The Boat Home From Comiket Was, Everyone Agrees, a Refugee Ship

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Comiket is the world's largest self-published comics fair, held twice a year at Tokyo Big Sight, a convention center out on the bay in a district called Ariake. The summer edition runs in the worst of the heat, draws hundreds of thousands of people over a few days, and ends with all of them trying to leave at once — most of them dragging boxes and suitcases of printed books they either brought to sell or bought to take home.

Getting out is its own event. The train lines serving the area are short and quickly overwhelmed. For years there was a fourth option besides the trains, the buses and walking: a water bus from a pier beside the venue, up the bay and then the Sumida River to Asakusa, the old-downtown district in the north of the city. On paper it was the civilized choice — a seat, a breeze, the skyline going by. The route has since been suspended.

Someone who took it once described the reality: exhausted people with enormous bags being packed onto the open deck until there was no floor left, then the boat pulling away. The word they reached for was refugee boat. Everyone who had been on it turned up to agree, and then to compete over which war film it most resembled.

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I evacuated from Comiket by water bus once, and the way they hurried along all these worn-out people shuffling under piles of bags, packed them onto the deck until it was wall to wall and then shoved off — it really was a refugee boat. I was down on the deck myself, hugging my bags so I wouldn’t drop anything, staring blankly back at Big Sight.

一度コミケから水上バスで撤収した事があったけど大量の荷物を抱え疲れ切ってのろのろ歩くオタク達を急かすように船の甲板にまでみちみちに積み込んで発進させていくのはまさに難民船のようだった自分も荷物を落とさないように抱えつつくたびれて甲板に座りこんでビッグサイトをぼんやり眺めてた

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First time I’ve been on a ferry this stuffed with people (^q^) way too much of a slave ship

こんな人でパンパンなフェリー初めて乗った(^q^)奴隷船過ぎる

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This is just Dunkirk at this point.

これもうダンケルクだろ

The camera angle is identical to soldiers pulling out of a war zone and it looks amazing (the guy with one leg stretched out makes it even more the same www)

画角が戦地から離脱する兵士のソレと同じでカッコイイ件 (片脚伸ばしてるのが余計に同じに見えるwww)

The gaze of the hero watching his homeland recede as the fires of war close in.

戦火の渦が迫り、離れゆく祖国の地を見つめる主人公の目線

Looks like someone’s about to yell I SHALL RETURN!!

私(俺)は必ず戻ってくる!! とか叫んでそう

It’s the extraction ending in Tarkov (Escape from Tarkov, a shooter where a run only counts if you make it out to the extraction point alive).

タルコフの脱出ENDだ

That mood on the water bus home from Comiket — the ending-credits feeling — I loved it so much…… (especially the years I was there with a booth)

コミケ帰りの水上バスの情緒感というか、エンディング感がたまらなく好きだった……（特にサークル参加時）

The grubby color of the water is part of the charm too

水の色が薄汚いのも味がある

That water is the color of a river on the mainland

水の色が大陸の川

The river smells and everything, but that atmosphere, that scenery, I love it. Everyone should do it once. The sea taxi.

川も臭くてアレだけど、でも、あの雰囲気、あの風景、好きなんだよね。一度は経験して欲しい。海上タクシー。

Some pioneer once pitched “cool off on the boat home from summer Comiket, travel in comfort” as a stylish lifestyle move, but doing it for real is just “riding a boat across a bay that the summer heat has turned into wakame soup” (wakame is the dark green seaweed in miso soup — the bay water goes exactly that color and thickness), and my memory is that it was neither cool nor comfortable…

「夏のコミケは水上船で涼んで快適に帰路に着く」なんて気取ったライフスタイルを紹介した先人がいましたが、実際にやると「夏場の熱で、わかめスープになった海の上を移動する船に乗る」だけで、特に涼しくも快適でも無かった思い出…

I shall take the water bus home from Comiket, elegantly! …I did once believe that. I was crammed in with nowhere to sit and stood the entire way to the last stop, I’m afraid. The water bus is best enjoyed on a day with no event on, I’m afraid.

コミケ帰りは優雅に水上バスで帰るぜ！ …って思ってた時期もありましたぎゅうぎゅうに押し込まれて座る場所もなく終点まで立ったままでしたわ水上バスはイベントがない日に乗るのがベストですわ

That last one ends every sentence in -desu wa, a register that reads as refined, old-money feminine speech — the voice of a manga heiress. Held steady through a story about standing squashed on a boat for an hour, the politeness is the joke: the elegance is the only thing that survives the trip.

Right after Comiket moved to Big Sight, hardly anyone knew the water bus was an option, so you could stretch out in a seat and even buy a canned beer from the kiosk on board. There genuinely was an era when it got you home in style.

コミケがビッグサイトになってすぐの頃は、水上バスという選択があまり知られてなかったからか、ゆったり座れる上に船内売店で缶ビール買って飲むことまでできて優雅に帰れる移動手段だった時代もあるのだ。

When I rode it home at C50 (Comiket 50, summer 1996 — the first one held at Big Sight, after years at the old trade center in Harumi, which the boat passes on the way), everyone was still buzzing from the venue, and then the boat came out off Harumi and last year’s venue appeared, and they were exactly a crowd of exiles looking at a homeland they could never return to (all of them just went silent and kept watching).

C50で帰りに乗った時、それまで会場の興奮冷めやらぬ参加者たちが、船が晴海沖に差し掛かった時、去年までの会場が見えると「もう2度と戻れぬ祖国」を見る亡命者の群れそのものでした(みんな黙って見続けてました)。

There was a year, back when I was escaping Comiket by boat, where a group off to the side saw us off by dancing 「ハレ晴れユカイ」 (the Haruhi Suzumiya ending theme, the dance everyone at a mid-2000s otaku event could do)……

昔、船でコミケ脱出する時に横で「ハレ晴れユカイ」踊ってるグループが見送ってくれる年があったなと……

The time I rode it, for some reason it was the otaku already on board who kept shouting “Don’t leave us behind!” and “At least take the children!”

俺が一度乗った時には「俺達を置いてかないでくれー！」とか「せめて子供だけでもー！」とか何故か乗っている側のオタク達が言いまくってた

When I took the water bus home from Comiket I had fun waving at the passengers on the boats running the other routes

コミケ帰りで水上バス使う時は他の航路の水上バスの客に手を振ったりして楽しんでた

Takes me back. The beer on that boat, drunk in that comfortable tiredness after a Comiket where you did everything you came to do — best possible pint to close out the festival.

懐かしい。この船で飲んだビールはコミケでやり尽くした満足感に満たされた心地いい疲労感の中でいただく、祭りを締める最高の一杯だったなぁ

The water bus, what a memory…… When I used it for Comiket I’d aim for a time slot that looked empty. One time the boat I was on had an armed Coast Guard officer riding along, plus a Coast Guard patrol boat tailing us.

水上バス懐かしいなぁ…… 私がコミケで水上バス利用するときって空いてそうな時間帯狙ってた乗っていた便に拳銃装備した海上保安官が警乗＆海保の監視取締艇が追尾してたことがあった

The journey in Ariake ends. Look back and the hellish smell of sweat recedes. Farewell, my friends. At the bottom of fading consciousness, countless cosplayers standing unmoved. The screaming still in my ears, the cicadas burned into them. The next journey begins. An odyssey too harsh, too sorrowful to call a journey. ○○ departs for the next pilgrimage site.

有明での旅が終わる。振り返れば遠ざかる地獄の汗の匂い。友よさらば。薄れゆく意識の底に、仁王立つ数々のコスプレイヤー。耳に残る叫喚、耳に焼きつく蝉の声。次の旅が始まる。旅と呼ぶには余りに厳しく、余りに哀しいオデッセイ。○○は次の巡礼地に向かう。

In my head I’m running a withdrawal operation going THIS IS THE LAST BOAT OUT!

脳内でこれが最終便だ！と撤収作戦してる

Come to think of it, the water bus you could catch from Big Sight quietly vanished at some point, didn’t it. I’d love to retreat by that route once. Think it’s ever coming back?

そういえばビッグサイトから乗れる水上バスっていつの間にか消えちゃったよね。一度はこのルートで撤退してみたいけど、もう復活しないんかな？

Since the pandemic the water bus has been suspending unprofitable routes, staff shortages being part of it. The Big Sight route got extremely crowded on big event days, but there isn’t much around there to draw people on a normal day, so even ordinary weekends were rough on passenger numbers. Bringing it back may be difficult.

コロナ禍以降、水上バスは人員不足もあり不採算路線を休止しています。ビッグサイト航路はイベント多客時は大変混雑しても、平常日に集客施設が周辺に少なく普段の土日でさえ乗客が厳しかったので、復活は難しいかもしれません。

I retreated by water bus too, back when I lived in Asakusa, and the boat looked exactly like this. But after sweating an unreal amount at summer Comiket, the sunset I watched while working on an ice pop was the most beautiful sunset in this world 🌇

私も浅草に住んでる頃水上バスで撤退したんだけど、船はまさにこのような光景だったでも夏コミでありえん汗かいたあとにアイスキャンデーを舐めながら見た夕日はこの世で一番美しい夕日だったよ🌇

My take

You somehow survive, you make it home — and six months later you're back on the same battlefield. Having volunteered.

#Funny #Culture

Source & translation note

Comments loosely translated for tone. Reactions collected from Togetter and X threads.

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