In a word: A-KON.

The major highlight of the event was meeting, talking to, buying stuff from and giving support to none other than Peter S. Beagle. His legal battles are coming to a head as of the end of this summer, and I'm hoping they don't have to go to a full-blown lawsuit for him to recover what's rightfully his. I also managed to take the single worst picture of me with him possible, but he had a wonderfully warm and reassuring anecdote about a certain jazz guitarist that made me feel a lot better. (From all I've seen, Mr. Beagle is just that kind of guy; he was a consummate gentleman to all who came by.)

A full gamut of photos from the show can be found here.

I found a few goodies in the dealer's room, mostly budget-priced stuff — like a $5 copy of the insane Hong Kong treat Saga of the Phoenix (I need to get a copy of the prequel, Peacock King) and both volumes of Buichi Terasawa's Kabuto, which is like a supernatural ninja story crossed with the live-action 1981 Flash Gordon movie. Of course I dug it. The same vendor also had one of the fairly rare Kodansha Library English-language editions of the New Kindaichi Files stories; Amazon doesn't carry these domestically, so I snap them up whenever I come across them at a good price.

The only big downside was my phone dying, but I picked up a replacement — a Nokia, with Bluetooth and multimedia playback — for a pittance. It's a little scary how much they can cram into these things, and I found a lot of my reluctance to use my phone as a media player / camera / personal organizer / etc. dropping away once I had a chance to play with it.