repeatedly go to the campus for various orientation-type things). It’s kind of a pain, but most of the trains have little TVs that show commercials, which are always goofy fun. Last week they were playing the commercial for DragonBall DS a lot, and this week they’ve got a commercial for the upcoming Fist of the North Star movie, that features a live-action version of Kenshiro’s girlfriend helping some old guy pick up his groceries (I don’t really get it either…).
The Tokyo screening of the Jump Anime Tour was being held at Hibiya Public Hall in Hibiya Park, which meant that to get there I had to take my normal line for a few stops, then switch over to a train bound for Hibiya Park. While I was at the platform waiting for my transfer train, I saw this little udon and curry shop where you had to enter your money and order into this vending machine-like thing outside, then go inside and wait as they made your meal. I hadn’t had any breakfast and it was awhile before the train came, so I put some money into the vending machine thing, but as soon as I did it just started making this horrible screeching noise, like a car alarm. I tried putting in my order but it didn’t respond, and then I kept hitting the money return button but that didn’t do anything either.
While I was trying to figure out what’s wrong with the thing, someone went inside the shop and got the shop lady to come out and take a look at the machine. She opened the machine up and started fiddling around inside, and as she was doing that, my train arrived. Now, I had put a 1,000 yen bill into that machine, which is about $10, so naturally I wanted to at least get my money back. But my train left before she got everything sorted out, so I had to wait ten minutes for the next one. But the udon was really good, so I guess it was worth it.
Anyway, because of all the udon-related technical difficulties, by the time I made it to Hibiya Public Hall, they had already finished getting all the invitees inside the hall. As has been mentioned earlier in the thread, this anime tour was not something you could just buy a ticket for like a regular movie or anything. Instead, you had to submit an entry to Weekly Jump indicating what screening you wanted to attend, and a certain number of people would be selected to attend each screening. Those selected were sent an invitation, and unless you had one of those invitations you couldn’t get in (although apparently those with invitations could bring a friend along if they chose to). So I was going to this thing essentially in the hopes that I would be able to sneak in somehow. Originally I was planning on somehow hiding myself in the crowd, but now that there were only staff members outside that wasn’t going to work (though it probably wouldn’t have anyway; I wouldn’t blend very well into a crowd mostly comprised of Japanese children).
At this point, my only real plan was to pretend that I’m some tourist who doesn’t know where he is, and just try and “stupid foreigner” my way into the place. Not exactly the most dignified strategy, but “desperate times call for desperate measures” and all that. I strolled up to the hall, looking around at everything in a touristy, “just passing through” manner. There were banners that said “Jump Anime Tour” set up, and tables staffed by attendees in red shirts. I walked past trying not to look at them, so I’m not really sure what their function was. Maybe to distribute pamphlets of something?
The main entrance was on a sort of second floor balcony that went partway around the building (“balcony” isn’t really the right word, but I can’t think of a better way to describe it), and I walked up the steps to there, going past some more staff members who I glanced briefly at, trying to do my best “Oo~oh, what’s this big shiny building?”-face. None of them said anything. I got up to the balcony and walked around the corner, and there was a few more steps leading up to the entrance. The entrance was really small. If I remember right, it was a double set of doors, but only one of them was open. The open one was half blocked by a suit-wearing staff member who was holding a “Jump Anime Tour” banner in one hand. There was no way more than one person at a time could have ever gotten through that, and I realized that my plan of sneaking in with a crowd would have never worked, even if I had gotten in on time. Hell, even if through some strange Twilight Zone voodoo every invitee had looked exactly like me, I still wouldn’t have been able to sneak in with the crowd. It was just that small an entrance.
The entrance guy looked at me, and I gave a vapid smile. He asks me in Japanese if I have an invitation, but I just kept smiling and went “uh…”. Seeing this, another suited staff member walked up the stairs after me. “Do you understand Japanese?” he asked me in Japanese. I shrug and give another “uh…”. “You don’t understand…” he said, still in Japanese, then in English he said “This is an event. You can’t get in without a ticket.” So he knew English pretty well, which sunk my crappy plan. “You need a ticket” he repeated, and I pulled out an extra train ticket I had in my pocket. “Not that kind.” he says, so I asked him how much for a ticket, but he said they’re not on sale. So I headed back down the stairs, out of ideas, and as I’m going down the suit guy says in Japanese “Foreigners” to the entrance guy, and they both laughed. So I haven’t exactly done my part to improve the reputation of foreigners in Japan. Sorry everyone…
This was all a little after 10:00 AM, when the first screening was. There would be another screening at 2:30, so I figured I’d explore Hibiya Park and see if I could come up with some ingenious plan to infiltrate the second screening. The park was really nice, and I spent some time taking in the sites. They have a lake there with big fish and a few turtles, and a nice fountain. There was a group doing yoga or something right behind the Hibiya hall, and deeper in there was a group painting the scenery. Some time later, I’m not sure exactly how long, I ended up back behind the hall again. There were a few doors at ground level, so I walked up to one and pulled on it. It’s locked, of course. Then I looked over at the next door over, and it was open. Just a little tiny bit, like it was stuck or something. Now, obviously this was the perfect opportunity, right? I went to investigate things further, but then I looked up at the second floor balcony thing (I still can’t think of how to describe it; it didn’t actually stick out from the building), and there was a red-shirted staff member staring at me with this “fuck off” expression all over his face. So I figured it was prudent to leave…
After that I went to Akihabara and visited this book store called Shosen. I managed to get DragonBall Tenkaichi Densetsu and the fifth Dr. Slump kanzenban, so my day wasn’t a complete waste, DB-wise. I also got the movie Black Narcissus, which they had for 500 yen (about $5). They had a whole bunch of classic movies for that much, so I might go back there in the future. At this time it was almost 2. I considered going back to the park and trying to sneak in again, but I figured that this was a bad idea, what with the staff member having seen me at all. Not to mention I was now carrying a bag with two Jump-related books, which would have undercut my “I’m just some random tourist who has no idea what’s going on here today”-act. So I went back to my dorm. On the way back I started feeling pretty sick again and as a result got completely lost on the subway system for awhile, but that’s a story for another day.
Oh, and once I was back in Koganei, I stopped to get some sushi to take home (I’m a complete sucker for sushi), and as I was walking back I got a “do not cross” signal at a small road. Now, I’ve heard people say that in Japan people never, ever J-walk, but apparently things have changed at some point, since I see people do it all the time. Case in point, every pedestrian and cyclist who came to that street except for me just walked on through (it was a pretty small road, with no traffic). But I waited patiently for the light to change, because I figured that since I had basically spent the entire day trying to unlawfully sneak into an anime screening, the least I could do to make up for it was to obey my local traffic laws (try not to think too deeply about that logic…). But then a little further on the way back I got another “do not cross” signal at a street with no traffic, and I thought “the hell with this” and just J-walked through.
And that is how I did not see the new DragonBall special.
!! I hope your ear gets better.
