Comic Market Opens Internationally-Focused Twitter Account
Tokyo Big Sight photo by Daryl Harding
The organizing committee behind Comic Market, Japan’s largest convention dedicated to official and fan-created works, anime and otherwise, has officially opened a secondary Twitter account focused on international visitors and those who wish to attend the convention without having to rely on machine translation for their main account, which tweets almost exclusively in Japanese.
We are announcing the genres by day and hall of C101. Each day of Comic Market has different circles. About 10,000 of them per day. If you come on the wrong day, you will unfortunately not find what you are looking for. pic.twitter.com/63NBGOD3NY
— Comic Market Committee (International) (@comiket_intl) November 14, 2022
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Currently, the account also features preliminary schedule and ticketing information in English, as the committee has confirmed that as with the previous abbreviated and condensed in-person events over the past two years, no tickets will be made available for purchase on the grounds of Tokyo Big Sight. They must once again be pre-purchased before arrival to the venue.
With the expected return of international attendees, the committee has also confirmed pending availability of an alternate avenue for international ticket purchases, as the current purchase options require a Japanese phone number to receive confirmation and authentication messages for ticket purchases.
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Within the past decade, the committee has slowly expanded the convention’s international visibility online by setting up English pages on its official website for first-time visitors, as well as providing updates on convention information during the event, primarily through English-language posts on its official English-language Facebook page.
We have opened an official Twitter account of Comic Market for international participants from all over the world. We will be tweeting mostly in English, with Chinese and Korean from time to time. See you all at Tokyo Big Sight!
— Comic Market Committee (International) (@comiket_intl) November 14, 2022
The organizing committee has since realized that its main Japanese-language Twitter account was more closely followed than its English-language Facebook page by international vistors, which took steps to tweet in English only when absolutely necessary, in turn increasing demand for a dedicated international account.
The account will tweet in languages other than English, such as Chinese and Korean, as the account also features the above English-language introductory tweet in Mandarin Chinese and Korean. The account will also tweet further updates up to the end of this month, ahead of the 101st Comiket being held on December 30-31.
Sources: Comic Market (International) On Twitter, Comic Market On Facebook (English)
