While walking around the event floor I was regularly surprised by how people were enjoying themselves. Here are a few of them, some promoted by NYAF and others spontaneous acts of culture.

Here is a group of people "popping" or doing a hip-hop style of dance, good music and great moves, best of all Spiderman is right in the middle. Another neat things that I saw but didn't get a shot of is maybe a hundred or so fans and cosplayers forming a chain and running freely through the crowd. These exact forms of otaku enjoyment would be unheard of at an event in Japan but when the "pedestrian paradise" was operating in Akihabara Tokyo, similar local kinds of fun happenings were regular.

Here is a kind of controlled battle zone. With a referee and a scheduled list for fighters, two combatants with soft bat style weapons would enter the ring and start swinging. It wasn't a haphazard random whacking of each other, the fighters often had stylized forms. Perhaps they had taken kendo or another martial art or just were just having fun. According to NYAF staff this controlled battle environment was created because as with the dancing above, people had begun to whack each other with weapons. To prevent injury to fans during the event they created a special space for more spectacular battles.

Above is a side stage that was running pretty well from Friday through Sunday. In this picture they are doing a kind of organized dance but for most of the weekend this stage was dedicated to a dating game style event. Maids would call members of the audience onto the stage and get one person to ask 3 others fairly personal questions to determine their best match. What happened after that I'm not sure but it looked like a good group of youth were spending their time there and enjoying the show.