Otaku Expo 2015 Special Six

Comic Market or "Comiket" for short, is a very accomplished anime and otaku convention held in Japan, bi-annually in winter and summer. However this time around a special event called "Otaku Summit Special 6" was created to break the bridges between cultures and introduce international Otakus and conventions to Japan. 

This was one of the best experienced in Japan for me for many reasons, but I'll explain the two main ones:

1. Cosplayers from all over the world attended, from different cultures and speaking different languages. I met people who only spoke Spanish, others who only spoke German and of course Japanese,  yet somehow everyone's love of Japanese and otaku culture gave us common ground to express ourselves.

2. It was my first time professionally cosplaying and I got to cosplay alongside some of the best cosplayers in the world, it was not only a huge challenge, but extremely fun and a massive learning experience. 

The event was across Saturday and Sunday, however I also got to attend the reception on the Friday as a guest and got to meet the creators and producers of the event, alongside the other guests and various companies. I was there representing Hyper Japan, the UK based Japanese and Otaku culture event. This is an event that is very dear to heart as I worked closely with it when I lived in England and I made many precious friends and memories there. The Hyper Japan workers were all lovely and helpful too!

Cosplayers were selected from various countries to represent their specific Anime convention as guests. From left to right; America, Japan, Spain, Brazil, Italy, America, UK (me) and Hong Kong. 

Aren't they all amazing?!

The best part was everyone's outfits, styles and looks were completely different so we made a perfectly versatile and well-balanced team.The American girl Eileen cosplayed as a character from Jojo's bizarre adventures, the Brazilian cosplayed as Raiden from the Metal Gear Solid series, the cosplayer from Hong Kong (Dante K) cosplayed as a character from a Japanese Otome MMO and the other American guy cosplayed as a back-up dancer from a Para Para game!

I think this showed how richly Japanese pop culture has integrated itself in to other cultures and how varied it is.

Day 1 - The Reception

This was a party from the early evening, with plenty of free delicious food and drink plus many different members of the press and company representatives to launch the event, as well as government Diet members.

The cosplayers were called to the stage to talk about their countries and the aspects of Otaku culture that are popular there. My outfit for the reception was Blue Rose from Tiger and bunny, I posted earlier from when I wore this outfit first.

We introduced ourselves, our respective conventions and took a lot of photographs, and then in true Japanese style, everyone had a massive nomikai. I think the point of the reception was to get the purpose of the Otaku summit across: breaking the barriers between cultures.

Day 2 - Saturday at Otaku Expo

The event kicked off with the opening ceremony; the director of the event and also the government Diet members cut the red tape to signify the opening, whilst speeches were given about the purpose of the event, highlighting the focus on internationalism.


We did a lot of interviews and photoshoots that day, also I helped Hyper Japan on the stall to promote the event and explain a little bit about the event's purpose and what they do. I was surprised to meet so many people who had been to Hyper Japan before!

I debuted my Sailor Moon cosplay for the first time so I was a little nervous~
I actually got blonde extensions just for this cosplay; the "dango" buns were made from my real hair but the little twin tails were the extensions. I don't like the way a lot of the Sailor Moon wigs looked, so I wanted to try using my own hair, it actually felt like a success and this cosplay was very popular!

I am really pleased with this cosplay, but I want to do it again with some tweaking to the hair; such as adding the hair accessories. As Sailor Moon: Crystal has just aired, the outfit itself was more popular and I got to find some other Sailor Moon cosplayers!

Isn't Chibi Moon adorable? She was really tiny!~

These are my top cosplayer picks from the day;

A male Junko Enoshima cosplayer, complete with Monokuma.

Bu bu bu~

A super-sexy Levi cosplayer who was a GIRL. I pretty much tackled her for this photo.

I am playing the FFX HD remake right now so I was extremely pleased to meet this awesome Yuna and Wakka cosplay pair.

The Cure Cosplay show can be viewed in the video here; 

All credits go to the maker of the video!

Day 3 - Sunday and Closing ceremony.

I wore Blue Rose again and spent the day mostly working on the Hyper Japan stall. Me and Sano-san ( the Japanese Hyper Japan representative)  gave a speech about Hyper Japan, for example the location, target audience and purpose, but mostly we chatted with companies who were interested in coming to the event or setting up a booth there. Leo helped me a lot, especially with more difficult Japanese.

What really made it fun for me was these guys;

All the cosplayers, both international and Japanese were amazing. We all helped each other as it was confusing sometimes attending the cosplay shows as there were three stages in the event. Or if one part of our costume needed fixing, someone would fix it for you.
For example my Blue Rose cosplay was a little ~revealing~ and the Japanese official Comiket cosplayer actually tucked my panties in when they became exposed >-< I was really thankful!

My cosplay picks were;

KANEKI! KANEKI! KANEEEEEEEEEEEEEKIIIIIIII!~

These girls were cosplaying characters from the unreleased "Show By Rock" anime that will be airing soon as is produced by Sanrio~

I will update more photos as I get them; mostly these were taken from my phone, but I have seen my picture on BBC, Japan Today and Japan Times so I will do my best to track down some more professional ones >-<


As I said before; this was a very eye-opening and life-changing experience for me, as I saw first hand how incredible the cosplay community is both in Japan and overseas, as well as the power of Otaku!

There was a Closing ceremony with a live and final speech, I forget which speaker said it but his words really stuck in my mind:

"I fully believe that Otaku culture can break barriers between countries and bring peace"

Thank you for reading!~

Blizzard clubbing!

In case you haven't seen the news; a snow storm has hit Japan and 7 people have been recorded dead, as well as over 1000 injured. Me and Emi decided to go clubbing on this fateful night.

Many trains were cancelled, and most of the Taxi's were busy, but somehow I made it to my house from Saitama without delay. On the way back I passed the temple by house, which ended up being one of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen. It was completely silent apart from the pitter patter of the snow and a solitary crow nestling in a tree causing a mini-avalanche. I can't believe that something so tranquil can be found in the heart of the city, this is why Tokyo is my favourite city in the world.

The snow continued the whole day so it became pretty deep:

Apparently it's the most snow that Japan has had for 78 years, so I feel pretty lucky to have been able to witness it. Even if it took us an extra twenty minutes to get anywhere.

Me and Emi dressed fairly casual in comparison to our usual fashion, the bad weather made us lazy:

We trudged through the snow to take the train to Shibuya and it was FREEZING, our feet got completely soaked and the wind was so strong that it broke Emi's umbrella and made me drop my Chu-hi. Shibuya was fairly deserted considering that it was a Saturday night, but the atmosphere was so charming; everyone was skating around on the ice and playfully throwing snowballs at each other, even if they were complete strangers. Look how empty Scramble crossing was! you can just make out how icy the roads were, it looks so dangerous...

We didn't forget to greet Hachi, although the poor thing looked a little cold:

From there we met our friends and went to our favourite drinking place in Shibuya; It's an izakaya in Centergai that is opposite the Sega Center and does two hour nomihoudai for only 800 yen! The food is really good too and most dishes are 270yen. Emi ate only pizza >-<

Then we headed to Club Camelot, our favourite club. We visit there so frequently that we have become friends for the staff so often we can get in for free. As usual we met a lot of great new people, drank tequila sunrise and danced on the podiums all night. It was well worth the treacherous hike in the snow to get there!

We rolled out of the club at 5am but because of the snow, our train was severely delayed and all the taxi's were busy, so we ended up spending an hour in Mc Donald's and not getting home until past 7am! So as you can imagine we slept most of Sunday...

On the way back to Saitama, I found someone on the train who looked more exhausted than I though.

Back to Blogging!

I finally bought a laptop so I can blog again!

I since my last post I have been living in Japan for about five months, so I have a lot to update you on. There have been some massive highs and of course, a few lows.

I have been working at a middle school in Koshigaya since I arrived and it has been one of the most memorable and life changing experiences of my life!

I will shortly make a video of this but firstly, I'll do a day in the life of me, on a working day.

6:30 : Wake up, check E-mails,, put on music and get ready for work.
7:10 : Leave my house and walk to the Seven Eleven, buy lethal doses of coffee and Pocky and then head to the station.
7:24 : Arrive at the station, get on the train to work,
7:35 : Get on the train, the station I need is two stops away.
7:40: Arrive at the station and walk to the bus stop.
7:45 Get on the bus to work, usually I have to stand up the whole journey. A woman I work with always gets the same bus, she doesn't speak any English but we chat for the duration of the journey. Two or three students get on the bus from the special Ed class too, they are always genki in the mornings.
7:55 : Arrive at the bus stop, walk towards work and engaging any students I meet in small talk about the weather or what they had for breakfast.
8:00 : Enter the building, put my "inside" shoes on and sit at my desk after announcing "ohayou gozaimasu" to as many people as I can. Me and Oba-chan sit at our desks which are conveniently next to each other. I drink my coffee and prepare for my classes.
8:15 : The teachers meeting begins, they take it in turns to discuss the business of the day, I pick up on important things such as "such and such has influenza" or "this particular class is cancelled" but as my Japanese is not fluent, I usually just draw unicorns on my white board and drink my coffee.
The meeting lasts about ten minutes.
8:35: The other teachers have already scrambled off to their homerooms or other engagements, so I sit at my desk until the students arrive for cleaning. Me and my Kyoutou-sensei (Vice Principle) greet the students, bow and begin to clean. Cleaning is just using brooms to clean under people's desks (which get ridiculously dusty) and emptying the waste paper baskets. Then I just sign the form that says they've completed it and sit back at my desk, prepare some more lessons and drink my coffee.
9:00 First lesson starts, I grab my text book and the papers I need and walk to class. On the way to class dozens of excited students shout "Good morning" so I try and engage as many in conversation as I can, they usually give up after "how are you?" "I'm fine thank you, and you?"
9:05 : Class begins, the students bow and sit down, I say my greetings, ask them how the weather is, get them to spell it and then, unless I have arranged a game,  pass them to the JT for their lesson.
This is where my day becomes different, as it completely depends on which JT I'm working with to how the lesson will be. Some JT's and I play a lot of games and interact a lot more with the children, while others just get the children to memorize text and have me repeating words over and over to them.
Usually I will read the "new words" and text to the students and have them repeat it and then I will try to help them with their pronunciation, we will have an activity using the television where the students have to guess the words and then finally, some kind of work sheet that they have to fill in or take notes. As boring as that sounds, lessons are always fun when the JT and I engage more with the students, play games or tell them stories.
There are four periods before lunch, each period is fifty minutes long. Usually I will have three classes before lunch, the free period I just study at my desk and drink coffee.
1:00 : Lunch time!
Students will knock on the teachers room and try to ask me in English if I will eat lunch with them, I don't join them unless they say "Katie-sensei, let's eat lunch together" which can sometimes take a long time.....
I sit at the table I've been assigned to and talk to the students in English; usually we chat about the games they like, the anime their watching or which teacher they think is the coolest!
The students are the ones that dish out the food to everyone and they wear cute little aprons and bandannas - it's adorable!
School lunch is usually;  A meat dish such as chicken karaage, a bowl of rice and some form of soup, sometimes there is a dessert such as jelly it's accompanied with a carton of milk. Usually it's delicious and often very varied. The only problem I have is the days that we have bread to dip in the soup they give you like two massive buns and it's far too much.
After eating we clear our plates and Rock Paper Scissors for who will clean the table. I always cheat at it because the students find it hilarious!
2:00 : After lunch I have one more class, or more often than not a free period in which I just eat pocky and study. I need to fill out my timesheet and get my Kyoutou sensei to stamp it with his hanko and then I am free to leave at 3:20.
3:20 Take the bus and train home, return to my Sharehouse and have a nice long nap!
4:00 : After work usually I have dinner with a friend, but about twice a week I will travel to Tokyo and meet with friends to play 'Taiko no Tatsujin'.

Thursdays I also teach a hospital class, this is my favourite class as I have full control and only teach about 5 students. I get to make up themed classes, give out stickers and I even held a Halloween part for us！

Aren't my students adorable?!?!

Here's a photo of the hospital I work at:

Sorry for the extremely boring first post, I thought it would be useful to see what I actually do at work.

Mini Shironuri shoot!

This was just a simple, school girl style shironuri. Although it is hard to tell from the photos, I stuck black feathers to my eye lashes. The outfit is inspired from Japanese nautical themed school uniforms, complete with seifuku style cardigan and boater hat.

The shoot took place in the country, down a deserted footpath, there was a lot of over-growing vegetation and dry grass which went really well with the "dead" look. Luckily we didn't bump in to anyone whilst shooting or that could have really given them a fright!

I wore my favourite wig - Babooshka by Geisha wigs, as I feel dusky colours suit shironuri a lot better. The shoot was ridiculously hot with the sun beating down on us, luckily we captured what we wanted quickly, so we could dash inside and eat ice cream >__<.

Candy Geisha sponsored Model!

I have been extremely lucky in being picked to be a sponsored model for the wonderful Candy Geisha, who specialize in gorgeous and cute accessories, inspired by Harajuku trends and well..The 80's haha, both of those things are very dear to my heart!


You can find their eclectic creations here:  http://www.candygeisha.com/
The first set I got to model is called "Rococo Kitty" and is a gorgeous acrylic cut bow with a "Hello kitty" cameo embedded inside. With it is a shiny pearl-style bracelet, matching cameo ring and earrings.

The set not only goes extremely well with Sweet Lolita, but also made me feel like a princess!
All the items felt extremely well made and came in a gorgeous pearly pink that matched so much of my wardrobe (I'm a pinkophile T__T).

I got to shoot the jewellery in a secret garden where I live known as "Churchill gardens" where gorgeous trees, ferns and ponds are in abundance. Wandering around the gardens in Lolita makes me feel like I have been transported back in time a century or so!
My co-rd was Baby, the Stars Shine bright brand dress: Chocolate Fairytale Fascinate. With a white headbow of the same brand, and also parasol. The blouse is off-brand from Taobao.

I also received a couple more pieces from them since this particular shoot, I will post them below~

Please tell me what  you think ^__^

Behind the scenes of the Shironuri shoot for MyM magazine!

Now I have been doing shironuri for quite awhile I have started experimenting more with styles and makeup, the shoot with MyM magazine was perfect as we were shooting in Epping forest. The verdant greenery was a lovely setting for the fashion - I got to pose atop moss covered logs, in between thickets and in overgrown grass covered in rabbit poop.

The look itself I wanted to emanate spring, with lots of pink blossoms and flowing layers and a fawn theme. The gorgeous headpiece was made by Hysteria Machine, they make gorgeous head wear of all kinds and she was kind enough to lend it to me, but in the end I loved it so much I ended up buying it! I tried creating fawn print on my face with eye shadow and more shironuri as speckles, it actually came out better than I had expected! I only hope it comes out well on camera.

I was lucky enough to model with the gorgeous Mary-Ann and Grace St.John, they both pulled off shironuri beautifully and did their own makeup! Grace wore a very classic blue themed outfit, while Mary-Ann opted for minty green, with blonde hair entwined with ivy. Our outfits were all different, yet seem to match so well! I think this was a perfect coincidence.

Grace was also kind enough to buy petals , it was hilarious trying to pose whilst watching people frantically throw petals into the shot >__< They were actually made from real petals and I can only hope came out in the shots! You can see them here on my camera phone as a manic blur.

The magazine should be out at the start of next month, I will no doubt post the pictures here when it has been published, I'm really excited!

Bumper Shironuri photoshoot with POSE!

Shironuri Shoot - behind the scenes.

POSE studio are holding a Japanese exhibition in June and I got chosen to be the stylist! For the past couple of months we have been holding various Japanese fashion shoots, this one however I can honestly say was my most anticipated and enjoyable! ヽ(；▽；)ノ

The fashion featured this time is Shironuri, taken directly from the name of the white make-up used on our faces. Shironuri makeup is widely known as the makeup used by Geisha and Kabuki actors, however this fashion actually is very loose in how you want to wear the makeup with which style!
As seen from my previous blog posts,  I have tried shironuri before wearing plain white face paint, although the final product was nice, it was patchy.  Since then I have bought the actual shironuri makeup and wax from Kyoto and the difference is phenomenal! The wax has to be heated first and the makeup itself should be applied with a large brush and mixed with water, the makeup itself was applied by the amazing Emily Golding MUA!

 The styles we chose were very much influenced by the Japanese model Minori who wears shironuri in a very mori girl style, using real flowers and floaty clothes that have a very ethereal feel to them.
For the shoot I chose four models (Including myself) to do a season themed shironuri shoot.
The inspiration for this I took from 'A Midsummer's Nights dream' and tried to think about what the fairies Titania and Puck would look like.
I was winter and so had a frosty pale blue outfit with a light blue Pegnoir, eye shadow and lipstick, black flowers and floaty dress with white bloomers and high-necked lace shirt. Black leaves were also put in my hair and my fellow stylist Lewis Golland even stuck real bark to my face! thankfully he removed the ants first. o(≧∇≦o)

My friend Pixie_ Late, who I have modeled with many times before was the spring season, she wore a gorgeous floaty pink maxi dress and lacy blouse and pink peignoir, with pink lipstick, eyeshadow and blossom petals on her face. She looked absolutely stunning and managed to carry off the airy, carefree aesthetic of spring very well!

 

Autumn was by the lovely Rosina, Lewis had the idea of putting sticks intertwined in her hair to make them look like hairy antlers! It was hilarious watching her constantly bump into things and become unbalanced >__<
Her look was an ivory and brown themed co-ord, with a frilly blouse and brown embroidered scarf, walking around with the antlers she barely looked human!

Finally, summer was taking by my friend Danielle Wheeler, we dressed her in a gorgeous floaty chiffon dress, summery floral skirt and Vivienne WestwoodxMelissa winged sandals. The wig was Lioness by Geisha wigs and we filled it with flowers both real and fake and a fake floral crown. The balance of soft and vibrant colours went really well I thought! She deserved so much credit for spending the whole day in those shoes which were two sizes too big! eek!

Lewis made two sets for us with props, one being full of dead sticks and flowing white sheets, the other being a bright springtime set with a real ivy backdrop and props such as books. Stephanie Thornton was the photographer and needed a step ladder to shoot us bless her!
Her work is always amazing though, I can't wait for the final result, I know she'll make them all polished and otherworldly!

The shoot itself was one of the most successful I've ever done, the models were all very co-operative and everyone injected their own ideas into their outfits. The makeup artist did a wonderful job, the set guy made beautiful sets and I know the Photographer has some gorgeous shots! I can't wait to work with them all again~
I will do another blog post when the shots are all edited and a shironuri transformation video is coming soon!

Photographer: Stephanie Thornton

MUA: Enily Golding

Stylist: Me and Lewis Golland

Set: Lewis Golland

Models: Pixie_Late, Danielle Wheeler, Katie Carter, Rosina Stubbs.