> Anime Expo took place in Tokyo for the first time in January 2004.
> It was a three day event (from 1/16 to 1/18), and it was held in the
> Bunka Kaikan in Ikebukuro.  Some of the events were also held in the
> Toshima Koukaidou.
> 
> I only went on Sunday (1/18), and I spent most of the time in the
> Toshima Koukaidou to watch the Unity and Cutie Pai mini lives.
> 
> I took a quick look around the corporate booth area, but there were hardly
> any people. 

What about the non-corporate booth area? Does it look like AX Tokyo was a big
flop, then?

> There was a cosplay cafe near that area, but it was almost
> totally deserted.  One girl I knew was working there on Saturday,

Oh man, I wish I had been in Tokyo at the time...

> I heard that the people who ate/drank there were allowed to take 5 photos
> of the waitresses.  Since they usually don't allow photos in the cosplay
> cafes in Akihabara, this was a nice system.

<sigh>

> I went inside and saw only 10 to 20 people inside!
> This is a large, multi-level hall that can seat almost 1000.

Whoa...

> For both of the events that I watched, there were only about 30 people
> watching the events.

Ouch... How many of the "people" at the convention in general looked to be
foreign, and how many likely Japanese?

I think they may have aimed it too much at the foreign fans, and it turns out
that foreign fans, even with the promise of more GoH's prefer not to go
overseas to a convention... If they had advertised it more to japanese fans,
this may have been able to do better, at least in terms of paying for itself.