Queuing in a parallel universe: Hyper Japan

by typecat

Hyper Japan was back on London on Saturday. I love most things Japanese and therefore armed myself with tickets pronto. I think that this is the second Hyper Japan. I say this because I went last year for the first time. I am therefore assuming that it was the second one. I assume this in the same way that I understand the world to be a construct entirely of my creation. So, you only exist when you enter the realm of my consciousness. Or something like that, gentle reader. Maybe we are all trapped in a snow globe on the mantelpiece of a forgetful child in a parallel universe where cheese is a weapon of mass destruction and it is socially acceptable to wear head to toe tartan. I just don’t know. But that tree in the forest with no one to hear it? There is no tree, silly.

Anyway, those of you who have the dubious pleasure of attempting to follow @typecat might be all too aware that I was not impressed by the two hour queue. Yes. Two hours. I never thought I would be the kind of person to stand in a queue for two hours and there not be a Michelle Pfeffier as Cat Woman at the end of it but we grow, we change, we evolve. Do we not?

We joined the queue knowing that we would be in it for some time and there would at some point be a mercy mission in which one of us would forage for food in local shops. But nevertheless we joined that queue in front of one of those women who make everything sound like a complaint. I had to steel myself to ignore her because two hours of that and one of would have ended up with one of us bloody. To be fair we didn’t at the beginning of said queuing realise that we would be in the queue for two hours. We thought it would be, like, 30 minutes, then the volunteers came down the queue and said if you didn’t have pre-paid tickets you had to go home. Then we felt special and more kindly disposed to queuing. Then another volunteer came down and said we would be hour. An hour, we all murmured, cowed but not yet broken. After all we had tickets, we were special.

Then an hour and a half later we were still in the damn queue, but now furiously tweeting and sounding much angrier than we were. @hyperjapanevent came in for a battering but, you know, fancy overselling tickets to the extent that Groupon people were being offered a refund. You know it’s bad when Groupon are offering a refund. I hate Groupon. That Tibet Super Bowl ad notwithstanding they are an evil company pedalling shit offers. They are also virtually impossible to unsubscribe from. Bad Hyper Japan people for moving to Olympia 2 and then selling enough tickets to fill Wembley Arena.

When we actually got into Olympia I was so exhausted I just frantically bought stuff to make it all worthwhile. Like Piperoids!

That is the whole point of Hyper Japan for me. To buy cool stuff. No one packages a product quite like the Japanese. ALl my stuff is lying around unopened still as I admire it. And I am a big fan of robots also. I am a bit concerned about Hello Kitty though. She offends me in some way I can’t quite be bothered to think about but has something to do with the infantilising of adult women en masse. This year had added Tokyo Fixed. Bike shop of the Gods. Ah, Hyper Japan. Worth a two hour queue and no mistake.

But the best thing about Hyper Japan is that it provides a marvellous opportunity to stand around judging people. And who doesn’t love an hour or two of that? And this fantastic judging opportunity was brought to Hyper Japan by, yes, Cosplay. And Cosplay is the whole point of Hyper Japan to a whole lot of those young people you see around so often.
Cosplay is a portmanteau. Man, I love that term. Let’s use it again: portmanteau. That is to say that it is a blend of two words to make a new word which has both the meanings of the original words. Costume and roleplay. Yes, people older than 12 dressing up as their favourite otaku characters. Sailor Moon for example, but many other Manga and Anime characters appear. Now, if you know anything about Manga or Anime you will probably have noticed that most of the characters are all elongated and adolescent in appearance with perfect skin and huge eyes. They’re an idealised vision of humans as drawn by Hello Kitty, in a way. Not so the cosplay enthusiasts at Hyper Japan. It seems that there are two particular features common to this strange tribe. You have to be overweight. You can be positively plump or clinically obese but the number of slim cosplayers is infinitesimal. Also, you must have bad skin. Acne is where it is at for the cosplayer. Other elements such as cellulite (which as we all know looks fabulous with a very short skin), pasty white skin and chewed fingernails are optional but embraced by the hardcore cosplayer.

I could be snitty about such things, you see, because I had run 9 miles that morning. And there is nothing so smug and irritable as a runner with sore knees.

What I would like to know is where do these people go the rest of the time? I have never in my whole time in London seen a spotty, fat teenager dressed up as Sailor Moon anywhere other than Hyper Japan. I suspect they are all sitting around in their bedrooms in Harrow and Pinner fawning into webcams and trawling ebay for giant eyelashes and authentic hair extensions. Eating and eating and eating. Mind you, it is better than drinking MD 20/20 outside the Co-op.

Also, judging by the horny teens rolling around on the floor in the gaming (and I thought they meant computer gaming!) section, it does seem to be a great way to meet boys. Even if they are all dressed up as Cid from Final Fantasy.