Merry Christmas Tree!
So tommorow's Christmas, and there's SO much I haven't posted about! I'll stick to the fun stuff and leave out the legal and educational stuff, though you can rest assured that it's all taken care of, I do believe. :D
So Friday I tried out my first TeniPuri cosplay, with Paula as Eiji and a couple of her rp friends from Australia as Inui and Fuji! I was Kaidoh, but pretty much the entire outfit was borrowed. XD; Still, it was a lot of fun and crack! First we went over to Akiba to take some pictures, since the tennis courts were closed for renovations, but we found the most awesome graffiti wall and took lots of shots there before heading over to Baba, to sing karaoke and eat delicious curry. There was Inui juice and much more-or-less in-character crack. XDD Awesome day.
Btw, all of the best pictures can be found in this gallery and its sub-gallery.
Now! Skip to Sunday! JUMP Festa!!! In other words, an enormous one-day event in Chiba celebrating everything remotely related to Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, including but not limited to Bleach, TeniPuri, the Dragon Ball saga, Naruto, Reborn, One Piece, Kingdom Hearts, PS0, and so on. I don't know how many thousands of people were there, but Paula and I were 2 of a small handful of foreigners going to this thing, which took up a few warehouses worth of space and filled it up with merch, games, museums, event stages, and preview screenings. It was huge and AMAZING and I can tell you more about that if you're curious, but frankly, our whole reason for going was to see a talk by 4 members of the cast of Rock Musical Bleach: Tatsuya Isaka (Ichigo), Miki Sato (Rukia), Eiji Moriyama (Renji), and Naoya Gomoto (Hisagi Shuhei aka 69-Face). It totally almost didn't work out for us, because they only let 200 people into the event, and waking up at 6am for the 9am opening of JUMP Fest wasn't anywhere near enough to put us near the front of the line to get in. Our tickets were numbers 190 and 191. XD We are so totally lucky. Godspeed and all that.
So we wandered around to all the different booths in the "stage" area. Supposedly, there was a whole section of "original goods," whatever that's supposed to mean, that we didn't even feel the need to check out. Between the booths and the cosplay and the food and the shows, there was plenty for us to occupy our time with before the show at 2:30....which was amazing. There was no singing or being in character, or anything like that. It was the actors up there talking and cracking jokes at each other, and playing games. The MC introduced them, and they came out wearing different brightly colored haori (Naoya was neon pink lulz) and sat on cushions on the stage at the front. I wish they could have been standing, because they were a little hard to see from where we were in the crowd, but still they were adorable and hilarious and so much fun. Naoya and Moriyama Eiji totally dominated the conversation most of the time, and were constantly whispering to each other for the rest. At one point Eiji went on about how you can see him accidentally stab Byakuya in the DVD release of the All and things like that, and Naoya rambled for a few minutes about a play that's coming up that he'll be performing in. :D I'm not great at picking up on all the details of what they were saying, but I could get the gist of it. Tatsuya (with the help of the other cast members) also had a special announcement about an upcoming Rock Musical Bleach Film Festival next year!!! They made it sound like a screening of at least some of the music footage, with guest appearances and a talk with/presentation by a lot of the cast members! I'm totally going to be in Japan when it happens, and I so want to go!
But yeah, back to JUMP Fest, the funniest part came when they had to play an artsy game~. XD Each actor was made to draw a picture of the character that they played in the musical. People accused Tatsuya of getting to cheat because there were posters all around the room with Ichigo's face on them, but his drawing still looked like a deformed black-haired chibi with a butter knife. XDDD Rukia looked great, and Renji too horrible, though his little sword looked more like a comb. The worst by far was Naoya's; like, so bad it was hilarious as hell. XDD ♥ Didn't look like Hisagi Shuhei at all, though Naoya tried to justify the drawing by pointing out the armband, the no-sleeves, a singular muscle on one arm, and the "69," but when they showed an picture of the actual character on the screen behind them, he realized that he'd totally forgotten 2 of the scars on his face and the band that goes over the character's nose. XD; He just about slapped himself for it, because that make-up had been such a bitch to put on, or so he said!. X3
So after all that, right at the end, there was a raffle to give away those drawing and some spur of the moment poetry that the actors wrote for another game, signed by the one who made i. I was so close to winning Naoya's crappy but therefore amazing pic! I was 190 and he called 109. Grrrrr. BUT I got something almost but not really just as good as far as experiences go just after that! Ya see, after the event, we were ready to leave for real, but we got a little confused about where the exit was located and wandered around lost for a bit. We finally made it outside, and we're weaving through the people and trying to avoid getting in pictures, almost bumping into people, etc. I was really tempted to make a face in the background of some video that was being filmed by the entrance mural, but I refrained. Still, I informed Paula of my strange urge, and she lauged, turned, and realized that the person I nearly ran into and disturbed the video of....WAS TATSUYA!!!! She tried to sneak around and get a good close-up picture of him, but he turned and she only managed a picture of his ass, which is still good and I will cherish it, but yeah... XDD;; I on the other hand, managed to make eye contact and gave the guy a huge smile and a small bow. He just looked confused by it, but I don't think he thought I knew who he was. It's not like the Bleach musicals have American releases, so he might not realize that he has foreign fans at all! Even though I had been one of only 2 foreigners in a small audience of 200 for the full hour before that moment, and I can't imagine him not noticing... Still awesome! When we left, we were totally on a Bleach Musical high and had to go back to Paula's place to watch the All and not study for the next day's tests like we should have. X3 ♥
Btw, this con report will pale in comparison to the one that Paule puts up, whenever it is that she does so, as hers will have much more detail and the inclusion of pictures. I can link to it when it's posted if anyone's curious and if Paula doesn't mind o.o
So the next day, Monday, two days ago, I had my last day of classes, and my family arrived in Japan! I was a little antsy for a lot of the day because none of them can speak Japanese and evidently my dad's international phone doesn't work here, so they arrived but couldn't call to tell me as much, and for all I knew could have been lost in Tokyo. As it was, they did get lost in Shinjuku station, but a nice English speaking Japanese man led them to the bus stop for the shuttle bus to their hotel and let them borrow his cell phone to call me, so I was able to meet with them around 7 at night, though they were all jet lagged and worn out.
On Tuesday I gave them a general introduction to "my" Tokyo by showing them around my school's campus and letting them see the view of the city from both the TMG building's observator by day and the Tokyo Tower's main observation deck by night. As it turns out, it was the 50th anniversary of the construction of Tokyo Tower, so it was rather insanely crowded, but it had special lights, decorations, and free gifts all around.
Today I took them to see the Imperial Palace East Gardens, and get more of an Edo-age feel of Japan before leading them over to Akihabara for the modern techno sensory overload side of the city. The gardens weren't as nice as they could have been because it's winter and rather brown looking right now, but my dad still got some really nice pictures and the whole day was a lot of fun. Tomorrow we'll do the Christmas thing, have a big lunch at Denny's, and then I'm going to take the family shopping in Harajuku and to karaoke in Shibuya. If it's not too out of the way, we're hoping to have dinner at Hard Rock Cafe, as well. The day after will begin our trip to Kyoto, and you'll hear more on that when I get back, I'm sure! :D
And that's it for now! If you've managed to read through all of this post, I first applaud you for your patience and tenacity and also wish you a most wonderful Merry Christmas Tree. ♥ Love you guys.
So Friday I tried out my first TeniPuri cosplay, with Paula as Eiji and a couple of her rp friends from Australia as Inui and Fuji! I was Kaidoh, but pretty much the entire outfit was borrowed. XD; Still, it was a lot of fun and crack! First we went over to Akiba to take some pictures, since the tennis courts were closed for renovations, but we found the most awesome graffiti wall and took lots of shots there before heading over to Baba, to sing karaoke and eat delicious curry. There was Inui juice and much more-or-less in-character crack. XDD Awesome day.
Btw, all of the best pictures can be found in this gallery and its sub-gallery.
Now! Skip to Sunday! JUMP Festa!!! In other words, an enormous one-day event in Chiba celebrating everything remotely related to Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, including but not limited to Bleach, TeniPuri, the Dragon Ball saga, Naruto, Reborn, One Piece, Kingdom Hearts, PS0, and so on. I don't know how many thousands of people were there, but Paula and I were 2 of a small handful of foreigners going to this thing, which took up a few warehouses worth of space and filled it up with merch, games, museums, event stages, and preview screenings. It was huge and AMAZING and I can tell you more about that if you're curious, but frankly, our whole reason for going was to see a talk by 4 members of the cast of Rock Musical Bleach: Tatsuya Isaka (Ichigo), Miki Sato (Rukia), Eiji Moriyama (Renji), and Naoya Gomoto (Hisagi Shuhei aka 69-Face). It totally almost didn't work out for us, because they only let 200 people into the event, and waking up at 6am for the 9am opening of JUMP Fest wasn't anywhere near enough to put us near the front of the line to get in. Our tickets were numbers 190 and 191. XD We are so totally lucky. Godspeed and all that.
So we wandered around to all the different booths in the "stage" area. Supposedly, there was a whole section of "original goods," whatever that's supposed to mean, that we didn't even feel the need to check out. Between the booths and the cosplay and the food and the shows, there was plenty for us to occupy our time with before the show at 2:30....which was amazing. There was no singing or being in character, or anything like that. It was the actors up there talking and cracking jokes at each other, and playing games. The MC introduced them, and they came out wearing different brightly colored haori (Naoya was neon pink lulz) and sat on cushions on the stage at the front. I wish they could have been standing, because they were a little hard to see from where we were in the crowd, but still they were adorable and hilarious and so much fun. Naoya and Moriyama Eiji totally dominated the conversation most of the time, and were constantly whispering to each other for the rest. At one point Eiji went on about how you can see him accidentally stab Byakuya in the DVD release of the All and things like that, and Naoya rambled for a few minutes about a play that's coming up that he'll be performing in. :D I'm not great at picking up on all the details of what they were saying, but I could get the gist of it. Tatsuya (with the help of the other cast members) also had a special announcement about an upcoming Rock Musical Bleach Film Festival next year!!! They made it sound like a screening of at least some of the music footage, with guest appearances and a talk with/presentation by a lot of the cast members! I'm totally going to be in Japan when it happens, and I so want to go!
But yeah, back to JUMP Fest, the funniest part came when they had to play an artsy game~. XD Each actor was made to draw a picture of the character that they played in the musical. People accused Tatsuya of getting to cheat because there were posters all around the room with Ichigo's face on them, but his drawing still looked like a deformed black-haired chibi with a butter knife. XDDD Rukia looked great, and Renji too horrible, though his little sword looked more like a comb. The worst by far was Naoya's; like, so bad it was hilarious as hell. XDD ♥ Didn't look like Hisagi Shuhei at all, though Naoya tried to justify the drawing by pointing out the armband, the no-sleeves, a singular muscle on one arm, and the "69," but when they showed an picture of the actual character on the screen behind them, he realized that he'd totally forgotten 2 of the scars on his face and the band that goes over the character's nose. XD; He just about slapped himself for it, because that make-up had been such a bitch to put on, or so he said!. X3
So after all that, right at the end, there was a raffle to give away those drawing and some spur of the moment poetry that the actors wrote for another game, signed by the one who made i. I was so close to winning Naoya's crappy but therefore amazing pic! I was 190 and he called 109. Grrrrr. BUT I got something almost but not really just as good as far as experiences go just after that! Ya see, after the event, we were ready to leave for real, but we got a little confused about where the exit was located and wandered around lost for a bit. We finally made it outside, and we're weaving through the people and trying to avoid getting in pictures, almost bumping into people, etc. I was really tempted to make a face in the background of some video that was being filmed by the entrance mural, but I refrained. Still, I informed Paula of my strange urge, and she lauged, turned, and realized that the person I nearly ran into and disturbed the video of....WAS TATSUYA!!!! She tried to sneak around and get a good close-up picture of him, but he turned and she only managed a picture of his ass, which is still good and I will cherish it, but yeah... XDD;; I on the other hand, managed to make eye contact and gave the guy a huge smile and a small bow. He just looked confused by it, but I don't think he thought I knew who he was. It's not like the Bleach musicals have American releases, so he might not realize that he has foreign fans at all! Even though I had been one of only 2 foreigners in a small audience of 200 for the full hour before that moment, and I can't imagine him not noticing... Still awesome! When we left, we were totally on a Bleach Musical high and had to go back to Paula's place to watch the All and not study for the next day's tests like we should have. X3 ♥
Btw, this con report will pale in comparison to the one that Paule puts up, whenever it is that she does so, as hers will have much more detail and the inclusion of pictures. I can link to it when it's posted if anyone's curious and if Paula doesn't mind o.o
So the next day, Monday, two days ago, I had my last day of classes, and my family arrived in Japan! I was a little antsy for a lot of the day because none of them can speak Japanese and evidently my dad's international phone doesn't work here, so they arrived but couldn't call to tell me as much, and for all I knew could have been lost in Tokyo. As it was, they did get lost in Shinjuku station, but a nice English speaking Japanese man led them to the bus stop for the shuttle bus to their hotel and let them borrow his cell phone to call me, so I was able to meet with them around 7 at night, though they were all jet lagged and worn out.
On Tuesday I gave them a general introduction to "my" Tokyo by showing them around my school's campus and letting them see the view of the city from both the TMG building's observator by day and the Tokyo Tower's main observation deck by night. As it turns out, it was the 50th anniversary of the construction of Tokyo Tower, so it was rather insanely crowded, but it had special lights, decorations, and free gifts all around.
Today I took them to see the Imperial Palace East Gardens, and get more of an Edo-age feel of Japan before leading them over to Akihabara for the modern techno sensory overload side of the city. The gardens weren't as nice as they could have been because it's winter and rather brown looking right now, but my dad still got some really nice pictures and the whole day was a lot of fun. Tomorrow we'll do the Christmas thing, have a big lunch at Denny's, and then I'm going to take the family shopping in Harajuku and to karaoke in Shibuya. If it's not too out of the way, we're hoping to have dinner at Hard Rock Cafe, as well. The day after will begin our trip to Kyoto, and you'll hear more on that when I get back, I'm sure! :D
And that's it for now! If you've managed to read through all of this post, I first applaud you for your patience and tenacity and also wish you a most wonderful Merry Christmas Tree. ♥ Love you guys.