Great, I'm in Japan already and I'm not done with my AX stuff. Well, here's my last story for now (I have two more I'm fond of, but those can wait until I'm back from my month-long tour of Asia).

This last story once again starts at night in the cosplay events office, where I was shooting the breeze with Bob the Trout and cooling down from a long day of running around helping people. While we were talking about how the day had gone, a pair of girls and their manager walked in. They were fairly obviously non-native English speakers, and Bob the Trout looked up from her data entry long enough to give me the "Please talk to them, my Japanese makes me sound like a 13-year-old boy with an attitude problem and you are much less likely to say something offensive" face. I know that face all too well, and so I related spent some quality time over the next ten minutes doing some impromptu translation while I was technically off-duty.

Then Bob threw me a curveball. She kindly let the girls know that I was going to be their "den mommy" backstage, meaning that I had been shanghaied for translation duty on a regular basis. Before I knew it, they were bowing politely and saying "Yoroshiku onegai shimaaaasu" in that way I can't say no to. Thus, I joined the cosplay staff on a semi-official basis. I didn't mind it too much, since it gave me something to do on a Saturday night, though I could probably have lived without a bunch of people in costumes calling me mommy.

Overall, it was a pretty fun experience, learning how a convention cosplay event works behind the scenes. I got to engage in one of my favorite pastimes, sitting down with someone and swapping stories with friendly people. I got to translate for a giddy session of cosplayers comparing notes on how Japanese cosplay and American cosplay differs (it comes down to this: America has a lot more space to build and swing around props, Japan has more lenient laws regulating chemicals).

So, with a common hobby and no choice but to spend 4 hours cooped up in a loading dock, we all ended up having a great time back there. And hell, I'm still in contact with those girls above (even though they forced me to squat down for that picture, telling me I was too tall). I'll be seeing them at Comiket in a couple of weeks, and all because I stayed in the cosplay office a little too long...

Sorry this couldn't be as long of a rant as the other ones - Summer in Japan has been punching me in the face repeatedly, and I want to get to my Japanese stories as quickly as possible. So tune in next time, when I talk about baseball, both high school and professional.