Right, getting on with blogging about Japan despite now being back in England (and still not finding enough time), I shall restart with one of the events I went to that’ll be the most ‘out of date’.
17th September 2011
Louise, Graham, Edwards, and I took one of the Shinkansen (bullet trains) to Japan’s capital to catch the Tokyo Game Show (the rather famous once-yearly video game expo/convention).
To purchase tickets for this event, you had to buy them in advance via a machine in a combini (mini-mart like Seven-Eleven, Lawson or Family Mart). Rather fiddly but thankfully Graham helped us out with the excessive Japanese reading and staff questioning required. You could buy them on the day, but we knew they’d be a bit more costy and would also add to the queuing.
Ooooouh and queuing there would be. We turned up a little ‘early’ but after we got off yet another train, we were surrounded by people all flooding to the same place – the convention center ‘Makuhari Messe’.
 The main queue to get into the TGS |
 TGS entrance |
 Konami showing an interview and yet more queues to get to certain games |
 While in Japan, I rarely saw Xbox games in shops compared to other consoles, but this was the first sight I saw upon entering |
 Itagaki Street DS features characters and themes from both Dragon Quest and Super Mario Bros. It’s based on the classic Monopoly-like game with some Mario Party-esque elements added |
 Various stewards directed incoming visitors to the show. There were also some staff with megaphones, enticing gamers to their booths with promotional gifts |
Unlike Graham and Edwards, Lou and I didn’t get the chance to buy the limited ‘VIP’ tickets, so while they skipped ahead and got to go in an hour earlier than everyone else, we found ourselves in a very large queue. We thought we were pretty far ahead but actually after the bag-checks… it just kept going. This thing wrapped round the entire building and snaked in on itself several times to cope with the sheer volume of people attending. Must have took us two hours to get in, it even rained at one point and this nice Japanese fella shared his umbrella with us. I noticed a fair few people playing on their DS or PSP to pass the time.
 Marc leading Sonic to victory |
 Louise posing with the famous Sonic |
 Is Graham (and his epic t-shirt) faster than Sonic? |
When we finally got in, we were overwhelmed, there was so much going off and it was so difficult to move through the large crowds. It was also muggy hot, everyone got rather sweaty.
We couldn’t try out many of the games due to massive queues, and time restrictions made it impossible to see everything on offer. Some things only happened on particulars days as well (we were only there for one of the two days it was open to the public – the press and companies had access previously on the 15 and 16th).
A giant ‘Nendoroid’ version of Miku Hatsune
I’ll save what else I was writing about the event for later as I’ve found I’m taking far too long over typing things up and getting everything edited.
Ven’s words of wisdom; “Break it up into a greater number of smaller posts. Will be easier to write and easier to read.” 
I’ll share some photos amongst them too, plus I’m making a small video.
Official TGS website – http://tgs.cesa.or.jp/english/