Interest
Tokyo's Ishihara Aims to Expand Comiket's Big Sight Center
posted on by Ko Ransom
In a budget meeting held by the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly on the 15th, Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara stated his intentions to expand the size of the Tokyo Big Sight convention center alongside Tokyo's bid for the 2020 Summer Olympics. According to Ishihara, the center "pales in comparison" to other facilities around the world.
The Tokyo Big Sight, home to events including the twice-yearly Comic Market doujinshi event and the Tokyo International Anime Fair, is the largest exhibition-oriented convention center in Japan, with 80,660 square meters of exhibition floor space. (For reference, the Los Angeles Convention Center where Anime Expo has been held has roughly 67,000 square meters, while Madrid, another city bidding on the 2020 Summer Olympics, is home to the 200,000 square meter IFEMA Feria de Madrid.)
The Big Sight was originally built in 1996, and began hosting Comic Market in the same year. Last winter's Comic Market 81 reported an attendance total of 500,000, and around 35,000 groups of artists are currently able to exhibit their work over each three-day event using the building's current configuration.
[Via Yaraon!]
