Mission Impossible: Get Totoro!

One afternoon I drive to a Japan-pop themed shop which is hosting an event in support of one of the local anime conventions that was gearing up to happen soon. I arrive, park my car nearby and spend the next hour or so walking from vendor to vendor saying hi to people I know and maybe a few minutes before I am ready to get back in the car and go to another coffee shop I stop in front of a table for a college anime club.

We talk shop for a couple of minutes and right before I lose interest and move on, one of the college students asks if I can spare a buck for a raffle ticket. The winner of the raffle gets a Totoro doll to call their own, so I give them a dollar and they hand back a raffle. With that I quickly go around saying bye to people I know and make my way to a coffee shop where I do nothing in particular.

Later that evening I am driving in my car when I get a phone call from the person who sold me the raffle ticket earlier. The raffle ticket that I forgot about sitting the floor of my car behind the passenger’s seat. That one dollar bill won the raffle and they are holding Totoro for me. I turn around from wherever I am driving and make my way back to the event at the Japan-pop shop.

The sun has long set and all the vendor tables in the parking lot are gone with the sun. The shop is lit up inside and outside are a crowd of cosplayers in their colorful outfits and oversized weapons as I walk up the stairs and into the shop which is bustling with even more cosplayers. I meet with the one guarding my Totoro and chat for minute. It seems that there is going to be a rave happening nearby for all the cosplayers and a number of them are inside waiting to see who won the raffle for Totoro.

Specifically a number of anime girls who spent too much money trying to win Totoro are waiting to see who the one is who spent a measly buck for Totoro. They do not seem to be too pleased to see in was frumpy looking me who looks as if I have no clue of what mayhem I have done by spending a buck for a doll.

Hmm... cute, if not sexy anime girls in colorful cosplay costumes each holding very large weapons of their own designs. Each with red in their eyes and black in their hearts with the rage pulsing through them hoping they will be the one to impale me with one of these weapons to claim Totoro as their own. This realization is when I realize I have two options. One, I can bargain the Totoro for a date and at the very least my life. Two, I can make a run for it to my car hoping that all of these cute, sexy, and dangerously armed girls underestimate how fast a frumpy, out of shape, Teddy bear of a man I really am.

I choose the later, grab Totoro, and me and Totoro hurriedly make our way out of the shop and bully our way toward my car. Wisely I chose not to look back at the fury and near riot that was about to happen as an army of anime girls began their push to make Totoro as their own and make me as a dead and bloody trophy of a corpse on their trophy wall.

Since you are reading this, you now know that I made it to my car, barreled through the maniac anime babes and after a few minutes made it to a gas station to take a breathe and allow the calm to ease the near panic I am in, and to take a photograph of me and Totoro before I make my way to my sister’s home to triumphantly give Totoro to her.