Paris Japan Expo 2026

went to Japan Expo this week, haven't been in the last 2-3 years and I was kinda missing it, it's great!

of course, a huge majority of the booths were about japanese-born pop culture (and on occasion not even japanese at all but it's rare or niche stuff)

• tons of cosplays (some insane ones, people are really fucking creative and skilled and I love to see it)

• tons of games (I almost thought they made a gacha in a style I'd like before sighing in relief than it wasn't a gache)

• tons of mangas (fun fact: did you know that France was the second biggest consumer of mangas in the world behind Japan itself?)

• a sizeable amount of booths held by France-wide associations about Japanese-originated--

  • skills (shiatsu, etc...)
  • sports (kendo, budo, martial arts, bow, etc...)
  • arts (calligraphy, etc...)
  • games (othello, mahjong, hanafuda, etc...)

• an entire portion run by the national japanese tourism office

  • about 3 to 6 different prefectures hold individual booths each year
  • the Tottomi prefecture was hosting a ramen tasting activity and I got to sample the single best ramen I have ever had the pleasure to put in my food hole, my tummy found it yummy and I would have LOVED to know more about how its made but translation proved challenging for their best french-speaker that was available at the time

• a large panel of artists of a large spectrum of roles (don't ask me about who was there, I was only there for one day and know absolutely NOTHING of celebrities--yes even mangakas despite my strong appreciation of mangas)

• a number of musical scenes for said artists/groups to play on schedules (we got a few pieces from a renowned violinist that played in the Final Fantasy orchestra world tour)

• a mega-karaoke blasting anime openings/closings that the present public was screaming louder than the actual speakers lmao (it was a lot of fun to witness)

• ...and for some reason, somehow, a sextoy brand. no I'm not kidding. took me a whole 3mn of staring at their booth to understand what was that weird gadget they were selling--it's a vibrator. gotta give credit where credit is due, their stand was so inauspicuous, you'd think they just do some various types of day to day gadgets (and technically, they kinda are); just with A LOT MORE FUCKING TACT AND SUBTLETY THAN ACTUAL DOUJIN STANDS but then again those last ones market themselves on graphic arts so it's not a fair comparison.

I will be going outside again tomorrow since my office decided to close on Monday to do the bridge with Tuseday which will be France's Fête Nationale (Bastille Day)

On that note, I recommend you check out the parade's live (or replay), is always nice to see how varied the french army is and there's cool events for the civilians to partake into--I remember about 16 choppers of the different army branches & civilian services (police, firefighters, civil safety, customs) land directly in a park and then the units/personnel in them set up "shop" to have people onboard and talk about how it operates and in what kinda situation they're being called, I wonder if they'll do it again this year