Comiket 87 Report!

Comiket 87 was held during the last 3 days, It was my second winter comiket, and once again I can say, Winter comiket is a lot more enjoyable than Summer comiket.

The weather was pretty nice, we did get a little rain on day 2, but not much, and it wasn't too cold (for me anyway). It was cold enough that some cosplayer seems to be really cold, but then again, being almost naked at between 0°C and 10°C would do that.

I didn't have much money this time around so I didn't buy much but I got a circle ticket again for Day 1, so I did most of my shopping in the corporate booths then.
Unfortunately, Kadokawa's line was pretty long, even before opening, so even with the circle ticket, I couldn't go to many booths.

First day shopping took a while, and I was supposed to meet with one of my friend, but because it took her too much time to get changed we could't meet during that day.
Took some cosplay pictures and went back to work D:

During day 2 I didn't have much things to buy, and I went with a Japanese friend, we spent most of the day getting cosplay pictures, and my best Comiket moment happened during day 2, when I got this awesome picture of me doing a princess carry to Misaka Imouto.

I went to Day 3 with a different friend, and I had 2 books to buy, but the line were so long that they left, and we were never able to find each others again, until closing time. We then went to eat dinner together.

Because I spent so much time lining up for stuff on day 3, and because cosplay area close earlier on day 3, I couldn't get many pictures =/

Here are my 3 favourite shots for each days, you can see all my cosplay pictures in the albums linked at the end of this post.

Overall this comiket was very enjoyable, and I'm looking forward to the next one.
Here's this comiket loot:

Cosplay day 1 (Google+/Picasa)
Cosplay day 2 (Google+/Picasa)
Cosplay day 3 (Google+/Picasa)

Christmas in Japan

Sucks.
...
This year was my first Christmas in Japan as someone who lives here.
2 years ago I was just arriving, and I was clearly just a tourist, and last year I went back to Canada.

So I had apprehension to the arrival of this Christmas.

While in Canada Christmas is mostly about Family, here it's about couples.
Being single, that wasn't really a nice sounding event.
But even as I was already not looking forward to it, I was underestimating another important fact.
Christmas is also not an holiday officially here, so there's no day off for it. And to top it up, right now at work we're doing overtime like crazy. So I spent the 24 and 25 pretty much in front of my computer working.

When I got home, since I was alone, I celebrated Christmas with Shinobu the best I could.

Merry Christmas!

Monogatari Series and Hello Kitty Collaboration Café

This month, the café The Guest in Shibuya hosted a Monogatari Series and Hello Kitty Collaboration Café.
A bunch of really cute art was released because of it, and they had some special menu items, you can read about it here unless they remove the page when it's over.

I'm a huge Monogatari fan, I love the story, and the characters, so I couldn't miss this.
So I went there 2 weeks ago.... and I was greeted by this:

What this means is, there's a 1:30 waiting line to get inside...
I couldn't wait unfortunately, so I gave up.....

Until today.
In Japan December 23 is a holiday, the Emperor's Birthday. So I didn't work today, and I went there, decided to go inside, however long that waiting line would be because the cafe ends on the 25, and there's no day off for Christmas here, so this is my last chance.... today being a holiday, I was sure it was going to be a long line... I was still surprised when I saw this however:

5 hours waiting time... That seemed way too long but fortunately, probably because the line would have been too long, they were giving numbers, and taking our phone numbers, and said they would call me when it would be my turn.

So I went and spent 5 hours in Shibuya...
Shibuya is kinda boring, after 1 hour I finished checking Mandarake (not enough space and too many people(, and Animate. Wandered a a little, but Shibuya get's boring pretty fast. 5 hours is too long...
so I went to the Karaoke.

Then the Cafe called me while I was walking out of the Karaoke, perfect timing, it was time to finally go to that cafe I really didn't want to miss!

First thing they do when you get there is ask you what you're gonna eat, once inside you can't change your order or order more. Unfortunately with Comiket coming soon, I didn't want to eat too much but I ordered the cute Donut plate (I realized later I was dumb and should have also ordered on of the sodas to get a coaster, but it was too late).
Then when your turn comes, you get inside, and you can take a picture with the cute Monogatari display there.

Look at that Shinobu, hnngggg so cute.
After that they made me choose a table-mat between a Hello Kitty and a monogatari one, of course I choose the Monogatari one. then they took me to my place where I waited while enjoying the view and my table-mat.

So Cute!

I was very careful all the time I was there, and I was able to bring the table-mat back home, now it's a poster on my wall.
Eventually my food got there, and that was a really cute plate indeed.

The doughnut was meh, as most japanese donuts are. The Ononoki thing was a mousse over a slice of pineapple, and the top part were cookies. It was kinda good. The best was the delicious Fondant Au Chocolat (not gonna use the English name, it's retarded) representing Mayoi-chan. The fruits on it with the hot chocolate inside tasted like a Chocolate fondue, and the cake part was good too.
Then there was 3 things left... the 3 Macaroon... which were way too cute to be eaten.

I must have stayed there contemplating them (and checking if my neighbor, who was also keeping them, would est them) for like 20 minutes. However as my time was running out (you could only stay for 1 hour in the café) I decided to eat them.

They were good, but I still felt bad about eating them lol.

The Café also had a lot of stuff on sale at their shop for the collaboration, and I bought a lot (too much, but not as much as I would have wanted), here's the loot from today:

That concludes my report on the Monogatari café. I'm glad I could go.
Oh, and for those who don't follow me on Google+, I made myself a little Christmas tree this week, and since with today's loot I have more stuff to put in it, it has been updated a little.
Here's my awesome Christmas tree!

That's all for this post. Good bye, and please keep checking this blog, Comiket is coming soon!

Album for today's pictures: (Google+/Picasa)

Living somewhere

This was the first room I had in Japan, in my first youth hostel during my first trip.
I rented it for the whole duration of my trip (2 weeks) but I only stayed there 1 week, the other week I was traveling around the west part of japan, but I left most of my luggage in that room.
Looking at it makes me nostalgic....
The feeling you get when you get into a new place for the first time, completely lost, knowing nothing, traveling around and discovering everything as you go with no one to guide you.
I'll never get this feeling again. Even If I leave japan for a long time and come back, I'll know my way around. I won't ever feel lost again in Tokyo. I won't ever see Japan again with those eyes.

Getting used to live somewhere makes it it normal. Even if I still can't speak Japanese well, I've gotten used to living here. It has became my daily boring life.

This is not a post to say that I don't like Japan anymore, it's just to say that, living somewhere makes it seems normal, so I can hardly find something I'm excited to share on this blog anymore. I still do fun stuff from time to time, but I wasn't blogging about everytime I went to play with my friends, or went shopping when I was in Canada, so doing it here just because its japan kinda feels redundant.
This is to explain why I'm not posting lately, but that doesn't mean I'll stop posting. I have a couple thing coming soon that maybe I'll feel like blogging about, so keep checking from time to time please!

Tachikawa X Anime

Little history about Tachikawa before I begin this post. Tachikawa is about 45m~1h from Tokyo, west of Nakano. The IKEA is there, and more importantly, some anime stuff Happen there. Some scene in the ToAru series happen there (actually I'm curious to see if the sister's arc happens there both in Index and Railgun or if they changed the location to look like Tachikawa only in Railgun...), more recently, Gatchaman Crowds and Sekai Seifuku: Bouryaku no Zvezda happen there.

Today (and yesterday) in Tachikawa, a matsuri was held. It's a pretty normal matsuri, actually not so interesting compared top other Japanese matsuri I've been, maybe it was because of the temperature, I don't know...

It's a matsuri so I had to buy Yakisoba!

 

Anyway, in parallel to this matsuri, a anime rally was organized, where you have to walk all around town to get cards from participating shops, if you get 7 or more, you get a special 2015 Railgun Calendar.

This was the starting point:

So I did it, and I also collected some of the special goods sold there along the way. It was a long walk, took me about 3 hours (you need only 7 cards, but I went and got all 10 of them, and 2 shops also gave me last year's card so I got 12 in the end), unfortunately, once you go a little farther away from the station, Tachikawa isn't really interesting. So it wasn't really that nice.
And the calendar they give as prize is ... meh
I don't regret doing it, spoke with some people, especially the people at the Tea house (one of the participating shops) were really nice.
Here's some pictures of some of the shops:

The tea house

Tachikawa also has some really nice Index Vending Machines all around town, I found 4 of them, but unfortunately, not the Imouto one :( (I wasn't specifically looking for them so I didn't check their location on the internet, but it's available on Tachikawa's website)
The 4 I saw, and the special drink they offer:

And this is today's total loot:

This was the website for the event: http://www.tbt.gr.jp/tachikawa_anime/rakuichi2014autumn/
if you want to see the picture album from today it's here, but most pictures are already posted in this post.