Hyper Japan Christmas Market

We managed to get a couple of days off work and booked ourselves on a flight to London, with our main focus being Hyper Japan’s Christmas market at the Tobacco Dock. Of course we did a few other things while in London too. We decided to visit Hyper Japan on their first day, which was the Friday. We bought out tickets in advance and we also purchased the priority entrance tickets, which turned out to be a bit of a waste of money, since we arrived in the afternoon and there was no queue so we didn’t need to use the priority entrance tickets.

Since we had not been to a Hyper Japan event before, we did not know what to expect. We knew which stalls were there beforehand and which shows we wanted to see. After entering the Tobacco Dock, our first impressions were not the best. We were expecting more of a Comic Con setup with lots of stalls in one main hall, but instead we found ourselves walking though like a shopping center where instead of the usual shops there were temporary Japanese stalls set up.

There were a lot of stalls we had been looking forward to seeing. Some of them were:

Tokyu Hands, a giant departments store in Japan, we were hoping to find something interesting to buy from them. But we didn’t this time, since they only had a very small selection to sell. It was still great to see a well known brand to have a stall at Hyper Japan.

NHK World was great to see. We saw Domo posting for photos, but when we got there the queue was long, but when we got there it was still seeing him in real life.

Tofu Cute sold a lot of plushies and other goods, and they had a great sweets selection. We could pick up all different sweets from Japan, like different flavoured KitKats and lots of different flavours of Ramune and lots more.

Being big fans of Cakes with Faces, it was great seeing their stall at Hyper Japan and looking at all the cute products. We were really interested in the sushi kit, so much that we bought it. What we loved about it was that we were not just getting the tools to make sushi, but also a super cute illustrated manual.

There were lots of other shops, some we had visited before, like Japan Center, JP Books, but there were also lots of stalls that we had never seen before, which made it even more fun, because there were sooo many stalls.

One of the more unique guests attending the market was Japanese shironuri artist Minori. Famous for her fashion style, featured on TokyoFashion.com several times, and even seen in Vogue, it was quite special to be able to see her in London. I was looking forward to seeing her, so it took me by surprise when we randomly saw her amongst the stalls, posing for photos. For her fans, she held a tea party, where you could enjoy a cup of tea with her, for a cost.

There were food stalls with a selection of Japanese food to choose from, and also a Japanese maid cafe. We had Takoyaki, it was delicious.

An events area was set up for on stage performances. We decided to see Lady Baby. The performance was great, but unfortunately people stood up on the chairs so we couldn’t see much. It didn’t stop us from having a great time though.

There were lots of other events throughout the weekend, like Mirai no Neiro the Vocaloid, WING WORKS and Kuli-Kala, and more.

This was just a slice of what could be seen at the Hyper Japan Christmas Market. There was so much more that we could have told you about this year’s market, but above were some of our highlights. For the price of the entrance it was well worth the money and it was a great afternoon and evening out.