Bunkasai (Culture festival) and M3

Hello everyone, This post is about current events, and not about things that happened during my Hiatus, I'll actually post more about the hiatus later, but I tough talking about currently happening stuff would be interesting as well.
Especially since that stuff was pretty interesting!

Jinssei Girl High School's Bunkasai

A bunkasai is a culture festival, as far as I know, all schools in Japan host these kind of events. There's two major festivals at schools in Japan, the Sport festival, and the culture festival. The sport festival is usually a school competition in sport events, kinda like school Olympics, and the culture festival is everything else.
We other see this festival in Anime, the classes do either Haunted house, cafe or things like that, the clubs do club related stuff like presentations.
According to the girl who invited me to her festival, it's the second most boring in Japan (which one is the first?) because the teachers won't allow them to use costumes or make haunted houses.
Boring or not, it was my first time seeing one for real, outside of Anime, so I was really curious!

There was a lot of things I only learned about Japanese school through anime and games, like how the change their shoes before entering the school and stuff like that, so I was kinda scared to do something bad while I was there, so my technique was to follow people around, and do like them.

First place I went to see was their Gymnasium, where the kendo club had a presentation.

After watching them for a while I wandered around in the school, entering in random classes to see the expositions. There was flower arrangements, art galleries, a sweet museum. Their English club had little games, and I spoke with them a little.

In the end I was never able to find the girl who invited me at the festival... maybe she was on a floor I didn't visit because I didn't know if I was allowed to go there or not (if nobody walked there, I didn't go either).

The most interesting part of this festival was probably their Light Music Club's live shows. It seems like they have a big club because they had 11 different bands, and while I only saw 3 of them, I saw 13 different members of the club.
Some of them are actually really promising, one girl had a really awesome voice.

The genre were pretty diverse too, the first ones I saw did regular pop, the second one was metal, and the last one was punk/rock.
It was really interesting to watch the crowd of little girls headbanging and slamming to the music... It's not everyday you see a slam of 14-17 year old girls... so I took a video of it!



The festival lasted 2 days. but I couldn't  go on day 2 because I was at...

M3 2013 - Fall

 So it's my 3rd time going to M3, you can see the previous reports under the M3 label here M3
This year when I checked the list of circles I usually go see, I was dissapointed. Most circles released their latest albums for an event in Osaka a couple of weeks ago, and a bunch of circles didn't seem to participate... but I was wrong, it was mostly because all these circle just don't update their stupid websites! I went there thinking I would buy only 6 albums, including 3 albulms released in Osaka a couple of weeks back, but ended up buying 21 and running away without checking the whole event because it was getting just too much.
I really love this event, there's a lot of good music, and it's a good place to discover new circles, but it gets expensive fast because when people ask you to come and listen to their album, it's hard to say no. and if it's good, well I but it, so it really stack up quickly.

One of the biggest difference between this M3 and the previous one was that there was a lot of KanColle arrange albums... KanColle is the new Touhou! I think two of the album I bought are about KanColle, but there was a lot available.
I also asked IRON CHINO about this, and asked him if he planned to do a KanColle arrange album, and he said it's interesting and that he will probably do it.

Once again I also took the time to speak with Miko, she had a weird Wig this time, but she's as Kawaii as ever!
She released 3 albums (well 1 of them seem to be a DVD but I didn't check it yet).

Heres a picture of my M3 loot:

That ends this post, Lots of things coming up in the next week, so I should be posting a lot. Also expect the continuation of the "Hiatus" posts.

Back from Hiatus, part 1 - Comiket 84 report

Why did I stop writing? I don't exactly know, I got fed up with it, and with my life in general I guess, maybe the lack of money hit me mentally and stopped me from writing? I don't know.
It's not like I didn't have anything to talk about, a bunch of stuff happened in the last 2 months.... oh well, I'll do a couple post about what happened ion the last 2 months and start posting again, hopefully regularly...

Comiket 84 report:

So last time I wrote was just after comiket, so here's a very late, and very short report (since I forgot a lot of what happened)

Day 1:

So during day 1, I decided to try and go buy something at the corporate booth. We started with Shaft...
Reaching the Shaft line took 1:45, then we waited in that unmoving line for more than 2 hours, under the burning sun, in the hottest day of this summer, which broke heat records. I tried to stay hydrated, but I failed, I almost fainted, I had to bail out, fortunately my friend, which can handle the heat more than I can, was able to finish the line and get some stuff.
After finishing the Shaft line, my friend came to pick me up where I was resting, and we went around the rest of the corporate booth, everything was pretty much sold out at that point though. And we were so tired we didn't actually look around for real, so we decided to call it a day and leave.
Overall Day 1 was not fun.

Here's some picture of hell:

I can't imagine how you could wear a costume like this in that kind of heat. It's suicide!

Day 2:

Day 2 was pretty fun overall, we went to the cosplay area, took a bunch of pictures, and wandered aimlessly while looking around in the doujin area and the corporate booths. We tried to find the KanColle book everyone wanted, but couldn't find it. I found the 5pb. booth however and got myself some awesome loot!

I remember I bought some stuff in the doujin area as well, but I don't remember what.
I don't know if it's always like this, or if's the first year, last time I came I thuygh the cosplay area changed location depending on the day, but now I think the 3 area are always open at the same time... well it was this way this time. We spent quite a while in there so here's my favourite shots:

This one is pretty awesome because it looks like Cirno is melting from the heat

Simply the best girl of Comiket

This girl had the most beautiful smile I have ever seen

Her again

You can see all the pictures from Day 2 here: Summer Comiket 2013 Day 2

On a side note, there was an Itasha and Itabike on the way from the station to the event, and I took some pictures, the bike looked especially nice!

I want that bike

Day 3:

Day 3 was Touhou day, and Doujin music day, so it was shopping day, the first half of the day was us running around circles and getting CDs. I spoke with IRON CHINO, Miko, DJ Noriken, and maybe others, but I forgot. This is the reason why I love Doujin event so much, you get to actually talk to the people who make the stuff you like. It's awesome.
Miko is still Love.

After the shopping I went to see Raide (a guy I met on G+, who worked on Katawa Shoujo) at the Katawa Shoujo booth, spoke with him a little and then went to the cosplay area for more pictures.

Unfortunatly we were there late, and they were about to close, so I couldn't get as much as I wanted, but here are my favourite shots from day 3:

You can see all Comiket Day 3 pictures here: Summer Comiket 2013 Day 3
And that's it for the Comiket report, I apparently didn't take a picture of my loot.
Hope you enjoyed, stay tuned for the part 2 of my what happened during my hiatus!

Updated (2013/10/19 13:44 JST): added link to day 3 album

M3 2013

Once again I'm pushing back my answering of question to this post: Q&A Hoping to get more questions.

Now, about 2 weeks ago (April 29) was this year's M3.
For those who don't know what M3 is, it's like a mini-Comiket, for music only. A big event with a lot of Doujin Music circles selling their works. You can see my last year's post here: M3 and akiba day 1.

So last year we got there a little late, and didn't really know how things worked. This year I got to do the line-up prior to the event, and got in pretty early.

The lineup is clearly not as impressive as Comiket, but there was still a lot of people.
During the first hour of the event, I quickly went to all the circles I knew, and wanted their new albums. The only circle with a really long line was Asriel.
After that, a friend from work arrived around noon, and we walked around, discovering new circles for the rest of the event. I got to speak with a couple of people, especially a lot with Miko again! Speaking with Miko always makes me happy! She's so cute <3 p="">I also went to a circle I discovered last year while walking around, called Kanata Labo (last year they were dorami diego kanata but now they made a bigger circle and the former is a part of the new one). I remembered them mostly because the cute girls told us "WE LOVE YOU" before we left last year, lol. They were still as genki this year as last one! While IRON ATTACK! was present at the event, Chino was not.
Here's a picture of what it looks inside (this is one half of one of the 3 rooms)

In one of the room, there was live performances, so we got to watch TAM play the violin:

Finally, we returned home after eating dinner in Shunjuku. This is my loot from M3 this year:

Kinda small, but didn't have time to walk around the full room, and unfortunately, I think a lot of circles are saving their new releases for Reitaisai at the end of the month.

That's all for today. Expect a new post very soon, because there are two things I wanted to talk about today, but I decided to split it in 2 posts!