Amidst the thousands of cosplayers and attendees who flooded the halls of the Raleigh Convention Center from May 27-29 for the annual Animazement convention, one of this year’s biggest guests was not a writer, artist or actor — but an astronaut. Soichi Noguchi, a JAXA astronaut known for being a part of NASA’s Space Shuttle mission in July 2005, after the infamous Columbia disaster, discussed his space experiences during a panel on Saturday afternoon.

The theme of this year’s Animazement was space. While in years past the convention has focused mostly on themes related to various aspects of Japanese culture, the organizers wanted to do something a little different this time, with next year being the 20th anniversary. Matthew Holmes, Animazement’s team coordinator for external media, said that the space theme provided enough of a departure from what they have done previously, but remains consistent with the convention’s core principles.

“Foremost this is a convention about education,” Holmes said. “So we use animation as a means of getting people in the door, but then we have things like the Noguchi-san panel to inform our attendees about other things they can look into in terms of what Japanese culture has to offer them.”

As Noguchi took to the stage, he greeted the audience by asking where people were from, and found himself elated when several people said they were from Japan, and replied with “Konnichiwa!” From there he posed another question to the audience: “So who wants to go to Space?”

During the first part of his presentation, Noguchi showed footage of both the launch from his 2005 mission, as well as another clip of him and his crew members inside the shuttle. Over the course of his career, he has logged a total of 177 days in space.

“Growing up, it was my dream to fly in a space shuttle,” he said during the panel.

In terms of describing what it takes to properly mold an astronaut, he used the analogy of cutting open a pizza. He said that just as you have to look at a pizza from the inside to determine if it’s good, the same principle applies to astronauts, as you have to look at their internal qualities to see that they are fit for space travel.

As Noguchi outlined key qualities which he believes every good astronaut should have, he said that beyond the basic skills and knowledge of the equipment you need, one of the most important factors today is cross-cultural experience. Whereas it used to be that American astronauts would only fly on American spacecraft, Japanese astronauts would only use Japanese spacecraft, etc., the increased diversity in the field today requires astronauts to be able to adapt to other cultures and learn multiple languages.

“We have to talk to each other and understand each other,” he said.

Yet Noguchi’s space experience was not the only reason he attended Animazement. In 2012, he voiced himself in two episodes of the popular anime series, “Space Brothers” which he showed a clip of midway through the presentation. “I’m pretty sure I’m the only astronaut in the world who has been in an anime,” he said.

Speaking with the Technician after the panel concluded, Noguchi said that as anime has become more popular in both Japan and in the U.S., it provides a way for science to intersect with pop-culture.

“It’s happening in Japan, because we always grew up in an anime generation,” he said. “We interact with this anime and manga culture, so it’s an easy access to a younger generation. And it’s the visuals that really help our presentation; by visualizing, we can more easily convey our message directly, not just for younger generations, but older generations as well.”