From July 2nd to the 5th,
Jibtv participated at the 2009 Japan Expo, the biggest festival of Japanese
culture and entertainment in Europe. With more than 164,000 participants this
year, it was an amazing experience.
Celebrating its 10th anniversary people from across France,
Europe, and the world traveled to visit the exhibition center in Paris-Nord
Villepinte, 30 minutes away from Paris city center. Once inside the exposition
center, it was like entering a Japan fantasy land of more than 85,000 sqm with
500 exhibitor booths from 14 different countries and many diverse activities:
the latest trends in manga, anime, cosplay, J-Music, video games, but also traditional
martial art, Ikebana, Japanese lessons, even baseball. Many people visit the expo on more than
one day because the amount on offer is simply too much to cover in a short
period of time. The youngest and most motivated come here for the entire four
days
The fashion, music, and idiosyncrasies of
Japanese people are surely to be expected in Japan, but when one sees thousands
of young French Japanophiles gathered en masse and celebrating their love of
all things Japan, it's... astounding.
At the event, jibtv introduced its online
video streaming service, Jibtv.com. We chose a corner stand with high
pedestrian traffic and put computers in front of the stand for an easy trial of
the site.
Many visitors complained that until now it was difficult to find a full, English language TV site about Japan and praised jibtv's broadcast for giving 100% free, on time, 24 hour content. Many were also interested in our blogs, especially in the J-bloggers as a way to understand the direct experience of living in Japan. Interested attendees took 5000 fliers from our booth during the four days.
At our stand, we mainly presented programs that would be most popular with
Expo attendees. Mangas and anime
lovers were curious about our program "imagine-nation" featuring
Japan's ranking of the most popular manga, anime and games, as well as
interviews with top creators and event information.
As famous Japanese clothing stores who also attended, showed off their catalogue
of designs we introduced our program "TOKYO FASHION EXPRESS", which reports
on the hottest fashion trends in Tokyo.
But probably the biggest hit at the Expo was the music. Most European
sites about Japanese music are French.
Music fans were everywhere and for those people, the Expo included live
performances by popular artists like AKB 48, Puffy, Ra:IN, Vistlip, Zamza
N'Banshee, Asuka and more!
Some young people started grooving to the tunes playing at the jibtv booth, courtesy of our program "J-Melo" with some of the best hits in Japanese music including pop, rock, jazz, and classical.
All of this seemed to go
against what one might imagine of French people. But seeing some young girls dancing para-para quickly
dissuaded us of the notion that culture is somehow limited to the country of
origin. Not surprisingly, all these French language ladies cooed
"Kawaii!"
But do not mislead yourself, most of the
young people at Japan Expo are not narrow focused "otaku". We were surprised by
the depth of their interest in all things Japan, as well as the importance this
foreign culture has in their own lives.
Also, if not all, most of their information was
gathered on-line. This new
internet connected world has created lovers of exotic cultures from far across
the globe. Yet, resoundingly the
sense we got from each person we talked to was that through this foreign
culture they had each found ways to express themselves.
In France, Japanese culture is today a way for French youngsters to find their own identity. Japanese culture has become a conduit through which these youngsters build their own identity.
Just like the Japan Expo, we hope to
bring them all kinds of informative, fun, and high quality content without
boundaries about Japan on jibtv.com.
