This Labour Weekend the sun came out to play too

Rupa Kelly, 9, eyeballs a Cyclops face mask from Cut Above Academy on display at the Armageddon expo. Picture / Martin Sykes

Armageddon on Labour Day is like being caught in Lost in Translation.

The pulp-culture expo has turned the Aotea Centre into a stamina-sapping foreign world where incomprehensible people talk about things like cosplaying and DragonBallz and Otaku.

Fortunately Martina Delaney takes pity, promises to spell out every word and becomes the translator.

She knows her way around because she has visited Armageddon all day, every day for its three-day run and still manages to do a fair impersonation of the Duracell bunny.

"On Saturday morning before I'd even really woken up I spent $500. And I think another $160 or so since then. I have quite a few toys, yes. I'm probably small fish though."

Delany is 29, a microbiologist and says she has "multiple obsessions".

"Sci-fi, anime ... that's Japanese animation, comics. It's not just Archie and Mickey Mouse. There's a whole lot of angsty stories.

"Then through the comics, a couple of years ago I discovered anime and now I'm really obsessed with that. I like Girls with Guns. That's me. It's not all about Yu-Gi-Oh and DragonBallz."

Delany is about to see anime Tenjo Tenge, and says fans were boycotting the English version because the Americans had seen fit to draw clothes on the characters who were naked in the Japanese original.

"Why would you do that? It was never meant to be for children anyway."

She leads the way upstairs to see Tiffany Grant, the voice of Asuka in Neon Genesis Evangelion, and anime producer Matt Greenfield, both over from the US.

Greenfield says anime is the second-fastest-growing form of entertainment, just behind professional wrestling.

The rest of Armageddon is a quicker tour. Delany's highlights include Gothic Dolls - a bit like black-haired Barbies but chunkier, with pierced lips and belly buttons - kinder-Goths, zombi teddy bears and Narnia bookends.

At Gotham Comics, manager Jeremy Bishop says the most expensive comic is a "high grade" 1968 Silver Surfer for $750.

Elsewhere in Auckland, people were more welcoming of spring.

At Orakei Basin, it was a big day for "Steve the Ginga" Wheeler who finally managed to get up on the wakeboard, helped by Kevin Stade.

"I've had four prior attempts, but they were at Karapiro and Mercer, so I couldn't stay in for long because everything was freezing off."

"He was the human submarine," Stade said.

"Instead of being on top of the water, he was under it."

Dwayne Cook was there to test run his new boat, bald spot carefully sun screened, with his friends Phil and Belinda Stevens and five children "we picked up from the local dairy".

Those missing the morning drive into work managed to find an all-day rush hour along Tamaki Drive, where the stop-start traffic allowed for plenty of time to admire Auckland's harbour.

The aptly named manager of the Remuera Palmer's garden centre, Viola Wood, said its entire stock of cherry tomatoes ran out yesterday morning.

Horticultural expert David Bruce was busy advising people on camellia varieties, the reasons for the price of pea straw (it has to be brought up from Napier) and vegetable care.

One buyer said she was supposed to be doing office work, but popped in for a wisteria - "not the most transportable of things" on a trolley, but "rampant" along a deck.