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)

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.

HARDCORE TANO*C Live!

I was expecting to write this closer to the last post, but I got sick and didn't feel like writing anything.
Saturday May 4th was my birthday, and while I forgot to go to a Maid Café this year, I went to the HARDCORE TANO*C Live event in Shibuya.
It was my first time attending this kind of event (Electronic music show/rave/whatever). But I was pleased with it. The show lasted 7 or 8 hours, and at the end I was exhausted. The music was great, but "dancing", mouving and bouncing like this for 7 hours really took all my energy. It really felt great though!

For those who don't know who HARDCORE TANO*C is, it's a collective of DJ's from Japan. Most of them do arrange of anime/game songs, but HARDCORE TANO*C is for their Original stuff. You can see a list of their crew here. Some of their most well know DJs are RED ALiCE, DJ Genki, DJ Noriken, t+pazolite, P*Light and USAO. To give you an idea of wat kind of music this is, you can listen to the "Anthem"of their tour



The show in Shibuya was held inside Shibuya WOMB. Apparently, it's one of the most famous Night Club around the world. The place seemed pretty normal to me, but it was great for what it had to do.

The Started at 13:30, and was opened by DJ Genki.

Dj Genki was pretty nice, it was a good warmup for the crowd.  Then came aran:

You can see what each Dj's intro looked like in that video above.
After aran came a trio of DJ, DJ Myosuke vs Massive New Krew.

Sorry, because my phone battery was depleting fast I didn't take that much video, but I do have some cool samples coming.
After them was kenta-vez:

I actually got to record a nice little sample during kenta-vez performance, it was really energetic, and gives a good idea of the mood and ambience there. Also the sound is pretty good for something recorded through a cellphone!

After that came Minamotoya (Couldn't get a good picture of his intro), who did one of my favourite songs from HARDCORE TANO*C albums, Blue sky!

After him came Hommar ju

Then came DJ Shimamura who did a nice cover of Irony, the Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai opening song

They also did some live rapping which was pretty nice, unfortunately it took me by surprise so i only got like the last part

Then came USAO. I really like USAO, but somehow, i really didn'T like his performance at this event, he only did Dubstep. :(

from that point on, my cellphone was almost dead so I only took pictures disconnected from the internet.
After Usao came Noizenecio

After that Came DJ Noriken, and DJ Noriken took his sweet time to start, it was long, he was playing with his settings, and the crowd teased him. It was pretty funny, but it was also really worth it. Noriken was cearly thr highlight of the night. His performance was so electric, it was pure Awesomeness.

After that came a guest, Kors k, it was a pretty nice performance.

And finally came RED ALiCE, finally? Yes finally, because P*Light and t+pazolite we're not present at the event. Which was a huge let down, because they are both awesome, especially P*Light, who is clearly one of my favorite DJ all around. Also, RED ALiCE was also a letdown, his performance was short, and didn't include any of his best works.

Finally the whole crew came to the stage to say goodbye and plug their new CDs.

They did a live version of the TANO*C TOUR 2013 the Anthem with the singer actually singing live, but my phone was completly dead then, so I couldn't even take a picture of it.

Overall the show was great, and the experience was awesome. I was pretty much completly drained after the show but it was worth it!

I'm sorry this post came later than expected, in part because I was sick, and also because it took me like 2 days to write ><.

My next post will probably be about Google I/O coming tonight, and the next one after this should be the answer to the Q&A.

Thanks for watching!

1 Month in Japan! Job Get!

Hello everyone. Today it's been 1 month since I landed in Japan. I didn't post as much as I wanted, and not really for good reasons.When I look back to this month it was in the end pretty normal. I didn't do anything awesome, I just tried to adapt, while saving money, until I got a job. Telling myself, once I get a job I'll be able to really enjoy what Japan has to offer.

Well last week I got a Job!
I am now a programmer at Unipro, a consultant company in Shibuya.

Everyone is really nice there, lots of them seems to like Anime/Manga too.
I got this job in great part due to my friend Sherry (Love you!). She asked one of her friend who lives in Japan to help me get a cellphone, while speaking with him, he asked me if I had a job, and when I said no, and that I was looking for a programming job, he told me he's a director in a development company! What a luck! I got an interview and 1 day later I was Hired. I made good friend whit him too, so now I actually have a friend and a job!

Now money will not be available right away so I still need to be careful with it. When it's safe, first thing I'll do is go to a Maid café!

I'm still having fun though, even if I'm being careful with my money. I went to Comiket, next week-end I'm going to see IOSYS, HALOZY and IRON-ATTACK Live! and I'm going to Comitia!

I'm gonna start doing some more specific posts soon, so please stay tuned!