By ◆ Juppie on Saturday, August 27, 2011 @ 5:59 PM
I'll start out with a big birthday shout-out to the Vocaloid Lily! There's sure been a lot of Vocaloid birthdays this summer - Gumi, Gakupo, and Miku's is coming up pretty soon.
Not a lot of Vocaloid producers use Lily, which is a shame because I do like her design and voice, but I have read that she's rather difficult to use...Oh well, happy birthday to her, nevertheless, and I hope someday we'll see more songs from her.
On to the main subject: The J-pop Summit Festival in San Francisco's Japantown. I only heard about it recently on Vocaloidism's blog, or else I would have wanted to go the year before last year (probably not last year because I was so freaked out by the homework load in high school that I didn't want to go out of the house for the first few weeks). But at least I had the chance to go this year, so I was really excited about it.
It's really not that big of a festival, not like the size of huge conventions such as Anime Expo down in LA or anything like that. That reminds me, one of my friends did ask if I wanted to go to Sacanime in Sacramento with her...I really want to go, but it is pretty far from here. :\
Mostly I walked around and bought posters at the vendors' tents at the festival, as well as gawking at all the cosplays I saw, which included:
VOCALOIDS
- Many, many Mikus (well, I guess that's to be expected, the most popular Vocaloid ever). Not just her official outfit; there were several different costumes.
- 2 Kaitos
- 1 Meiko
- 2 Lukas
- 2 Gumis (both were of the song Matryoshka)
- 2 Pikos (this really surprised me, I didn't expect a lot of people to know about him)
- At least 3 Rin/Len pairs (a picture of one of the pairs below)
(I do not know either of the cosplayers or the person with them XD)
There were also cosplays of:
- K-On (There were Yui and Mugi wearing the K-On school uniforms, and Mio wearing the outfit from the ending song Listen)
- Macross Frontier (but actually, it was kind of a Vocaloid crossover, since the girl who was being Ranka Lee had a Miku wig on, and the girl who was Sheryl Nome had what looked like a Luka wig)
- Kuroshitsuji (there was a Ciel cosplay, and also a guy with black hair and a butler/waiter type of shirt, I don't know if he was doing Sebastian or not)
And there were a ton of girls dressed up in lolita fashion. I wonder if they got dolled up just for this weekend's festival or if they wear the clothing on a regular basis. o:
I really spent way too much money on buying posters, but I'd say it was worth it. XD I considered buying a t-shirt that said The Socialist on it (because it's featuring the Rin Kagamine song "Socialist Darling") just to try and see if anyone thought I was a communist (well, I did have a classmate last year who insisted he was a communist, so it's quite possible someone would notice and get fired up about it). Also walked around and saw that there were two small malls in Japantown, so I browsed the stores over there and bought a few things. There's two crepe stores there! I definitely have to come back and buy them. And I ought to go check out San Jose's Japantown sometime. I guess I'm just going to make myself even more obsessed with anime and Vocaloids and whatnot, but oh well. It's good to finally have something to look forward during this coming year.
Labels: 2011, cosplay, j-pop summit festival, japan, japanese, japantown, jpop, lily, merchandise, san francisco, vocaloids
By ◆ Juppie on Wednesday, January 5, 2011 @ 4:55 PM
Not men, sorry, and I haven't watched that show, but that's nothing new. I hear about many things, wonder if I ought to find out what they're about, and promptly forget about them. I've recently tried to get back into watching anime (which was a lot easier once I finished the second season of Kuroshitsuji...It was disappointed, I recommend you only watch the first season) and have been adding to my list of animes to watch. Hope I can actually get around to all of them. Considering that more animes keep coming out, though, that's hard to say. (By the way, is the plural of anime "animes" or just "anime"?)
Well, anyways, it's been an easy week back at school, even though I expected it would be difficult - particularly because my real language teacher has arrived. She was gone for the whole first semester taking care of her twin babies, and I had no idea what to expect. But she seems nice enough, so I think it'll be a good semester, as long as I pay attention in class and participate more. XD And in order to facilitate the adjustment back to school, there's been some little destress activities going on during lunchtime - which includes free food, much to my delight - and one of the things to do was paint your nails.
This is an activity I have not done since I was in elementary school, probably around third grade or so. I do like the sensation of painting, and how shiny nail polish is, but I always seemed to get bored of painting them. (Not to mention we only had one or two colors of nail polish, and I don't know if we even have those bottles anymore.) But I didn't really feel like working on homework, so I thought, "Why not?" Two friends of mine painting a nail each, and I started painting a third one after trying to fix the other two, but ran out of time. So I ended up with a reddish-pink thumb, a dark blue index finger, and a half-painted aqua middle finger (which I have scraped the nail polish off of, because it was gathering in a strange blob). It looks rather lumpy now that it's dried. Still, painting it was fun. And I don't mind the smell of it, even if it's rather artificial.
I've been thinking that I should use the New Year as an opportunity for change. It always seems like people make New Year's resolutions, try to follow them for about a week or two, and give up (kind of like what often happens if a child gets the dog she was begging for). But I have been wishing that I could change certain things about myself - how I treat other people, how I manage my time, perhaps also how I look - and I want to make 2011 a great year (and after that, 2012, 2013, 2014...the rest of my life). Easier said than done, and maybe I will be like most people, giving up after only a week or two. But it shall not be from never trying.
Labels: 2011, anime, attempt, behavior, change, colors, forget, forgetful, incomplete, kuroshitsuji, nail polish, nails, new year, resolution, school, teacher
