I just spent 3 days in Toronto to attend Anime North 2010. It's biggest anime convention in Canada. I've sort of outgrown being an anime otaku (I have my favourite titles and have very little room for new ones). As for the merchandise, I try my best to support the local shop (which manages to sell at every convention I've been to in the last few years from Toronto to Montreal), but I also get the latest unlicensed stuff over the Internet too.
And this the story of one such bit of merchandise... I present the Macross-themed messenger bag pre-ordered months ago. if you don't reserve, then the international retailer won't be able to keep such intended-for-Japan product in stock for long.
Unfortunately, I didn't have this to show off at the convention in time, but...
Here's what was in my communal super-box when I got home today:
I haven't had much luck with SAL from Japan but thankfully, this shipment contained crushable good: a soft messenger-bag won't suffer much. And of course, when I opened it...
It's kind of small, but there's no hard rule on what size a messenger bag should be, I guess. It is however, coincidentally also the first time I've owned a messenger bag that is actually functional as a bike-messenger bag (it has the shorter under-arm strap to keep the bag against one's back). Unfortunately, I'm still not sure how useful that will be since the main compartment doesn't zip up, so smaller items may still slip out when it's worn across my back.
