An incredible day at the AFA for day one! I'm already late for day two and need to dash so only going to leave you with a summary and let the photos do all the talking.
Today I'm MC with Reiko for the K-ON! girls and then the Otacool signing session with the gorgeous Alodia who will be in Mirai cosplay - her younger sister Ashley will be in Haruka cosplay!

Spent most of the day in armor before going back to the hotel to change. The hotel room has been hit by an atomic bomb as you can see from the photos at the end of the post. Hmmm, my iPhone 3.1.2 seems to be able to use any sim card and supports tethering now - not sure why ^^;

Went back to the AFA to catch Shokotan on stage before heading off to dinner with the big bosses from Good Smile Company, Cospa, Genesis Frontier and Bushi Road.

Good Smile showed some photos of a special product which will be out this December - its sooooooooooooo cute! Will change Nendoroid fans life (probably) ^^;

Was great to meet so many readers! Hope to get to meet folks who I missed yesterday. Thank you all for coming to see my shenanigans on stage and for dropping by my booth ^^ See you later - gotta run!

Ah - nearly forgot to mention - Mirai-chan will come with the camera that you see her holding. Stay tuned for pre-order info. If you look closely at the back of the camera, you can see something on the screen ^^;

All this happened in the past 24 hours. Having an amazing time - All looks like play but its actually hard work ^^; But fun - incredibly fun ^o^
Spoke at the Animation Asia Conference and met folks like the producer of Summer Wars and the Girl Who leapt through time (Mamoru Hosoda) and the CEO of Kadokawa (Haruhi/Lucky Star).

Then there was a press conference for the AFA taking place tomorrow from 10AM at the Suntec Convention Center.
Met Kaname, May'n and Uchiro Mizuki too. Shokotan came late but will probably catch up with her tomorrow.

Got onto CNN again with CNNGo and the Cospa South East Asia site launched on Mirai Gaia.

Also been spending a load of time working on my booth with Good Smile Company.

I need to hit the sack now to get some kip for an early morning for final rehearsals for my bit on stage tomorrow at 15:30. Rehearsals include my bit MC'ing with Reiko for the K-ON! Seiyuu on stage at 13:15.

AFA is going to be incredible where we expect 50,000 attendees. See you tomorrow morning!

First photo from left to right:-
Kaname, May'n, Uchiro Mizuki, Mamoru Hosoda, Danny Choo.

Together with May'n backstage. Met her manager. Be expecting to see more of May'n at dannychoo.com - his office is in Meguro too!
Just finished a day of presentations for the Animation Asia Conference. Need to dash to rehearse for my section tomorrow and go to meet the K-ON girls.

Sneak peek at my booth. Will do another update when I get back to the hotel.
I just lurrrrrve this job!

After landing in Singapore and spending an hour to catch up on mails at the hotel, went with comrades at Sozo, 0ne and Genesis Frontier for some scrumptious hawker center food. Then went to visit the Sozo offices. Sozo are the folks organizing the Anime Festival Asia that is taking place from this Saturday 21st at the Suntec Convention Centre.

The Sozo offices is like an otaku haven - perfect working environment for otaku who want to work with brand names in the anime business.
Here are a bunch of Moe Moe Kyun maid badges. Very cute!

AKB48 girls. Which is your fave. One of em has big eyes.

Bunch O Gundam and Macross kits.

Really cute Haruhi mousepad - thanks Shawn!

Unopened Mugi tea. Not sure if its safe to drink after many months.

Cant remember if I'm allowed to show this or not - if the photo disappears it means that it was some sort of exclusive ^^;

Forgot the name of this girl group. Cool photo.

Another shelf filled with goodies.

Jim's desk. A few of the staff have the new apple mouse. My last Mighty Mouse kicked the bucket. The new mouse any good?

I love this illustration of Mio! Don't you just want to eat her?
Lyana Lim has been here a lot.

HSR International Realtors PTE LTD (as seen on Straits Times)

Karaoke and anime dubbing machine for when the folks need a break while they work through the night.

3 Mizuki Nana screens! Do you have different wallpaper for each of your screens or all the same?
Hmmm. Lots of tissue on the desk...

The Hasbro Transformer figures look quite decent after a custom lick O paint.

Another shelf O fun. Didn't realize how cool Sinanju looked.

Nice view of Saber from down here.

Clannad mouse.

Flyer for the ACC - the B2B conference which I will be speaking at on Friday afternoon - keynote still not finished!

Would 6 oppai be too much for you?

Lovely Pepper illustration book. Think I wold love to publish one of your Mirai/Harua and Kanata fanart.

This guy needs some Dollfies or figures!

Load more goodies to poke about with in this corner.

LOL! ^^;
I always stick a small sticker over the MacBook built in cameras as there is (most probably) a way for hackers to see what you are doing without making the green light come on.
Do you cover up your web cam?

Where is that second season of Claymore gone?

About to take that group photo. Everyone grabs their fave object.

Loads of K-ON! stuff!
I'm due to be MC'ing the K-ON! Seiyuu on stage this weekend at the AFA. If you are coming then see you there!
You can still come along to get tickets on the day. My bit on stage is on Saturday during the afternoon.

First night in Singapore. Its great to be back and look forward to meeting you at the AFA!

Been filming since this morning for AFA09. Think I broke my toe ^^; Currently at hotel resting for a wee bit.
Heading off to Orchard road and am due to be at the Ion Orchard from about 18:30-ish. If you are interested in coming along then the film crew, folks at AFA and I will be around to meet you ^o^
More updates and photos later. Must dash!

Oh - watch the AFA Feeds for updates of where we are:-
http://twitter.com/animefestival09
http://www.facebook.com/animefestivalasia

Absolute awesome progress by Illustrator KL in time for my presentation at the Animation Asia Conference where folks like the CEO of Kadokawa, Director of Summer Wars/Girl Who Leaped Through Time will take a look if they have not fallen asleep during my presentation ^^;
Whats your fave production studio for anime titles?

The GIF is in a loop now and just to give you an idea of the animation. Just wondering, do you pronounce GIF as "Jif" or "Gift" without the T ?

Sorry to have kept you waiting! I have good news, bad news and then good news.
First up is the good news. There were multiple correct answers who all guessed 2,950 yen. Looks like many folks have been paying attention to the previous Week in Tokyo and Japan related posts where I mention that I always get my business cards from Tokyo Meishi Land.

Then its the bad news. I mentioned that in the event there was more than 1 correct answer, the first answer would win. Going to try to give out the goodies in one round rather than drag then out into a few rounds. This makes it easier for me to manage the giveaways which leads to moar for you.
In this case, FatB wins! Thanks to AmiAmi, FatB gets Figma Aegis. FatB, send me your details to support at dannychoo dot com and I will forward your bits n pieces onto AmiAmi who will send you your new daughter directly.

And here is the receipt for the cards.

But after the bad news (well it was good news for FatB ^^;) comes the good news. AmiAmi got more stuff to giveaway but I've kept Kid Nemo waiting for too long who have been lining up to give you stuff.
Kid Nemo went through a rough patch previously with not so customer-centric customer service. I've been told that has now changed and that they are back on the mend.

Kid Nemo have not one but two figures up for grabs! These gorgeous girls from Candy Boy will go to two lucky winners - Sakurai Kanade and Yukino. This time round however, there is no question to answer.
From the 600+ comments on previous giveaways, it looks like there is being many of you lurking in the dark ^^;
Lurking can be fun but I would love to get to know you!

If you want the chance to have these figures, All you have to do is to tell us why you read dannychoo.com and what would you like to see more of. I'm not looking for rosy answers and am interested in hearing your feedback which will help me better cater for you. While I will still continue to write what I'm passionate about and interests me, there could be other areas that I have not touched on yet and could be interesting to explore. For example somebody wanted to know what disabled facilities in Japan are like - I have been collecting photos for an article on this topic which I will post soon.
Also would be great if you could tell us how you discovered dannychoo.com.

I have included a few polls too which would help me. I have asked these questions in the past but the user base was much smaller. In return for your feedback, two readers will be chosen at complete random (using a script). Only a couple of rules:-

-You got until the end of this week.
-Please put your figure preference at the end of your comment like [kanade] or [yukino] - the script will choose a random comment with either one of these tags.
-Winners must send me their details within a week of announcement. If I'm not contacted then the winner forfeits the prize and it goes up for grabs another time.
-The winners must provide me with their mailing address, phone number and real name so that Kid Nemo can send you your goodies directly.

The Giveaway baton is handed from AmiAmi to Kid Nemo. Looking forward to your feedback and good luck!

Tokyo 06:34AM. About to leave for Narita airport. Going to miss my girls. Hope the relatives don't tease them while I'm away!

Never been this swamped before - I know I've said it in the past before but it means that things are even more busier ^^;
Apart from the Keynotes that I have been preparing for Singapore, we've also been working on something for Cospa and Good Smile which should launch while I'm in SG.

Also a quick note about my trip to SG. I got many mails from folks who said they want to hand me prezzies - please dont bring anything for me! Appreciate the kind thought but I'm carrying a ton O crap and unlikely to be able to carry much back to Japan.
The most important thing to bring to the AFA is yourself - looking forward to meeting you!

Going to be making most of my posts while I'm in Singapore in the Tokyo Live Bloggers section on the top page - easier to post stuff via email from the iPhone.

Together with Internet Entrepreneur Ejovi Nuwere at the headquarters for the Japan Times.
Ejovi established a load of well known services like FON and now currently runs Internet strategy at the Japan Times and is the CEO of Land Rush Group.

It gives me great pleasure to announce that The Japan Times and I are planning to launch a Tokyo portal website which is tentatively being called internally as project "Tokyo Dot" as in tokyo.japantimes.co.jp.

By combining our two brands together on the Mirai Gaia platform, we aim to provide the latest in lifestyle trends from Tokyo together with an enhanced user experience which embraces many social media networks through available API's.

We are looking to feature much user generated content in the form of Tokyo Live Blogger posts and work with folks like you who photo blog about life in Tokyo.

We want to provide the definite guide to Tokyo for your interests and needs and would like your feedback.
As part of the portal, I personally would like to see things like photo walks and my "A Week in Tokyo" series.
I'm also thinking about things like:-
-Top ten business hotels to stay at.
-Top ten budget hotels to stay at.
-Top ten vegetarian restaurants.
-Top ten Medical/disabled facilities.
-Recommended 1x1 language teachers.
-Guides on living in Tokyo (driving license, buying a house, starting a business, visa, marriage, tax etc etc)
-How to start a successful career in Tokyo.
-Job classifieds.
-Everything Tokyo.

We would like to know which Japan news sites you currently enjoy (like JapanProbe) for example and what you like about those sites.
Would also like to hear what you personally want from a Tokyo portal. What sort of news and info and features would you like to see.

If you run a Japan photo blog, let us know the URL - we want to involve you as much as possible. Having your content on the Japan Times is something that probably looks good on your profile too ^^

A few pics of Ryomou of late who is looking particularly lovely in her new Azone cardigan thingy.

Thought I'd cover the subject of Dollfies popularity while we look at more Ryomo photos.

An article by Liz Ohanesian in the LA Weekly covers Dollfie Dreams and Gurren Lagann Yoko. The article even made it to the top page of digg.com spreading the knowledge of Dollfies to more of the Internet population.

Dollfie Dreams have been around for years and yet I only came into the knowledge of their existence through a Wonder Festival I think it was. I thought they were lovely when I first saw them in person but then was completely puzzled by the prices - 60,000 yen?!

I remember that there was a time where I thought figma joints looked odd until I actually picked one up and started to fidget about with them. I also remember a time when the only thing I would see when I looked at a doll were the joints ^^;

But once you actually own and start to pose a Dollfie, you start to appreciate how lovely they are and the joints become part of their beauty - I guess I'm an oya baka ^^;

Saw a CGM post on Dollfie Saber which looked gorgeous. Then started to look at more Dollfie photos and could not take it anymore - I needed to have one! ^^;;;;

Since I adopted and started to post more and more photos, I notice many DC readers and Japanese comrade bloggers starting to adopt too.

The one thing about Dollfies is that they cost 3 limbs and a pancreas. And even if one didn't mind sparing these body parts, many of the Dollfies are lottery based meaning that even if you had the moolah, you may not necessarily get one.

If the hurdle and cost was much lower to adopt a Dollfie (say 100 USD) would you get one?

Going for a photo walk around Tokyo at Night and will be zipping back n forth through time as we do so. As with previous photo walks, I would love to have the usual chit chat.

Identify and live your passion and the rest will just follow - it always does.

T'was something I wrote in one of my previous motivational articles. Tonight I would like to talk about the importance of this phrase.

It's never always been plain sailing running a startup. There have been times where I wondered how we was going to make it through some of the stormy seas filled with giant man eating mer-sirens.

While many startups follow the pattern of getting venture capital or angel investment, I decided to startup my company only on my savings from my times at Amazon, Microsoft and affiliate earnings.
I also had extra income from building websites on the side where I hired developers in Romania and India together with designers in the US to work for me on my clients projects. Obviously still managed to fulfill my responsibilities at work.

I had a life goal of setting up a company by the age of 35. With the amount of money saved up and a steady flow of income on the side, I left Microsoft and started up Mirai Inc (Kabushiki Gaisha) by the age of 34.

For the first year, I was mainly doing consulting work for companies like Disney Japan, Columbia Japan, iKnow and also building up my brand name within the Japanese Internet industry. I also presented a few times overseas.

As the brand grew, more work started to come my way. At this point in time it was just my wife and I running the company.

After the first year, we saved enough to make our first local hire and some developers overseas. We spent the second year working on our proprietary platform that I named Mirai Gaia. "Mirai" as in the name of the company and "Gaia" as in "goddess of the earth and mother of Cronus and the Titans in ancient mythology."

During my salaryman times, all the websites I made were completely different on the back end. Each had specific functions for each client - ecommerce functions, job recruitment functions and what have you.

I knew that if we took the same route and made websites just for each client that came on board, we would end up with a mess and the only way to maintain the mess would be to hire more heads.

Many web development companies just throw code together which is quick and cheap to develop. They also screw their clients by charging them extras for small changes to the website.

I wanted to change this situation by empowering the client to have the freedom to change what they want without being shafted for more money.
By empowering the client to change stuff on their own also means less work for us.

My vision for Mirai Gaia was a platform that could support hundreds of clients and yet be supported by a minimal number of staff.
In order to do this, the platform had to be developed using the Model View Controller method. It meant that the development time would take much longer but eventually end up being a highly scalable platform that could cater for any clients needs with minimal amount of work.

I wanted Mirai Gaia to be a robust and scalable publishing, CGM and ecommerce platform and decided that we should built it ourselves.
We could have gone for open source solutions but most of them have limitations and a learning curve - two reasons good enough to build our own.

I felt it was important to build the platform based on my learnings and experience of running a website visited by millions of users per month.
I feel that many products (including open source frameworks/platforms) are just built assuming what consumers want because the people building it don't eat their own dog food.

"Eating ones own dog food" is a term we used a lot at Microsoft. It means to use the products that we sell.
As we want the best for ourselves, we implement improvements in the product which can then be enjoyed and consumed by our customers.

We had many clients lined up in 2008 who gave a tentative "Yes" to wanting to use Mirai Gaia.
Despite the economic climate, we had so many clients lined up. I was feeling on cloud nine.

However, Mirai Gaia took longer to develop than initially planned and while we was working on it, our savings were being depleted like there was no tomorrow.
We had clients waiting but could not deliver in time. Most clients canceled their order of Mirai Gaia and decided to use other solutions.

Considering what I would have earned if I stayed a salary man and the wages we were paying local and overseas staff, the development of Mirai Gaia had costed us something in the region of 35,000,000 yen - quite a bit of change.
The company bank account pretty much dried up and we was running the company from our own personal savings which were being sucked dry too. My salary was 0 yen for a couple of years.

At one point in time, we thought we had to sell the house to keep the company afloat.

Advertising from dannychoo.com helped but things were looking pretty grim. Wifey supported my decision to give up a high paying stable job at Microsoft to startup the company. Through the past few years, she has been understanding and supportive.

Sure I could have theoretically asked my dad "could I borrow some moolah until I get out of this situation" but that to me would have been like throwing in the towel and giving up on life itself.

I'm sure he would have been disappointed if I did end up asking him. I keep hearing from mutual friends that goes on about how proud he is that I made it thus far without any moolah from him ^^; (sniff/tears).

When we spoke on the phone I would always tell him how well things were going.

Apart from having a lovely understanding wife, I feel that I have also been blessed in another way - I blog about Japan and otaku subculture which has lead to free samples of figures, Dollfies and related merchandise. This obviously helped a lot during tough times ^^;;;

So how come I managed to stay rosy most of the time?
Well I wasn't rosy all the time but in times where I got rather down in the dumps, I always repeated to myself what I preach:-

Identify and live your passion and the rest will just follow - it always does.

From my past experience, I always found that just continuing to do what I believed in would always bring about those clear blue skies and calm seas - no matter how stormy those rough seas got.

Its kind of like continuing to fight through a storm by steering the ship back on track and making sure that it does not go off course. By bailing out the intake of water. By adjusting the sails in whatever way needed to get through it all.

The belief in your passion that you have been living is strong enough to get you through everything.
Don't let go of that rudder, don't let the ship go under. You will make it because you continue to try your best. The important thing is to continue trying. Something always leads to something. Nothing always leads to nothing.

In mid 2009, we hired Chris Gaunt. Hired as a front end UI developer but ended up knowing more than he let on. He was certainly more than meets the eye!
Chris re-engineered much of the Mirai Gaia code and things really started to take off.

I also believed much in dannychoo.com. It was initially set up as a place for me to experiment with web technologies, turned in to a blog which then completely changed my life in terms of the people I have met through it and the opportunities that it has brought me and the company.
I continued to write what I was passionate about and share with the world my interests and life in Tokyo.

The advertising revenue was helping us get by but I knew that it wasn't enough to keep the company afloat. But I still continued to be passionate about what I believed in. Reading your comments reminded me that we have a great community here at DC which further egged me on to continue plowing ahead.

dannychoo.com started to get profiled heavily in local and overseas press which started to bring in more clients in Japan.
With Mirai Gaia in pretty good shape, our client base grew and the company bank account started to come back up to healthy levels.

And how come I didn't talk about this before?
Well I was waiting for us to get through this all as I knew we would ^^;

I'm sure there will be more rough seas ahead but I'm armed with a phrase that you and I share.

Identify and live your passion and the rest will just follow - it always does.

Going to stop lecturing you now - enjoy the rest of the walk. All photos taken on the Lumix LX3.
Uploaded all the original photos in this post to Mediafire - 193MB.

Only kidding about Gaia meaning "goddess of the earth and mother of Cronus and the Titans in ancient mythology."

The Gaia meaning is that it encompasses everything - a multi-purpose platform.

Some progress on the Mirai no Mirai anime pilot video. These are just work in progress frames at the moment. Skirt animation is being tweaked. Awesome work by Illustrator KL who works like lightning!

Saw this on Francis-sans blog and then realized that it must have been covered by Japan Probe - and it was!.

The show explains how there has been a sudden increase of people computing in the middle of the road and at times while riding a bicycle - calling them "路上パソコン族" (rojou pasokon zoku) or "a tribe who uses computers in the middle of the road."

The report does look like another case of "Yarase" which is very common on TV over here. Yarase means that its basically just set up - a bit like how tabloid news papers tell lies ^^;
So in this case they just got a bunch of people to walk around with computers. Or maybe its not Yarase? Me personally not seen them but it does give me an idea of filming a trooper walking around town with a mac...