Believe it or not but there's actually cons every year over here with cos-playing and everything^^. I've yet to be there though even though I'm probably one of the countries most hardcore anime/manga fans
Lately, the last 3-4 years, right after I started being into it, anime has become known to everyone below the age of 30. Trust me you won't find a soul between the age of 13 - 30 that doesn't know what it is. It's a weird thing really though 'cause there's no anime on TV or anything... We don't even have the 3 standards (Naruto, Bleach and One Piece) here
If I'm gonna think about what caused all of this, my guess is that it's due to the immense success of the (crappy) shows Pokemon, Digimon, Beyblade and Duel Masters.
If stuff continues like this, after all no one knew what anime was over here 5 years ago, then in about 10 years we'll be producing our own animes. Of course the culture here is very different so it'd definitely be less erotic and less overly epic and fantasyish, but then again that might be for the better^^.
Wow, I went and wrote an ass-long message to you -_-' Sorry about that
