We went to "Made in Asia"

The big hall with all the kiosks at Made in Asia

Yesterday, I had a day planned with my brother and girlfriend. Together we went to Brussels Expo to visit: Made in Asia. Made In Asia is an exhibition of all things related to Anime, gaming and cosplay. The event brings together all lovers and people that sympathize with these topics from all over Belgium to Brussels, one weekend a year.

We left a bit over 11 am, remembering the event from last year we knew that we would need as much time as possible to stroll over all the kiosks. Arriving there, however, prooved to be the easy part. If you don’t count the bus driver in training that had some difficulties on the road that is (but hey, we all know that a new job doesn’t come with conquering some obstacles). No, once we where there we had problems finding my brother. Our phone operator seemed to have no connection there. And since we couldn’t connect to another provider’s network we spend the first 40 minutes waiting to catch a glimpse of internet to find him.

Once we found each other it was finally time to delve into it. We strolled around all the kiosks and feasted our eyes on all the cosplayers. Damn, the work some of these people must put into their costume. If I would ever cosplay I would buy a “Geral of Rivia” costume, due to the amazing hair the guy has ;). My girlfriend was already making a shortlist of all things she wanted to buy and her eyes were set on “Hadhafang”, Arwen’s sword from Lord of the Rings. She sort of collects medieval and fantasy replica weapons. A cool hobby certainly, but not the cheapest one.

Something else a lot of geek and anime stores where buying where “mystery bags” or “mystery boxes”. Basically, you buy a box for 15 to 25 euro and the value of the items inside are worth around double. That is on paper of course, since the most of the items are things that don’t sell super good. Anyway, we bought 2 of those since they always came with a toy which costed almost the price of the mystery box. Needless to say the majority of the items didn’t interest us. Some of them already found their way to the bin, but there where some fun little knick-knacks as well.

After checking out the kiosks we ate a hotdog and went to check some of the other halls. There was one about gaming where there was also a huge League of Legends tournament casted. I love watching esports happenings live. Sadly the casting was in French and for a Dutch speaking Belgian the commentary was way too fast for me to understand. These things are always in one language. But wouldn’t it be a cool idea that there are two casters that interact in each other one in Dutch and one in French? I believe Scottish football is casted in the same way where one commentary speaks English and the other one speaks gaelic.

Anyway, so far my rant about the problems of living in a multilingual country. We strolled a bit around but playing games ourselves was a bit harder since everything had a waiting queue. Considering we still had to check out a lot of things we where not really in the mood for that.

Another hall was all about collectible card games and board games. With a huge representation for the Pokemon CCG. I didn’t know so many people still played those but cool to see so many people are still involved. I noticed that the majority of the players where around my age though late 20s - early 30s. I guess we are the generation that hold Pokemon that little bit closer to our hearts :p. Except for the collectible card game there where many stores and organizations teaching people new board games. I admire the people that have that patience. I understand that it’s their job and all and this is a great way to promote their store. But whenever I have to teach someone a new board game I get pretty salty starting from minute 10.

By then it was already around 6PM and we were getting pretty tired. Since the event for that day ended at 7 we decided to gather our well conquered loot and head towards the bus station. A very tiring day certainly, and one that was so nice to make our wallets a bit lighter… ;) but one we enjoyed as always. See you next year “Made in Asia”.