Just past midterms
Hey guys!
I know. It's been a while. So here's my excuse: I've spent every evening after work for the past 2 months working on this one facet of a single cosplay. But as of last night, IT'S DONE! And just in time for Halloween! Ankh from Kamen Rider OOOs, complete with monster hand is officially done!!! ...Okay, so not really, because I plan to paint my own t-shirt and probably make a new over-shirt from scratch, but it's at least done enough that I was able to test it out by wearing it to school today!
There it is! Had to do a little maintenance on it and spruce it up a bit when I got home, but that's the gist. I'm wearing it again at a big Halloween party/cosplay event this weekend, so I'll be sure to fix my hair right and get some much better and closer up pictures. I'm also thinking of entering it in a costume contest, since I've never tried one here in Japan before. Wish me luck!
Most of what's been going on with me has been the daily cycle of teaching classes, working on cosplay, and then sleeping. Rinse. Repeat. I guess some highlights would be teaching all of my 2nd year classes how to write in L337, getting asked to wear cosplay to class on a random day, so that they could get a picture of me teaching like that for the yearbook (I was Legretta at the time of the picture, btw, though I wore 4 different outfits total), and most recently, getting to teach the students about American Halloween. I've been wearing costumes to class again and brought the episode of Peanuts "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," to show the kids. It's a really good representation of an average American Halloween celebration. However, my favorite thing about those lessons is teaching the Halloween song to the 1st years. I did it last year, and seriously, nothing is funnier that watching the meaning of the words "I'll pull down your underwear," dawn on the faces of 20-some Japanese school children. XD
The weekends have been FAR more interesting. At the beginning of the month, Paula and I were invited to be guest singers at a live house about an hour and a half drive away. One of the teachers that Paula works with was putting on a concert there, and the owner of the jazz bar asked if we would like to sing two songs in the middle as well. It was absolutely nerve-wracking, but SO worth it. We ended up singing 2 songs from the musical RENT. Here's a pic of me during our part of the performance, and here's the whole group, including Paula, the other singers, and the band. If Paula and I can pull together about 10 songs that we're comfortable with, we've been invited by the owner to hold a live of our own someday!
Some time after that, I got to do a little more voice acting work! Nothing big. I think I mentioned it here, but my first experimentation with voice acting was for a parody of our middle school English textbooks using all Tohou Project characters. This time it was an English dub of a 10 minute Tohou short animation. Nothing big, but it was an experience, and I'd totally do it again if I'm asked. For those of you who know Tohou, I was playing the vampire mistress, Remilia. Not sure when it'll be available for viewing, but I'll link to it if I can.
Other things I've done include going to a couple stage plays and musicals. I saw another play by the wonderful company Amuse, Mystic Topaz. It was in the same vein of humor as play, Black Pearl, and while I like BP better, it was super fun! Mizuta Kouki got to play a character as gay as the boy acts, and Doori was fabulously fail. Plus, I'm forever amazed by the range of Uehara Takuya's acting talent.
Aaaaand this past weekend was the end of the run for the 4th installment of the Magudarana Maria musicals! I paid a butt-ton of money on this one, so that I could go and see it twice, the second time being it's final show with me sitting in the 8th row. I didn't get any of the actors landing in my lap or straddling my face, but the view from that close was absolutely worth buying the ticket on auction. The music was beautiful, the men in their dresses were beautiful, and the direction of the story was...well, not beautiful, but perfect. I didn't have much interest in one of the side plots involving Anastasia, but I liked the character development for all of the recurring characters. Now I'm looking forward to part 5!!!
In upcoming news, there's a drawing day at school number two, where the students go outside and draw a picture all day on Thursday. There's a Halloween party that I'm going to this weekend. Actual Halloween is on Monday. In about 3 weeks, I'll be going to see Tenimyu Dream Live 2011 in Tokyo with Paula and Meri-tan, and that's about it for the near future!
As a sort of side-note, I'm currently writing up a guide for foreigners wanting to cosplay in Japan. I'll probably post that here once it's done. Also, if anyone wants to know the process I went through to make the Ankh arm, let me know, and I'll totally put up a tutorial. :3
I know. It's been a while. So here's my excuse: I've spent every evening after work for the past 2 months working on this one facet of a single cosplay. But as of last night, IT'S DONE! And just in time for Halloween! Ankh from Kamen Rider OOOs, complete with monster hand is officially done!!! ...Okay, so not really, because I plan to paint my own t-shirt and probably make a new over-shirt from scratch, but it's at least done enough that I was able to test it out by wearing it to school today!
There it is! Had to do a little maintenance on it and spruce it up a bit when I got home, but that's the gist. I'm wearing it again at a big Halloween party/cosplay event this weekend, so I'll be sure to fix my hair right and get some much better and closer up pictures. I'm also thinking of entering it in a costume contest, since I've never tried one here in Japan before. Wish me luck!
Most of what's been going on with me has been the daily cycle of teaching classes, working on cosplay, and then sleeping. Rinse. Repeat. I guess some highlights would be teaching all of my 2nd year classes how to write in L337, getting asked to wear cosplay to class on a random day, so that they could get a picture of me teaching like that for the yearbook (I was Legretta at the time of the picture, btw, though I wore 4 different outfits total), and most recently, getting to teach the students about American Halloween. I've been wearing costumes to class again and brought the episode of Peanuts "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," to show the kids. It's a really good representation of an average American Halloween celebration. However, my favorite thing about those lessons is teaching the Halloween song to the 1st years. I did it last year, and seriously, nothing is funnier that watching the meaning of the words "I'll pull down your underwear," dawn on the faces of 20-some Japanese school children. XD
The weekends have been FAR more interesting. At the beginning of the month, Paula and I were invited to be guest singers at a live house about an hour and a half drive away. One of the teachers that Paula works with was putting on a concert there, and the owner of the jazz bar asked if we would like to sing two songs in the middle as well. It was absolutely nerve-wracking, but SO worth it. We ended up singing 2 songs from the musical RENT. Here's a pic of me during our part of the performance, and here's the whole group, including Paula, the other singers, and the band. If Paula and I can pull together about 10 songs that we're comfortable with, we've been invited by the owner to hold a live of our own someday!
Some time after that, I got to do a little more voice acting work! Nothing big. I think I mentioned it here, but my first experimentation with voice acting was for a parody of our middle school English textbooks using all Tohou Project characters. This time it was an English dub of a 10 minute Tohou short animation. Nothing big, but it was an experience, and I'd totally do it again if I'm asked. For those of you who know Tohou, I was playing the vampire mistress, Remilia. Not sure when it'll be available for viewing, but I'll link to it if I can.
Other things I've done include going to a couple stage plays and musicals. I saw another play by the wonderful company Amuse, Mystic Topaz. It was in the same vein of humor as play, Black Pearl, and while I like BP better, it was super fun! Mizuta Kouki got to play a character as gay as the boy acts, and Doori was fabulously fail. Plus, I'm forever amazed by the range of Uehara Takuya's acting talent.
Aaaaand this past weekend was the end of the run for the 4th installment of the Magudarana Maria musicals! I paid a butt-ton of money on this one, so that I could go and see it twice, the second time being it's final show with me sitting in the 8th row. I didn't get any of the actors landing in my lap or straddling my face, but the view from that close was absolutely worth buying the ticket on auction. The music was beautiful, the men in their dresses were beautiful, and the direction of the story was...well, not beautiful, but perfect. I didn't have much interest in one of the side plots involving Anastasia, but I liked the character development for all of the recurring characters. Now I'm looking forward to part 5!!!
In upcoming news, there's a drawing day at school number two, where the students go outside and draw a picture all day on Thursday. There's a Halloween party that I'm going to this weekend. Actual Halloween is on Monday. In about 3 weeks, I'll be going to see Tenimyu Dream Live 2011 in Tokyo with Paula and Meri-tan, and that's about it for the near future!
As a sort of side-note, I'm currently writing up a guide for foreigners wanting to cosplay in Japan. I'll probably post that here once it's done. Also, if anyone wants to know the process I went through to make the Ankh arm, let me know, and I'll totally put up a tutorial. :3