Wednesday, August 27, 2008

yunessun.

the actual site can explain a lot better than i can:
http://www.yunessun.com/english/

...and we just wanted to take a bath in the wine one... we had NO IDEA what we were in for lol. yunessun was very satisfying as an onsen/ water-themed resort. theyre open 365 days year! =D i think yunessun's got the right idea. itd do well in vegas =D

oh there's this crazy thing they got called Dr. Fish where they let these special fish eat the dead skin on your feet + legs maggot style haha. that was the most bizarre feeling like ever lol.
NPC action.

feeling rather adventurous we decided that we wanted to go to an onsen somewhere in hakone right after the last day of gasshuku. when the others asked us where we were staying we were like, "... somewhere in hakone." some of them were like 0_o! and others were like, /palmFace "you mean you havent made reservations anywhere? ... amazing..."

honestly i didnt think we were doing such a crazyMan kind of thing. hakone is littered with onsen right? meaning if you ask someone "hey, where is the onsen?" they will ask you, "which one?" right? anyway, fairly confident we head set off on a non-shinkansen towards that area. at this point we learn that it's raining cats and dogs allllllllll over japan and trains are getting delayed by more than 15 minutes left and right. we acquired a 777yen potato apple pie to eat on our ride towards the hakone area. to our surprise we met a fellow gasshuku-er and pressured her to give into temptation with a slice of the pie hehe.

we get to our destination and it's still raining like crazy. as we're talking, this NPC engages us into conversation outta the blue. after talking with him, he tries to convince us to stay at the hotel where he works. after a bit more dialog, we agree to follow him - but on the train as he tries to book us in, we find out that there arent any vacancies! but as we were winging it anyway, we agree to have a takoyaki snack (which turned into more of a dinner) at this takoyaki place/ bar he frequents.

NPC introduces us to his older man friend/ co-worker who turns out to be a very strange, shy, and socially retarded kind of fellow. we have a nice round of drinks and the bartender helps us out trying to find some place for us to stay that night - which was totally awesome of him. as it was nearing midnight, he tells us that he hooked us up with a place to stay around the station and on top of hooking us up, he actually offers to drive us there too - which is like WHOA because gas is expensive and the station was a 20 minutes drive away... in the pouring rain.

NPC says bye to us at the takoyaki bar and we get into the bartender's car! when we got to the hotel, he helped us get registered and said goodbye. he totally saved us! one hero of a bar master.

as i was sitting on my hotel bed later that night, it was all playing out in my head like an RPG event, haha. help from strangers! oh yeah!

the next morning (monday) we go to the station and pick a random ass gimmiky place from a travel guide and go for it! armed with a map and compass (yes we totally used them both too! they took pivotal parts in getting us to where we needed to go, lol) we took a train up to this mountain stop and walked 20 minutes through the mountain forest towards the red dot on our map, lol.

when we got to where we wanted to go it was kinda like... bam! it was kinda like a high school just rose out of the forest or something. this place was HUGE. considering all the other onsen places we were passing by on the way, this resort was a whole village itself. the place we went is called YUNESSUN.
gasshuku.

we got on a 716am kodama from toyohashi and was able to sit down to a literally last-minute lunch at the shinbuden at 1159am.

friday >> practice was... nice i guess? not as hardcore as i or anyone else (team USA) was expecting. no major injuries, everything was executed on time. the study session was talk about the gods. no BBQ, no legalized drinking in the shinbuden... which made everyone all closed up and stuff. no smiles anywhere - i kid not. no mosquito bites yay! =D

all girls locker room talk and girls dormitory talk that you think only exists in anime and manga totally is real hahaHA. it's so cute when you hear college girls talk about boys in the way you and your girlfriends talked about boys in uh middle school lol.
"so he turned his head around as he was backing up his car, and and and i was sitting in the seat right behind him and our eyes met, and and and..." /squeal
"i like a kind guy who goes at my pace" /squeal

lol one of the girls was complaining that her guy took her on a lame date, so we were like 'tell us tell us' and she was like, "nnnnnnnnnnnnn well he was driving and we were talking and before i knew it we were in front of a book store. then then then, we went in together and got like a bunch of manga and i thought we were gonna proceed with our date after leaving the store, but in the car he was totally driving back home and i didnt want to say anything, so we got home and then he was like, "come inside!" so i couldnt say i wanted to do something more because he was so excited so we went in and we spend the rest of the day inside reading manga together ;_;"

then i was like, "dude thats a quality date!" then one group of girls were hella laughing at me >_> but the other group was like, "oh yes oh yes! very love love! together reading! he must have been holding you at the same time right?!" and she was like, "well yea, but..." and everyone was all teasing her and acting out the situation and stuff lol.

saturday >> more normal-paced practice. schedules were really in the pocket. enbu was very interesting to watch. saturday night was very... exciting LOL. mister Headmaster is a very amusing drunk. and there are just some things you cant unsay - things you cant unhear.
/hand entends forward from body and clutches the air, balling hand slowly into a fist.
i cant quote from mister Headmaster, but i can quote from another dude!
"gomen nasai" /vomit in wash trough
illegal drinking? highly possible~ huhuhu~
no mosquito bites this day either! =D

girls shower room talk is also very surprisingly accurate to anime and manga. they really WILL compare breasts 0_o! no one is left out of the magic circle in a shower room either. not even in the corner lol. >_> so there's this one girl who has a normal asian body rite, but like her boobs are outta control - you wonder where she hides it during practice. but theyre massive - and she was all jumbling them with her hands in the shower and stuff - it was nuts! 0_o! and it looked exactly like this style of Amazing Nurse Nanako. lol, google it real fast and you'll see what i mean if you dont know what the nanako style is lol. anyway. i kid not. they really were shaped like that.

sunday >> beginning to feel tired and more and more dirty from putting on a sweat drenched judogi ;_; but i was still healthy and got in good practice and actually a lot of praise from the higher ups i worked out with /tailSwish ^^ the enbu was nice to watch again. one of the members had this fatty camera that sounded like something outta Speed Grapher hahaha. it made the enbu more epic because people were being thrown around and right before the landing and rolling youd hear these camera shutter sounds haha. felt like a fashion show hehe. the rag-upon-ground floor cleaning race was amusing as ever hehe. then at the shrine i got this cute jangly charm bell thing for 'good luck.' i just got it because it was pink hehe.

we said our thank yous, goodbyes, walked to the train station, and that was that... sorta =3
osaka.

i went to osaka a while back for a mini training camp thing, but never got to really wander the streets. i didnt even get to eat takoyaki ;_; but a few days ago i did! =D it was blazing, but we chowed down on some nice takoyaki and parfait =D we were wandering through several shopping malls and game centers, all around entertainment shops, gay towns, etc. haha.

at the end of the day we went to eat at this fatty steak house. the meal was divine~~~ =D and it also was officially the most expensive meal ive ever paid for myself in my life. >> 4800yen... oh wait i paid $45 at the wynn buffet, which is almost the same. anyway, the meal was cash money, but it was worth it.

shochu.

my teacher buddies are the crazy lol. their conversation with brother always goes something like:
"so how long are you staying?"
'2 weeks'
"oh thats great. where have you been to so far"
'tokyo, osaka, nagoya..."
"ah nice vacation. DO YOU LIKE SHOCHU!?!?!?!?"
and they get all enthusiastic suddenly and stuff lollollol. this is SUCH an alcoholic country.

shinbashi.

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=jI0pzt4oTZk
i know it's old, but passing by the actual shinbashi station, you cant NOT think about this lol.

bicycles.

ive really been missing my pink stallion these several days. ive had to walk cause there was no bike for brother to use too. but yea, SO. MUCH. WALKING. and id always be thinking - darn it, itd be totally sweet right now if i could ride my bicycle. especially when walking down a big ass hill haha. other than electronics, pink stallion is hands down the best investment ive made out of everything else ive purchased in japan haha. i'll be happy to ride it to school tomorrow. then, it shall take me 13 minutes and not 30 minutes to arrive at school.
comiket 74

DECULTURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
goodness, what an experience. so ive been going to anime cons every year since like 2000... and... nothing ive been to compares with the summer comic market in tokyo. i mean, i've been to all the different kinda of events and gatherings at AX... i've been to all parts of las vegas on the new years countdown... i thought id be ready to experience the legendary comiket crowds... but i wasnt! lol.

so the plan was to climb fuji between thursday and friday morning, come down, and get to the con in tokyo around noon on friday. THAT SO DID NOT HAPPEN. lol. it was like 1000am friday and we were like 'lol so how bout that getting to comiket by noon plan...' we werent even at the top yet XD though we were very very close (but so far away ;_;)!

anyway, we were just gonna eff the con for friday, and use the rest of the day to rest up to be all fresh for saturday. brother had left luggage in a shinjuku station locker so we had to go pick it up first thing saturday morning. there was no way we could have woken up any earlier than 1000am on saturday after the climb, so we set out for shinjuku around 1030am saturday thinking itd take like 45 there, and 45 back (to funabashi where we were staying) with some waiting time tacked on there. then going all the way back to the tokyo area again for the con lol. anyway, i predicted we'd be there at 130pm-ish and that way, wed beat all those early morning veterans right? then we'd do a quick swoop of goods without cosplaying that day, and devote our sunday to cosplay...

that was the rationale... but the trains totally failed us in tokyo. the line that we wanted to take back to funabashi was totally out of service for some question mark reason, as were the 2 following trains on the line, so we had to take this lame and long roundabout way back with like super chunky waiting times... by the time we got back to funabashi we were like, 'i wonder... if we'll be able to make it... like for reals... lol.'

we tried anyway =D

...and got inside one of the dealers hall right at 400pm! ... but no one was selling anything!!! -_- that day we really REALLY felt how punctual jp folks were. they have this tradition i think? where they applaud the 1600 hour chime (comiket ends ON THE DOT!!!! at 400pm). lame. anyway, we were able to marvel at the tail end of the crowds which were still pretty fatty. we saw cosplayers like freaking everywhere - in the halls, outside the building, inside the building, at the AM PM conbini - so we said 'sweet, theyre lax about cosplay.'

we met up with some of my buddies and spend the rest of the evening in akiba... where a monsoon of a rain kept us trapped there for some time haha. then we partied like no tomorrow at good ol saQra bar that night after getting back to funabashi.

SO - having missed 2/3 days of the con we were bent on getting there at 1000pm (the opening time) on sunday. set my phone alarm for 800am and noticed that i was low on battery so i plugged it into buddy's charger to test compatability, charging light came on and everything, so i set it and we all went to sleep.

come morning, the urge to pee woke me up, so after a trip to the bathroom i looked at mr phone and it totally didnt turn on and i was like, 'ah come on~~~~' ... sure enough mr phone was dead which meant alarm that was supposed to have rung didnt. i checked my watch and it was like 930 and i was like cruddddddd. i was kickin myself too because i had actually brought my own phone charger too, but after getting tricked by that damn charging light, i didnt think i had to bust it out because i thought our chargers were compatible.

/complain
/complain

totally got tricked.

we hurried to get con-ready and bolted out. after stopping by random places for last minute cosplay items and food, we managed to get to the con around 130pm i think. first thing i dashed for was T2 ART WORKS! but how foolish was i to think that there would be any of HIS goods left at 200pm -_-

after being hosed in so many ways, i felt that we had to at least get out there in the cosplay area and get some pictures of ourselves with other macrossF cosplayers. so we mosied our way out to the cosplay area ready to enjoy ourselves at the last hour of cosplay on the last day (cosplay ends at 300pm on the last day). we chose a relatively secluded (as secluded as you can get at comiket) place near a bush, made a magic circle, and began to gear up!

as we were changing, people were staring at us and we were like !(<_<>_>)a
we thought it was because we were talking kinda loud in english, and we had an exotic non-asian among us lol.

anyway, we looked good!! after the first random photographer came to snap us, we were in happy the moment! which made up for all the time we missed out from the con =D well, that's how i felt at least haha. there wasnt any way i was gonna leave the con without getting at least one picture of us in our cosplay, after spending so much time and effort and yen-age on them lol.

at 300pm we decided to go back into the halls to scout for goods and thought - well theres hella people inside the halls in cosplay (not just innocently ambiguous EGL threads either - like we saw full bright pink wig shit and stuff) so that means green light towards the end of the con maybe? so we were looking around for maybe 20 minutes when a staffer comes up to us - or rather, comes up to our non-asian buddy and is all, "hey! hey, change out of your costume now. cosplay time is over." and we were like, "aight. we understand." and since we had our clothes underneath our cosplay, we could change fast and stuff. so we parked next to a wall and began to de-gear.

the meaning of freedom:

i took off my wig, tie, hood thing, and started to unbutton my shirt when the same staffer runs up to us with this end of the world look and is all "HEY! HEY! did you not understand what i asked you to do?!" and i was like, "... " kinda taken aback at how he was like screaming at us all up in our grill and shit and he was like, "can you understand japanese?! huh?! can you understand what im saying?!" and after a few seconds of thinking like "omg step the eff BACk, coz..." i say, "um, im changing...' then i undo another button and his head like explodes and hes like, "STOP!" this time in english, and holds up both hands widespread in front of my face like russian martial art style... which makes me drop my tie and hood on the floor so i instinctively pick it up and he goes, "NO!" in english. then i drop them both in my bag and he goes "STOP!! NO NO NO MOVE!!!" and im like '...lol' then he talks into his walkie talkie thing and like 5 other staffers show up and original dude explains to them in japanese, "uh, we got a bunch of first-timer GAIJIN here who dont know any japanese, they dont have their clothes with them, and theyre trying to change in the bathroom."

at this point im thinking, 'uh, we know what youre saying, we're not changing inside no bathroom, and we have our clothes right here... on our bodies... just let us take our shirts off and we'll be part of your perfect image fake ass plastic society again, bitch.'

BUT - we decided it would be to our advantage to play the "so sorry, no japanese!" card.

lol. and then they brought out Tanaka!

jk - basically they told us to follow them. we were good kids so we did and so we were bought to this staff area where we were forced to wait for some question mark reason... i listened to this staffer on his walkie talkie who said "yea radio Tanaka (dont know what that other punk's name was) we need someone to tell them about how stuff works in english... yea tell him to escort them to the locker rooms too... alright thanks, see you."

i pointed to this girl in cosplay and was like, "why arent you forcing her to change right now?"
he said, "we only called you out because you're not registered"
we were like, "and how did you know we werent registered? by looking at our faces? its not like that girl, or that other girl, or that cloud strife with his big ass buster sword right there are waving around their reg papers or anything."
he was like, "...."
then he was like, "there are like 200,000 people here right now. we cant catch everyone."
then we were like, "so catch her... or her... reach out your hand. youre not doing anything right now... your other staff buddy isnt doing anything right now either, go bust em."
"..."
then we were like, "why did you tell us and not anyone else?"
" ... "
then he was like, "if we let one person go then other people will do it and itll be like a... domino effect."

alllllllllllllll we had to do was take our effing shirts off. like... 5 seconds for reals. they can close their eyes, count to 5, open their eyes, and everyone can go about their business again - no stress no mess. but thats not how they do it in japan.

whatever task or process that needs to be done, you gotta involve as many people as possible, push around as much paper as possible, and wear a suit and tie as youre doing it because god forbid you do any business without having your wife shine your black valentino shoes and bleach your-never-before worn white shirt beforehand. but zomg that cant happen and you'll get fired from your salaryman i-hate-my-life company because your sons gonna effing stab your wife to death before she can touch the shoe polish or washing machine.

/hate off

anyway, comiket rules are whack.

LOL oh yea, so as the first dude was beginning to bully us he was like, "where are your papers? dont you have this cosplay registration packet?" and we were like, "registration?"

right then his head exploded another time and we were like, 0_o! then he talks into is walkie talkie all panic-like saying, "oh shit, oh shit you guys, these guys arent registered, we're in a big mess here omg - O M G!!!"

Tanaka walks us all the hell the way over on the other side of the con where the locker rooms are and explains to the female cosplay staff that i didnt register for cosplay but cosplayed anyway and now i need to use the changing room without being registered and ZOMG will it be possible to do that??? ZOMG ZOMG!!! and even the lady staffers were all biting their nails in nervousness and i was like in jp, "i. have. clothes. all. i. need. to. do. is. take. off. my. shirt." then they were like, "oh well.... hmmmmm. i think we might be able to somehow make an exception...." so they led me to the room, i took off the shirt as i was walking towards the exit where the exit girl asked for my reg booklet and i was like in jp, "i am going to walk out now. i talked to 10 people about this already. im leaving." and went out lol.

most pointless thing ever.

raced all the way back to dealers hall to scout for this one decal of Ranka Lee that we had glancingly seen earlier, met up with the rest of my people again at that location, we each bought a decal, and then at the very next minute, the chime went off, people clapped, and comiket 74 was over.

/rant on
our non-asian buddy was totally profiled. comiket staffers will let the locals slide on the rules, or in the harshest of cases they will politely ask their fellow jps to do XYZ. we on the other hand get yelled at in the face over the smallest of things. we're the ones getting detained and shit - being made an example of...

/rant off
/sigh

im not sure if i was THAT ready for being treated like that... and i know it's all one sided the way im telling it.

i did read the comiket phone book. i read english version, made sure i knew what was up and what to expect and everything. i was aware that there was a cosplay registration + fee BUT because of complications we only had one hour to cosplay anyway.

it was my suggestion to put our cosplay stuff on outside in the open air because it would have (and DID) save us time. we did not need the services of a locker room, though i am aware that the con said we needed to any ... how can i say ... "movement of clothing" inside the locker room. from my american point of view (the right point of view) why do i need to pay for a service i dont need?

it's like if a homeless guy comes up to your car, washes your windows for you without your express permission, and then extends his hand in your face demanding payment. maybe that's not a good comparison to the situation, but that's how i felt about it. the "if you wish to cosplay, you must register at the dressing room" thing is just a way for these guys to score money off of cosplayers.

what if you had a white mage cosplay where all you had to do is put on a cloak? you wear a socially acceptable pretty white summer dress to the con and as youre waiting in line, you take the cloak out of your bag and throw it around your shoulders. did you hurt anybody? did you flash anyone your panties? what's the problem? what's the big deal? everyone within a one mile radius of me right now actually is into what im doing too. we all think it's cool here. you guys are all about closed-community magic circles. i accept that you enjoy child pornography. why cant you accept how i like costuming?

imagine yourself in street clothes. what if it was cold in the morning? you have a pullover on, and as youre waiting in line, it heats up so you take it off. youre breaking the rules!!!!

one can argue that these cases are different because the bottom line is that one person is a cosplayer while the other is not.

comiket reg book states "Please be aware that cosplay and masquerading have yet to be widely accepted in mainstream Japanese society."

that's bullshit.

where does the word 'cosplay' come from again?

that sentence should be re-written to something like, "Please be aware that the freedom you and i have grown up with does not exist in Japan. Please be aware that even among the most hardcore of Japanese otaku, it's still not ok to show your fandom in front of them. Please be aware that the presence of shame is as prevalent at this convention as it is in the rest of Japanese society."

imagine youre a world class chef who goes to an international cooking convention. then another chef walks up to you and calls you a glutton fatass for coming to a cooking convention. if it was in the states, itd be a great joke! but in japan itd be for reals man...

freedom.

cant wait to get back to it.

damn proud to be an american.

our country may be harsh, crazy, dangerous, and the ass of every other countries' jokes but, at least we got real freedom here. ive never been much of a patriot or anything, but after living in a country like japan, you realize just how much shit you're allowed to do in america. we think outside the box. go against the grain. question authority. we're ready to take all kinds of heat from anyone cause we're fighters. but we're lovers too! we dont squirm at the sight of PDA.

cause darn it, you cant sit in a classroom and learn about diversity if all the kids around you are japanese (plus one token brazilian lol).

you talk to the jp kids who have lived in foreign countries for several years and they come back to japan and theyre frustrated about all the stuff they're smacked down for doing here. then youre frustrated cause theyre frustrated!

come on jp folks. just. do. it. eff everything else.

/claw eyes out
it's ok to be humannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

/sigh

lemme get back to the con...

anyway, it was my fault lol. i should have acted more... japanese... and mindlessly followed an established system... but i let the american in me have too much free reign. i'll behave next time. i wont even cosplay - it's too much of a pain in the ass. i dont wanna wait in a pointless line to enter a room i dont need to use and so wasting my time.

I'll enjoy TGS as a simple foreign fan as i did last year =D

i'll quell my cosplay flame by sewing pjs lol.

oh snap! lol. so i was talking to a ranka in the cosplay area and we were just talking about who we were and where we came from and stuff, costume chatter yknow then i mentioned that me and steve were eng teachers and she was like, "oh wow teachers! nice! ...oh wait /whisper is it ok for you to be here getting pictures taken of you?" and she said it all seriously too LOL.

anyway i think im done venting on the subject of my first comiket. i was gonna pick apart more of the "DO NOT"s of the book, but it's alright... i feel better now lol. i feel like i have a better understanding of the society here. and no, it's not as warped in my mind as how it came out written here, lol.

we were after all experimenting with cosplay at a jp con for the first time. it was truly a fine study for us. i have no regrets. i think what i needed was this kind of harsh treatment anyway to kinda beat me into sumbission lol. i myself still have 2 more years here after all haha.
fuji.

it doesnt look so intimidating from the shinkansen... but once you get to the station its like... whoa. we got there in the evening and our plan was to get to the top by sunrise. it was past midnight when we started climbing...

man we were so juiced in the beginning. all of our gears on our backs and stuff lol. we got to the first checkpoint-ish place and got a paper map thing that outlined the climb to the top with all the distances, heights, etc. along with approximated times to each of the other checkpoints to the top. we were like 'sweet. we're kicking ass at our rate. we'll be able to make it up there with like an hour time to spare.'

oh man.

so it's pitch black up on fuji, and the only light source we had was this dinky keychain-sized LED light thing lol. i think it was better that way because the would-be view of the top of the mountain from our low position would have been like 'ohshi-' for us haha.

how we will never take air for granted again:

as we were passing up the checkpoint stations we saw that each little hut station thing sold jerky, water, gloves, other mountain gear stuffs, and oxygen can things haha. we were all laughing and taking pictures of it and stuff, thinking some of the older climbers might need to use it maybe... so we just chuckled along our way... as we reached the above-the-clouds level though, we were like, man... its uh, kinda hard to breathe up here... and by the time we were nearly at the top we were like, omg, we NEED those air things man... like we is gonna black out if we dont suck one of those air can dudes lol. anyway, it was ridiculous. first time in my life i felt that way before... the feeling of having not enough air to breathe, or like... trying to fill my lungs as much as possible but without the satisfaction of a deep breath... it was crazy stuff.

on the brighter side of things, the weather was beautiful and the scenery was incomparable to anything else ive ever set my eyes upon. took a bunch (27 to be exact lol) of disposable camera photos which i feel obliged to post here haha. i'll post like 2 now hehe.



oh yea, so as the above pix shows we got these stick things, right? well we got them at the bottom of the mountain at this shop right, but in this picture (this is the last threshold torii thing before the top) im not holding one~ and that's because as we were taking a rest, covering our heads with a blanket and so obscuring our eyes, some stickless cousin came around and swiped mine. how ghetto is that? i was reminded of a starving animal's mentality kinda... where some dude was prolly like, 'damn should have got a stick... need stick badly... will not make it without one!' /yoink

:/

anyway, it was all gravy, made the last stretch plus all the way back down without the stick... but i paid 1000yen for it! i even attached a pink glowstick to the top! darn that! theres no 'oh i mistook it for mine' possibility there... ah well... hope that punk got hurt on the mountain!

top of the mountain:

again, that picture of us celebrating right? well we only took it because we found out that we were on the very last staircase to the top lol. i think i remember myself saying, 'dude they like... pump this part of the mountain with like, extra oxygen or something man... i can like, totally breathe fine now man...' lol. we were tripping out pretty bad. all i remember after getting to the top was taking a bunch of pictures, watching this white dude pee on a random rock like 3 meters away from me, then i fell asleep on a bench outside. i think i slept for an hour? but when i woke up, it felt like i had fallen in some kind of... temporal vortex... all the events of climbing and picture-taking and getting to the top seemed like a dream and i felt as if i wasnt really on the top yet.

i forced myself to eat, but after a few bites, i just couldnt swallow the food in my mouth lol. i wasnt nauseated or anything, but the food was just sitting in my mouth and i couldnt get myself to chew or swallow. it kinda feels like trying to pee again after having peed 5 minutes previously? haha.

i mindlessly bought omiyage and soon after we began our trek down around 3pm.

we got to the bottom at like... 700-something pm? lol.

the way down was a zig-zagging kind of ordeal... we got to enjoy the scenery more, and didnt have to take breaks as often as we did on the way up (i swear the last hundred feet up was like... we had to take a break every 8 meters).

we managed to catch a bus to the station and the rest of the way back to civilization was... mindlessly traveled lol.

final thought: ive never pushed my body to its physical limits as i did climbing fuji. fuji isnt just this pretty, perfect background mountain that you can see from the shinkansen. it's a beast!!! im never gonna climb that thing again lol. glad i got nice omiyage hehe.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

100th post!

so instead of putting everything in a nutshell like i always do, im going to make a list of stuff ill write about in detail in a later post:

mt fuji
comiket 74
osaka
shochu
shinbashi!!!!!
bicycles
gasshuku... lol...
random teen NPC in the mountains
yunessun

Monday, August 11, 2008

so i totally effed up this dye job for my Luca tie

/anger

it was originally this radioactive lime green color, so i was trying to dye it a darker shade of green. i took a green posca marker (which i thought was a permanent opaque paint marker through previous usage) diluted it in some water, and set the tie in to suck up the green paint mixture. it coated the tie in a beautifully uniform shade of hunter green so i was like sweet, that was easy, all i gots to do is let it dry! so i set it outside and went back to work on other stuff. about 2 hours later i checked on the tie again and what had happened was the coloring kind of separated and settled i guess? so there were darker pools of green everywhere and it was all splotchy and i was like CRAP. so i did a second dyeing and this time i concentrated the paint a bit more. after applying it on, it seemed to do the trick, but if i let it air dry again i knew it was going to splotch, so i took out my hair dryer and stood there blasting it for like 5 minutes. after most of the dampness went away, i let it set again and went back to other stuff. i checked it after like 30 mins and you could kinda still see where the different concentrations of colors were. anyway, i washed away the excess paint, and now it's hanging up to dry outside. in between this operation i was thinking that since the dye job was pretty much a fail, id try my hand at making it out of the green satin i thought i wouldnt have to use >_> another 1.5 hours later... handmade tie complete! this time i (somewhat) followed proper instructions, so it came out looking pretty alright. if i actually had some wool, or some other kind of cushy fabric to put into the tie, it would have been pretty good looking, but since i didnt, it's all flimsy and stuff, but it presents the look i want just fine, so whatever.

ranka only took me like... 6 hours to finish, which was kind of surprising. i thought id really be pushing my time this summer (like all summers) with cosplay, but these costumes are soooo done. lol.

anyway, my cosplay statuses as of today:

Ranka Lee @ 90%
minus wig (needs to get here so i can style it! XD), minus boots
Luca Angeloni @ 95%
minus wig (cause i decided its gonna really eff up my hair if i bleach it blonde just to dye it strawberry, and then i'll have to dye it to a normal color after the con cause of school and that'll be a pain in the ass)
Alto Saotome @ 90%
minus wig, minus red hair cord thing, minus protective charm/ necklace thing, minus pants
Mihaeru Buran @ 90%
minus wig, minus glasses, minus pants

Friday, August 8, 2008

found the ties. yessssss. sucks i bought that fabric tho... but whatever, let's hope that i can use red green and blue satin for something in the future haha.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

uwaaaaa~ deculture!

so im making ranka lol - the dress she wears when she meets alto for the first time.

i have material for the guys' ties, so i'll make them tomorrow. im following the instructions from http://www.askandyaboutclothes.com/Tutorials/HOBERHowToMakeANECKTIE.htm so theyre gonna come out all proper and stuff hoho.

and english club movie is pretty much finished at half an hour =D

Friday, August 1, 2008

what an intense week of filming!

now to change gears into editing mode. hooray for magic particles and flowers lol