Cover from the Comic Market 50 catalog.

To a westerner, the doujinshi (fanzine, literally 'same-character story') phenomenon may seem quite puzzling. Sales of large quantities of comics, some rivaling professional quality, takes place right under the noses of the rights holders, seemingly with their tacit approval, just about every weekend of the year.
By far the biggest of the conventions is without a doubt Comike, or Comic Market, which takes place twice a year, in August and December. This past August 3 and 4, the 50th Comike event was held at Tokyo Big Sight in Ariake.
The admission to the event is free, but realistically anyone who is serious about going would be lost without buying the Comike Catalog, which is available at many comic shops around Tokyo for approximately ¥1200-1500. The catalog lists which groups are where and what they will be selling. The book often sells out, and I found myself three days before the show without one, having looked at numerous places. Fortunately MD GEIST / GENOCYBER director Ohata Koichi, who was showing me around one day, was able to take me to an out of the way bookstore where I could score one of the remaining few.

The Yurikamome Monorail Station. Where's the end of the line?

Tokyo Big Site's location at Ariake's International Exhibition Center presents some logistical problems, as neither Tokyo's famed subway system nor JR (Japan Railways--a national train line) run to the area. Probably the most convenient way of getting there using mass transportation is the 'New Transit Yurikamome' monorail, which stops right at the front of the site. While fairly comfortable on the trip there, the ride back was very crowded.
The Comike-virgin's first impression upon arrival will probably be the whole scale of things. Upon entering the front gates your first task, a non-trivial one at that, will be to find the end of the line. The grounds are literally a sea of humanity. While I heard no figures of this year's attendance, I would not be surprised if it were 100, 000-150, 000 per day.
Much of the material on Saturday is girls-oriented, and the Sunday selection is more oriented towards a male audience, although there are a many exceptions to the rule on both days. For example, most GUNDAM X material was Saturday). My stalwart companions were a bit overwhelmed by all this and decided to bug out for a SLAYERS RETURN event in Ginza with a Hayashibara Megumi appearance at this point.

Almost in... Cosplayers dressed up as Rei and Asuka (Evangelion). More cosplayers, this time from the King of Fighters.

The lines were neatly arranged, and once the event opened, people moved steadily inside. It took about 30-45 minutes to navigate my way in and head for the exhibition halls. The layout of the building is fairly simple. The east pavilion has two main halls, which are mainly used for original works.
The western pavilion has six halls, four of which were used, oriented more towards parody works of games, manga and anime. (As a means of comparison of scale, the Tokyo Game Show, recently held in the same location, only used two of the western halls) As a rough estimate, there were upwards of 2500 tables in total. In comparison to the line outside, the crowds inside were an absolute madhouse. All the stereotypical Japanese politeness gets thrown out the window here, and elbows and shoving are the order of the day.
The mix of non-original-character titles was about what you'd expect - a mix of mostly recent titles with a few oldies thrown in here and there. Probably the two biggest titles were SHINSEIKI EVANGELION and Konami's TOKIMEKI MEMORIAL ~forever with you~. About 30-40% of the titles were ecchi. Since I had come searching for precisely those two top titles, I had a field day, but also found other gems like doujinshi of Adachi Mitsuru's MIYUKI and KEY THE METAL IDOL.
Cosplay is the other thing that Comike is known for, and this time was no exception. In the atria there were cosplayers from just about any series imaginable, from GATCHAMAN to SAILOR MOON to EVANGELION. I could not resist this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and put on my Hotohori (FUSHIGI YUUGI) costume, joining the fun. Hopefully no photographs survived.