Since the J-POP Summit first started 2009, local Bay Area residents have been treated to a special one-of-a-kind event celebrating Japanese fashion, anime, art and of course J-POP. From its humble beginnings featuring small Japanese indie bands, along with the first U.S. premiere of Hatsune Miku, to its now considerable presence, it has been a wonderful delight watching the festival grow into one of the premiere San Francisco events. This year especially as it featured a top tier guest lineup that included Tomomi Itano, May'n, Tokyo Girls Style, YANAKIKU, human beatbox DAICHI and many more thousands of enthusiastic fans packed the streets of the famous San Francisco landmark. However, the performances were not the only main reason to attend it as there were also the food and ramen festivals. Both of which contributed to some growing pains for the festival that not even the upper managers were able to clearly foresee during its infant planning stages.

For a lot of Bay Area residents, including us, who were familiar with the previous years this year presented a new challenge. Since there were multiple events including the ramen festival, concerts, food trucks and more, many locals drove to the festival and they ran into a huge problem: the Japantown parking lot reached max capacity in the morning. Yes, by 10 am the parking lot was full and created a traffic nightmare due to the festival. Cars scurried along the streets like mice running a maze complete with dead ends, no left turns and only one ways streets. Once it was our turn to try and find a place to park, we joined a nearly 1.5 hour parade of cars waiting in line to get into the parking lot, just a mere few blocks away.

Well after we waited for parking lot to have an open spot available, we finally made it to the festival, we were hungry. Now it was time for the Ramen festival, Yes I know there are restaurants in Japantown but most attendees where there for one reason and that reason was the ramen and ramen burger from the vendors. However, once we laid our eyes on the five hour long line it would take to brave just to get some ramen, we took a second to ponder if the ramen was really worth that much trouble. Although many festival-goers stood in the long lines for that exclusive $8 bowl that was only available if you stood in line for up to 2-5 hours. Mind you that there were multiple lines for different types of ramen, so you couldn't get in one line and order all three. Well don't worry by the time people would get to the front of the line they would have gotten hungry again, so back in line they go for the next flavor ramen bowl. I did see some people making deals with other people in other ramen lines saying "I can buy you a bowl from my line if you buy me one from your line." This seemed pretty smart to score all the different types of ramen in one shot, but we chose to go elsewhere for food that wouldn't take five hours to obtain.

PR manager Erik Jansen was quoted saying that there was easily more than 40,000 people lining up the streets in San Francisco on Saturday, which could be seen with the packed lines for parking, vendors, food and shops dotting Japantown's landscape.

"I think it really speaks to the popularity of J-POP, and all of its genres [that there were that many people]." Jansen said. "Since the beginning, J-POP has always been about bringing fashion, music, film, art and presenting what's hip in Japan right now."

To us, this has always been one of the most impressive things about the festival. As a free-to-attend event, one of the clear goals of the festival has been to expose people to the Japanese mainstream culture and show them what's current in Japan regardless of medium. By attracting people with different backgrounds and hobbies (anime, fashion, etc.) and exposing them to the buffet line of Japanese culture including food, music, vendors, fashion, etc. it's created an immersive annual gathering where people can learn more about Japan and find like-minded people who also enjoy the same thing.

This one-of-a-kind environment has led to a recent expansion of the festival to Union Square and the nightclub Slim's, which are a both located few miles down from Japantown. Both of which were specifically chosen to give different people even more exposure to the wonderful and unique culture of Japan. "Union Square was the perfect place since they already have concerts there during the summer time and is tourist central." Jansen claimed. "We're bringing this to people who wouldn't otherwise be exposed to J-POP, a different demographic that might never otherwise check it out."

As for the future of the show? Who knows what exactly will be popular in Japan in 2015, but given the growth of the show and the (hopeful) lessons that they learned, all we know is that we can't wait to see what they have in store for us next year!