Hi Chibi, you're pretty much living my dream! I love doujinshi/anime and want to translate it someday too! I moved to Japan to learn Japanese for the year and am trying to become active in otaku culture here. Do you have any resources or recommendations on how to find anime/doujin events like the Comic City Spark. There seem to be a ton of events but I only hear about them from other friends. Thank you!
Hello, your Japanese will get better if you are actively speaking Japanese (no matter how bad you were) xD
For doujinshi events, I usually have friends that are active in the field told me about it. Or I know about the events from pixiv, since artists will post previews of their books before the events and label the event and the location they will be at. So you will need a pixiv account :D
Assuming you have one and can read hiragana and katakana and some easy kanji (since u r in Japan). Example
This is a search tag for TOdobaku, and in the search tag, you can see some artists have the tag 【スパーク】read supaaku (super comic spark) shorten. THat is the event tag, and you can search for doujins under tag with your pairing name (in Japanese) like: 出勝(DekuBaku), 爆出 (Bakudeku), and so on…
Example again, this artist Kuroda has posted his/her new doujinshi sample. And under the description, you can read all the info about the date, time, and location it will be.
“10/4 COMICCITYSPARK12【東1 コ60b/クシヤブ】B5/38P/¥500-/R18“
東1 = higashi 1 is the hall the artist will be at
コ (ko) = is the row in hall the artist will be.
60b = is the number code for the artist/circle’s stall.
For smaller events like comic sparks, I won’t know unless someone told me about it. However, bigger event like Comic Market will be held twice a year, and you can find all information here . It’s in English, and the next event will be updated automatically after a previous comike event ended. And as you can see, the next comike will be held in Winter, December 29,30,31 in 2017. :)
To search for doujins online for comike, I use pixiv, with the tag “C92″ (for summer 2017 comike, which already ended). Therefore, for the upcoming comike, the tag will be “C93″ on pixiv.
I hope it helps! Good luck.