In July, we went to Japan Expo in Villepinte.

First visit

The last time I went, Japan Expo was held at the Cnit in La Défense. That was back in 2002 or 2003.

So much has changed since then. We went at the request of our daughter, who had even prepared a cosplay for the event.

I was a bit worried that it would be too crowded, but we managed to limit this inconvenience by going on Thursday. There were a lot of visitors, but it was still reasonable in terms of queuing at the stands. We did most of the things we wanted to see, arriving at 9am in the morning and leaving at around 2.30pm. We didn’t take part in any events, shows or signing sessions, as that wasn’t our aim for this first visit. Next time I think we’ll organize things differently.

Designers’ section

We started with the small designers’ section. Next time we’ll do this part last, because when we got to the publisher stands it was too crowded and we didn’t want to queue up for all the activities.

We found lots of pretty illustrations and stocked up on stickers, cards, posters and key-rings.

I love the illustrations by @ameliesworkshop.

We didn’t set up a stand selling official figurines and goodies, as there are already quite a few stores in Paris. Some of them even had a stand at Japan Expo.

Professional section

We saw a lot of great booths.

The Carnets de l’Apothicaire display was beautiful.

There was an Attack of the Titans set where visitors could pose and pretend to be a titan.

We visited all the publishers’ stands selling our favorite manga to collect goodies and buy “a few” volumes.

We also visited the Tsukasa Hojo exhibition. I don’t have any pictures of the exhibition because photography was forbidden.

We’ve made a lot of purchases. These were manga series that we were already reading, and we anticipated some purchases so that we could take advantage of the goodies. In particular, the miss brought back a huge bag with Les Carnets de l’apothicaire on one side and Jujutsu Kaisen on the other. She plans to hang them on her bedroom wall.

It was a great day and we plan to return next year. Have you been? Do you usually go to this kind of event?

See you there!