Animecon at The Hague

Allow me to weave a small and uninteresting tale. My interest in Japanese animation started way back when I was a small girl. My father had brought home a copy of My Neighbor Totoro, and ever since then I was hooked.

When I was in high school, I attended a few conventions. But this phase ended when I went to college. In college I took several Japanese appreciation and culture classes. For my language I choose Japanese. Although if they had provided Dutch, I would have taken that instead.

What’s more, is this is an interest that I can share with Sander. He hasn’t invested the amount of time that I have with films and television. But he knows a great deal more of the language, both written and spoke, than I do. Together we make a fantastic team, we discuss shows, the language and more.

Since moving to the Netherlands, we’ve looked for exciting things to do on the weekends. We decided to attend a convention (our second since I moved out). We don’t go out of our way to attending things. But since the Hague is pretty close to where we live, we decided to check out the last day of AnimeCon.

Looking at the previous days, we missed out on lots of interesting panels. But Sander worked on Friday and we celebrated his father’s birthday on Saturday. Attending Sunday was the only option. I’ll be honest, we spent most of our time ogling at the merchandise, and we ended up with a few small, but well worth, items. There were lots of competitions and one lucky girl received a ticket to Japan, courtesy of the convention.

The panels we wanted to attend but decided to skip out on, involved bento making and onigiri tutorials. There was an extra fee to attend the events so skipping them wasn’t a big deal. Our lunch was Karaage and it was quite delicious, so we didn’t feel like we missed out on a Japanese meal. Besides, we have Ramen Ya in Amsterdam, which is a hop, skip, and a jump away from home. I actually can’t believe I don’t have a post about them yet!

Other events we could have attended, were movie screenings, show screenings, hobby demonstrations, workshops or how to dance like idols. Sander and I are collectors by nature, so we spent more of our time in the main dealership hall. We were content with doing a double walk though, there was so much to see.

What was so pleasing for me to see, was that the sigma of being an Anime fan seems to be disappearing. Of course you’ll get those people who shame anyone for doing anything… But these types of events are safe havens for fans. Sander and I had a fantastic time and he wants to attend next year as well, which is fine by me!