Well. A whole chapter in my life has ended, and a new one has begun.

The video blogging has been fun, but it takes so much energy. So now that I’m back in the States, I’m hoping to start text blogging a little more. The last episode of Stalking Japan should be up in the next week.

So get this, instead of flying straight home from Japan, I decided to stop by in San Diego for Comicon 2008. It was nuts.

DAY 1

Coming back to America was more of a culture shock than going to Japan.

I went to Japan with a real open mind, a willingness to try anything, but I didn’t think to make these mental preparations before returning to America, so when I arrived in the international airport in San Francisco it was a surprise. Instead of seeing only Japanese faces like I was used to, I saw all sorts of people from all sorts of places. And instead of constantly hearing Japanese, I heard English coming out of people’s mouths as they talked on cell phones and yelled to family members.

I saw a man throw his trash at a garbage can, and even though he missed he walked away without picking it up, and I thought to myself “How rude! That would never happen in Japan!”

Once I got to my departure lobby, I walked in a daze up and down the concourse, staring at all the people. Even though I wasn’t really hungry, I bought a gyro and sat down to eat. And as I was eating, a middle-aged man with a kind, round face and a whitish beard stopped next to my table and asked me how the gyro was, and whether or not I’d recommend it, and then was on his way again. And I thought to myself “How nice! That would never happen in Japan!”

And after that I began to recover from my reverse culture shock.

I flew in to San Diego Airport and checked in to my hotel. The 10 hour jetlag left over from my flight over the Pacific was intense. My body was so wacked out that I felt like I could sleep or stay awake and it wouldn’t matter. So I decided to stay awake.

I went to the convention center and got my badge and later met up with some friends that I made last year, including Kim Herbst, Kazu and Amy Kibuishi and other people from the Flight booth.

At this year’s Comicon, the newest thing on the cosplay scene was steam punk. Old and young people braved the crowded convention hall with Victorian outfits and intricate bronze goggles and complicated belts filled with test tubes and strange mechanical devices. I’ll show you some of these guys in the last episode of Stalking Japan.

DAY 2

The next day I met up with fellow Parabler, Bryan Ballinger. I’ve noticed that once you meet someone in person, all of his or her forum comments or blog posts that you’ve read up to that point suddenly make so much more sense. And this was no exception with Bryan. Bryan was quirky and interesting, like his comics and artwork.

Bryan was a little shocked to see how young I was, because age is something that’s often obscure over the internet. But we soon discovered that as cartoonists we had a lot to talk about. We had a wonderful lunch together, and ate hamburgers the size of your face.

After lunch, I rested in the hotel room and waited for Mike Maihack, the editor of Parable, to arrive from Florida. He was going to room with me for the rest of the con.

I lay on the bed, digesting that giant hamburger. They definitely don’t have hamburgers like that in Japan.

I’ve known Mike for 2 years online, and we’ve even talked on the phone a couple times, but it was great to finally meet him in person. Mike seems like a very spontaneous individual. He had decided to come to Comicon only a few weeks before, which was a surprise, but a pleasant one.

That night I went to the Avatar panel and afterwards I met up with Dave and Raina Roman, who were enjoying all the great Avatar cosplay that was going on. From there I went and picked up a bite to eat at Subway with Mike and Johane Matte, a contributer to Flight and a storyboarder for the Avatar series. Meeting Johane was wonderful, you could really see her passion for her art and her love for her work.

Afterwards, Mike and I met up with a lot of the Flight cartoonists who were relaxing in our hotel lobby. There I got to meet JP Ahonen, a Flight contributor who had traveled all the way from Finland to be at the convention. He spoke perfect English, and was really fun to talk to.

DAY 3

On day 3 Mike and I showed up at the Nickelodeon booth for a signing by Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino, the creators of the Avatar series.

Unfortunately for us, we discovered that we had to get tickets just to get in line for the signing. So we went on a wild Easter egg chase to find out where they were distributing the tickets. When we finally arrived, we were surprised to find that they were raffling off the tickets! Luckily, Mike won the raffle on his first try, and I won it on my second. Amusingly, the winning tickets had eggs stamped on the back, so it really was an Easter egg hunt! We felt quite pleased with ourselves.

Oh yeah, and the signing was fun too.

That night Mike and I had dinner with Bryan and some of his friends, one of which was Cory Edwards, the writer and director for the next Fraggle Rock movie.

DAY 4

This last day was mostly filled with saying goodbyes and exchanging sketches and mini-comics and business cards.

That afternoon I met up with Christian Hill, who offered to drive me to the airport. We talked about my next big project that I’ll be announcing officially on Doodle Alley some time soon. He’s a real professional, a master at networking, and he had a lot of great advice for me about navigating the professional world. I felt like talking with him was one of the highlights of the con.

It was such a surreal transition for me. I knew that I was back in America, but I also knew that the Real America wasn’t Comicon. In the Real America, it isn’t a common thing to see fleets of storm troopers walking around, is it?

Bah, who knows what the Real America is… who knows what the Real Japan is…

Life is life, I suppose.

Hey everbody. Sorry it's been a while since I updated the blog. Me and Phil had a week full of tests a couple weeks ago, and it took us a while to recover.

To make up for it, we made this especially long episode for you all.

Enjoy!

It was an interesting experience. There were a lot of small differences between Japanese and American baseball.

For one, at American baseball games, there is a lot more screaming and whistling and sometimes even cursing. At this game there was just as much enthusiasm, but it was much more organized. I didn’t hear anyone whistle, and there was also a lot more songs. There was a different song for each team, and even songs for individual players! Instead of clapping, the crowd used small plastic bats. The hardcore fans had bright costumes and face paint, and I think people even brought their own instruments to play the team’s songs.

One mistake Phil and I made in the movie though… the final score was Tigers: 4, Dragons: 3 instead of 2 and 1. Sorry about that.

See you guys next week!