Tsumugi & Ritsu's Birthday Event 2019 in Toyosato's former elementary school.

Here's the promised K-On! post!

When we planned this trip, the only thing we had planned at first was just to go see the OSK Sakura Night Sakura Taisen Collaboration in Kyoto. (which was a very nice show btw! I might do a quick post about it at some time. some weird mix of cabaret and other stuff, with some Sakura Taisen songs and the voices actresses). We had to sleep in Kyoto, so we tried to think about what else to do around it, and while Kyoto isn't really THAT close to Toyosato, I still proposed it, and we decided to go. I had wanted to go there for years, ever since I learned it was possible to visit it, and it was finally my chance!

At that point I didn't even know there was a birthday event going on that week-end. We found out like 3-4 days before leaving when someone noticed on the guided tour of the school (that we had reserved) website, it said the auditorium was unavailable for visit. I quickly remembered it was sometime used for events and checked ToyosatoTeaTime website, and yup! there it was! It's Mugi and Ritsu's birthday event! Even better! a nice coincidence!

The next day, we learned about the horrible news of what happened at KyoAni, we though about cancelling the tour a bit, felt almost insensitive to go visit K-On! holy place right after this tragic incident... I already talked about this in my last post, so I won't say more about it here. But in the end we decided to do it anyway. We also added a trip to the KyoAni studio to pay our respects to the fallen and their families.

The day after going to KyoAni and watching the OSK Sakura show, we woke up around five and took a very early train toward Toyosato via Hakone.

Right when stepping out of the train you can already feel you're in a good place.

No sign of K-on! stuff so far, but we get inside the building of the station itself and it's already there, a map of the city with the Toyosato Former Elementary School taking the spotlight.

As soon as we step out we're welcomed by this really shy Azunyan hiding behind a post.

The K-on presence in the city doesn't seem as big as it is for Lucky Star in Washinomiya or for GuP in Oarai, but still there was a lot of shops with posters and more of these pedestrian boards on the way to the school

MIO! Don't cross the street with your eyes closed!!!

And then we reached the school, the very beautiful and well maintained school.

Since we had taken the guided tour we headed to where the library used to be, it's now a building with a cafeteria, and places to eat and socialize, as well as a K-On! goods museum, more on that later since we didn't get to see this immediately, our tour guide arrived and we went to the front of the school. To be noted here, when we singed up for the tour, they asked us if we wanted one that focused on the architecture or K-On!, we said "a bit of both". So we expected a bit of both, but the whole tour was 100% about the building history and the architecture, not a single K-On! word was said. The guide even tried to make us go pretty fast trough the K-On! club room, but I just ignored it and took my sweet time in it. The information he gave us was interesting, but I really wish there would have been a lot more of "so this is where this happens in the anime".

The Hare and the tortoise is a really important theme throughout Toyosato.

The Hare and the tortoise are ready for the race

But of course the tortoise won!

So apparently this stairway is pretty important in "I want to eat your pancreas"

Then we finally reached the mythical club rooms. I think the right one was the jazz club room, and the left one the Light Music club room, obviously, complete with Mugi's tea sets and kitchen, along with the cosplay rack.

Because of what had happened a few days earlier, the boards we're filled with words of love for Kyoto Animation.

After that the visit continued, since we took the tour we had access to some rooms that are normally closed to the public. The science classroom was especially really nice, and way too advanced for an elementary school. We also visited the Guest room, a recreation of an old classroom and the kind of museum for the architect. You can see pictures from this in the full album that'll be posted below. This post is already picture heavy and I haven't even reached the birthday event yet!

After that we headed towards our last stop of the tour, the auditorium, because of the event we couldn't go in, but we were allowed to go to the second floor, and rested a few minutes there while watching the band doing rehearsals.

After that we headed back to the starting point, the old library, where the tour ended. We walked around in the library and saw the temporary memorial set up for Kyoto Animation, full of flowers.

We then headed in the K-On! good museum, you can see all the pictures in the full album, but here's some of my favorite

After resting a bit there, it was time to go to the Birthday event.
The event was in the auditorium, and because of the events preceding this, started with a minute of silence for KyoAni. The party was a bit hard to start because of that, the main host seemed to have hard time with it, but another host took over and got things started anyway.

The even was super nice, they started by talking, then brought out the wonderful cake. It was really a nice cake.

And then... They proceeded to cut the cake, in what was one of the most dramatic cake cutting I ever witnessed.

After cutting the cake, they took it away outside, and let everyone come to the front to take pictures of the shikishi's, the Standees and other items they had on display.

After that everyone went outside to eat the cake... I just started a Keto diet so I didn't eat any. I even had to refuse the offer from someone who offered me his part. Thank you so much again ^^;

After a while, everyone went back inside, and the Mini Live started. I unfortunately don't remember the name of the band, I'm pretty sure it had "tea time" in it's name though. They did 5 songs, I don't remember the first one, but it was a Tsumugi character song, the set list was:

1. Unknown Tsumugi song
2. Drumming Shining My Life
3. Listen!!
4. U&I
5. Singing!
6. God Knows

God knows? yep, that was pretty funny actually. After finishing their 5 song set, they got an encore. It was apparently the first time it happened to them so they had not prepared another song. The bassist was also new to the band so while the other members knew Fuwa Fuwa Time (which was requested by someone in the crowd) they couldn't play it. So they ended up choosing God Knows, which everyone was of course ok with! (Poor guitarist). The live was really fun. I filmed some parts of it, you can see it here.

After that, and until the end of the event, we played some games to win some prizes, first was Bingo, then there was some JanKen battles, and there was also a big dice with only mugi and ritsu's faces on it, and you had to guess which one it would fall on.

Even the standees were up for grab, I so wanted that Ritsu standee, but I didn't get it.

After that they announced the date of the next event, the YuiAzu Birthday Party.

Aparently they always end their event with a big call from everyone to say "K-ON! DAISUKI!" (I Love K-On!) but because of the events of the days before, they changed it this year to "KyoAni DAISUKI!!". and on this call, the event ended and we left.

There was a couple very nice Itasha in the parking of the school that I took picture of on my way out. The nicest one being the really cool K-On! one with Yui on top.

And that's it for this post!
I hope you enjoyed it. There's a lot more photos of the school, the event and the Itashas in the full album, please check it out too!

See you next time!

Kyoto Animation

Hello everyone. By now I think anyone reading this has probably heard the news, 5 days ago, on July 18th, a crazy person set fire to Kyoto Animation Studio 1's building, throwing gasoline everyone, even on the people, hurting 35 person and killing 34.

Everyone reading this probably already knows about it, but I wanted to make a post about how much KyoAni affected my life.

The first anime I saw from KyoAni was either Lucky Star or Haruhi, I actually don't remember in which order I watched them. But both of them were really influential in my life. I'll start with Lucky Star since it was clearly the one that inspired me the most, and the one I watched the most often too.

Lucky Star is really really good. It's pretty episodic, so you can just watch any episode any time and enjoy it, you don't really need to watch it every time in order. I used to describe it as a like a Simpsons episode, pick any episode, it's going to be funny, you're going to have fun. But Lucky Star was also the first inside view into real Otaku life that I saw. Konata, and Patty to a pretty big extent too, probably helped shaping the Otaku I am today. I re-watched it in the plane while coming to japan for my first trip, to note which shop were important to visit in Akiba, used it to prepare mentally to the Comiket hell. My first Seichi (holy sites) that I did a pilgrimage to was Washinomiya, the Temple were the Hiiragi sisters work, and where the Toori that Kagami is dancing in front of used to be (rip). I idolized Konata and Patty as being the perfect Otaku all my life, and also got influenced by them in my daily life, though, I don't have the money to do the "buy 3 of everything" thing that Konata does. The series is one of the main reason I moved to japan too.
Considering how important that series was to me, it's no wonder that the first doujins I made were about Lucky Star. I met a lot of great people in the Lucky Star fan community, people that I consider my friends now, that were also devastated by what happened 5 days ago.

Haruhi had a less direct influence on me, but it was just my favorite anime at that time. The story was very well made, the animation was great. The voices were awesome. I've often joked about how Haruhi is the true goddess for Otakus. I've wore Haruhi's logo on me for many years. and probably would have done for more if stuff actually fitted me (the hoodie I had was self printed with the print on thing that were in the DVD boxes). It's also what made me become a super fan of Hirano Aya. So while it didn't have a direct effect on my life, this work touched me a lot, and I still to this day, think it's one of my favorite anime. The movie being also in my top of all time movies. Nagato was my Waifu for a very long time too, she was my first Dakimakura. She's still my second favorite character all around. And ... while saying this right after this incident might seem bad, I still think that Haruhi S3 is the sequel I am hoping for the most out of any series.

I love K-On!. I did a full post on this already so I won't spend too much time talking about it here, since another post on K-On! is actually coming soon. But you know this is a work that was very important for me too. actually got me into drumming. Yui is so cute. Ritsu is so cool!

A Silent Voice was such a great movie, it brought me to tears right there at the theater. It was the best movie of that year from my view, and comes about at the same place as the Haruhi movie in my favorites. I have not yet done a pilgrimage for it, but I'm still planning to do it in the near future.

Of course there's more, I loved a lot of their other shows, but I just wanted to talk about the most importants to me.

Last week-end to pay our respect to the fallens, we went to the site of the arson, and prayed. There was a big media presence, of course as Gaijin we got interviewed. But everyone was pretty respectful, and the solemnity of the moment was respected by everyone.

I don't like to see people fishing for the deceased names on the internet, Kyoani was a studio that poured love into their work at every level, and all the lives that we're lost were equally as important. I do hope the studio can get back on it's feet after this terrible incident, and wish them the best.

Wet camping in Chiba

Last week-end I went camping with 3 other friends. We wanted to go to Yamanashi, but didn't reserve in time so we got a pretty limited camp ground choice and decided to go to Kujukurihama Seaside Dai 2 camping grounds. The place was so so, close to the sea, but the beach there was pretty disgusting.

One of my friend was the same one that came to my last 2 camps, the 2 others were new to camping in Japan, one of them being completely new to camping at all.

Even though the location wasn't the best, we still had a lot of fun. we set our tents in an half circle around the tarp, and the fire being on the other side. this time we actually tough about the wind direction too so we didn't get smoked all day and night haha.

I sold my old tent to one of my friend (the grey one) since when my previous roommate left japan he sold me his bigger tent (yellow/brown one) which is big enough for 2 people.

We spent a lot of the day just cooking food on my newly purchased fire pit/grill. It was delicious and was a lot of fun.

We had so much fun talking and eating that we didn't actually really have time to play any kind of games or watch anime.

Unfortunately, while it was very small rain up to when we went to sleep, the night had a very strong rain. So when we woke up we just packed and left immediately.
There was a lot of bugs on that camping site too.
It was still an overall pretty nice trip, but we'll probably wait till after the summer is over till we go again to avoid the heat, humidity and the bugs.

No full album this time due to problems with getting permission for the pictures.
Some of the pictures in this post were shot by https://twitter.com/anti_friday