Shopping Guide
From July 8-12 at the Paris-Nord Villepinte Exhibition Center, Europe’s largest Japanese entertainment festival, Japan Expo, was held.
The expo included anime, manga, game, and music events, as well as works on display and products for sale. In addition to pop culture, booths were set up in various themes from traditional arts and sightseeing to sports and technology. Events were also held that exemplified the expo’s “festival” aspect.
This year’s visitors totalled more than 210,000, even more than last year’s. As evidence of this year’s record-breaking attendance, there was a long line to get into the exhibition center on each day of the expo. Besides young otaku, visitors spanned a wide age range, and many people went with their families.
As for the cosplay present at the expo, staple series such as Dragon Ball, The Legend of Zelda, and Final Fantasy were accounted for as well as many people cosplaying characters from popular works such as Kuroko no Basuke, Attack on Titan, Sword Art Online, and more. Each series’ level of popularity was seen by those passionately cosplaying them. The cosplayers all got into character and turned heads, and the level of cosplay overall was high.
At an Evangelion exhibit, concept documents were on display, and a video outlining the process of the anime’s production was also shown. The appearance of the finely crafted illustrations using CG stopped people in their tracks.
At the amatuer booths, independent creators were selling their artworks, manga, games, and other handmade items. The height of the interest in 2D drawings, which there is a fondness of in otaku culture, could really be felt.
In contrast to Evangelion, the presence of Japan’s so-called original characters “Yuru Chara” 1 was high. Attendees enjoyed seeing characters such as Kumamoto Prefecture’s mascot character Kumamon and Hikone City, Shiga Prefecture’s mascot character Hikonyan as they ran around the stage and the exhibition center.
In the food booth area, a sushi shop in the La Défense district managed by Mabento and other companies were sampling delicious Japanese food. Among them, takoyaki and yakisoba were popular, and here too, there were constant long lines. Shaved ice was also a big hit at the expo. In addition to the standard strawberry and lemon flavors found in Japan, other flavors at the expo included mint and cassis. This cool and refreshing treat was a great way to beat the heat inside the exhibition center. A wealth of other Japanese food items were also on sale, including sushi, bentos, sake, udon, Japanese candy, and more.
This year’s Japan Expo ended with as much enthusiasm as when it began. The enthusiasm of people from Paris, France, and Europe for new things, as well as their generosity, was unabated. The scale of this event keeps getting bigger each year and continues to show the high level of interest in Japanese culture. Japan Expo is expected to keep making great strides. We look forward the next Japan Expo!
^1^ Short for “yurui mascot character,” these mascot characters are used for events, all sorts of campaigns, tourism, introducing famous products, and information PR for different regions, as well as a corporate identity for businesses and organizations.
This is a Tokyo Otaku Mode original article.
