Tamis first Japan trip . . . oh my.

While cleaning up my shelf and desk i found a few old memories from my very first Japan trip and thought it can’t hurt to share. Actually i think this trip did make me a bit more mature, i was 17 years old and knew not a single word japanese, so i was all on my own with my english and i did survive! But, that’s not the only reason . . .

I always used to be a shy one, hard to open up or to talk with people, but here i was put into a situation which was on one side exciting and on the other pretty much scary.
My first trip was sort of a business thing, going for interviews with mangakas. I was deadly worried because i wasn’t able to speak japanese, nor did i know the maners of the country back then. In the end, if i remember that trip i made SO many rude misstakes i really sink my head in shame when i go back there each time, lucky me that japanese people seem not to mind if an foreign person doesn’t know how to behave in japanese.

I was a total NGE fangirl back then, the pic above shows the loot from my first day, i didn’t take more pics in the end. It’s not much either, but i went back to germany with a big Samsonite hardcase stuffed with goodies. (yea, i actually bought a Sailor Moon fighting game for PSX back then, don’t ask… please lol)
The little box over the mousepad was actually a present from a friend there, yea i am so not into Gundam.

So, bout geting more mature, i was told when i arrive in the hotel to call someone right away, JUST to let him know i arrived. This was such a evil trap… i called him and he was like “okay i got time for the rest of the day, lets meet in the lobby?” – i was doomed. After the long travel and totaly wasted he asks me right away for a meeting, of course being all afraid to mess things up i did agree to it, threw myself into the shower and got ready to hit the streets.

Then i was being draged around to a lot of Otaku related shops, he also did help me kindly to work down the shopping list i got from friends. Then we did end up in some ice café were we managed to talk a little, a little because his english was as bad as my japanese. He used his cellphone most of the time to call some kind of translation service, so he was telling them in japanese and they told me on his funky little CUTE cellphone in english what he said. Back then i used to own a Alcatel OneTouch Easy cellphone, simply put it was a BRICK. Of course after i have seen his cellphone i wanted one too… but more on this later.

I managed to get the interview questions down for the most people in the meantime, so since i wasn’t able to speak japanese i just gave them the questions in english and got the return via FAX in kanjis, back in Germany we then had it all translated to german… what a hassle. But hey, that was 10-11 years ago, no one did complain and the digital communication age was just about to start rolling anyways.

Above a scan of the first question i did ask Shinji Aramaki, the handwriting there isn’t mine! I swear! I have a bad handwriting due using computers – i admit that, but that one isn’t mine. ^^;

After we have had some ice tea we did plow truh a few more shops, one had an elevator right to the street… that was new for me, being a village kid back then. We went underground, an old lady was behind the counter and a ton of mangas were all around on the walls and shelfes, back then i didn’t realize that i had been draged into a doujin store.
So, me being the NGE fangirl i did look only for NGE and found Project-E … i was so innocent i didn’t even guess from the cover that this could have been a hentai and it is drawn so well it’s really really hard to tell.
Even thought he and the old lady tried hand weaving in the air to tell me what i was about to buy there, it was no use and being underground his cellphone didn’t work either lol.

When i was back in the hotel, unpacking it from it’s transparent cover i was… well… shocked. In Germany people did even offer me quiet a bit for it since it was so nice drawn and they said “ohh thats rare to have such a good doujin”, seriously i had no clue about doujins back then and i don’t today either, i know what it is and thats it, i am not a manga person. BUT, the word “rare” made me go “nope! *akanbe* MINE! *puts proudly into her shelf*”, since then i am the proud owner of a hentai doujin i didn’t even read once.

More Aramaki works.

And more… i don’t even know if it’s okay to post it here, but heck it’s over 10 years old. It was a non-comercial interview too, non-comercial seems to be the magic word which can open doors for interviews pretty easily.

My three lovely figmas taking a nap in my very first Mandarake paperbag, i did keep it as a memorial. I also still got my first two 50Yen exchange coins from when i bought my first anime related stuffs over there, tied on a leather strap lol… it’s so handy that they have a hole in the middle.

My Plastic Little Laser Disc, actually my only one and i never had a LD player. A friend was seriously throwing away his LD collection back then, i was a big fan of Plastic Little – so i bought it of him for a few german marks. THEN we suddenly got an interview with Satoshi Urushihara, he was all over me for geting the laser disc back, he offered me ten times more then i paid him haha… no chance. I got it signed of course, maybe a bit hard to see, golden edding on the top left corner, Haruhi is pointing at it. Seems to be common for mangakas to add little faces to their signatures?

Also the VHS got the signature treatment, right over Titas legs. Is this still SFW? I lack a cover up button, to lazy to make one now… have fun.

Oh right, i said i will tell you about the cellphone later, that’s like now. The final funny part of my first Japan trip was my adventure on geting a japanese cell phone.
So, after seeing my friends awesome little nutshell cellphone, i wanted one too. So i went into a phone store, pulled a number (though no one else was there lol) and sat down till someone would call me up.
A friendly guy did wink me over and we started our conversation. I did show him my cellphone and took it apart. Basicaly to show him my phone carrier card which was inside it behind the battery, so i could ask him if that would work with their itzy bitsy phones. While taking it apart his eyes grow bigger and bigger… he suddenly stood up, went into a back room and came back with 6 of his co-workers. Then they started to give the single pieces of my cellphone around in a circle to look at it like it was an alien.
Everyone was like “Ohhhh Uhhhh Ahhhh” … i think they had a good laugh in the end, this tech was so yesterday compared to their stuff.
When done with looking at the parts, he said that their phones are bound to Japan only and don’t work with a carrier card system, i was a bit disappointed, but it couldn’t be helped so i left.
But yea… if i think about it today, damn i was very naive when i was 17.

So, a final word about the maturing stuff. Since this trip i never had a problem anymore to talk to anyone, no matter who or which rank that person might would have (celebrity, officials, whatsoever), i go bluntly out to them. This might has some downs but also has it’s ups, it’s easy to get to know people, at least if i want to. In Germany thats rather rare for me, it’s funny how i know more people in Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Finland and the U.S. then in Germany – or maybe sad? ^^;