December and January are pretty busy months at bars and izakayas in Japan as companies and groups of friends get together for "bounenkais" (Year end parties) and "shinnenkais". (New year parties) The official reason for these events is to reaffirm commitments to friends and co-workers into the new year but I think they are perhaps just another good excuse to party and get a little crazy.

At the end of 2006 in Tokyo we had a little bounenkai too. In the picture we have from left to right Nobuyuki Takahashi, (Anime publisher credited with coining the work "Cosplay") Sakuya, (WCS 2006 Tokyo) Chouko, (WCS 2006 Web) Ai, (WCS 2006 Nagoya) me and Kyle (Cosplay.com). Not in the picture are Goldie (WCS 2006 Tokyo) and Kato-san (TVA). I had to leave early but I heard that everyone sang karaoke until 4 am...

Happy New Year!

The holiday season has come to a close but unfortunately for me the weight I gained from all of the good food has not disappeared. With the New Year comes the Thai Preliminary round which will take place this weekend on January 13th. I have heard that the Singapore representatives from 2006 - Ferlyn and Julia - will be in attendance as well. Looking forward to see how things go! You can expect to see pictures up from the event in the "Preliminary Competition" section of the WCS 2007 part of the web page in the next few days and I will include information on how things went in the blog here too.

A TV crew from a station in Shanghai, China came to Nagoya over the weekend to introduce different parts of Japan to audiences in China. The program has been on air for about 2 years introducing different parts of Japan each week and this edition was in Nagoya. They filmed the Sakae shopping area and the Robot Museum which was opened as a result of Aichi Expo 2005, they also asked me to do a tour of the Osu shopping district. I don't know why they asked me to do it but they said it would be in the spirit of the program so I went along with it.

We started at the Osu Kannon temple and did a little walking tour of the area, visiting stores and restaurants along the way. We finished off at a famous restaurant called "Yakko" and we ate a local delicacy "Hitsumabushi", which is maninated eel on rice. Delicious! While eating we talked about the World Cosplay Summit event and they introduced to the audience that it will be held at the Shanghai Expo in 2010. It was alot of fun!

Here is a picture of everybody:

The man and lady on the right work for the Nagoya Travel Bureau and helped out a lot with gaining permission to enter the different locations. The guy with glasses and red shirt next to them is Dashan who is involved in the operations of the WCS event in China. The main personality for the show is the lovely Rin-chan who you can see giving the peace sign to the mid-left. Everyone else is a part of the crew. I have never been around a film crew quite like them, almost all of them spoke perfect Japanese, some spoke Korean, English and of course Chinese. It was a great pleasure to meet you!

Ed

Here is some updated preliminary round information taking place in Brazil.
There have been other listings in this blog and in the news section regarding the pre-preliminary rounds taking place but here are some concrete dates for the events:

Two rounds have already taken place and here are the remaining four:

January 20th, 21st: Pernanbuco State
February 3rd, 4th: Rio de Janeiro
March 17th: Ceara State
March 24th, 25th: Sao Paolo State

Information on each event will be updated in the news section.
Preliminary rounds in Japan too will beginning sometime soon, stay tuned!

The Negibose 5th Comic Party finished successfully in Bangkok this month but what is not stated in that cheery news is the tough environment that the event took place in. In our lives we are fed a stream of new news through the media and every day there is a new disaster somewhere around the world. Smaller disasters will be overshadowed by bigger ones, a string of smaller ones will quickly lose newsworthiness and when the new big disaster is reported the previous disaster is often forgotten. You may remember that Thailand had experienced a coup d'etat recently and there are regular bombings throughout the country with an underground rebellion taking place in the south of the country.

This is the reality that the event took place and it shows how much people love their Manga/Anime/Cosplay to show up for the one day Comic Party. It was held in the same location as last year and you can see the latest photos of the event on the Japanese side of the WCS 2007 web page here!
You can see the 5 team finalists among the final pictures and you can also get a peek of Ferlyn and Julia, the Singapore representatives at WCS 2006. The Cosplay event was only a part of the festivities as there were also many booths displaying Manga and Anime, all in Thai of course! Even more interesting was that individuals who had created their own versions of Manga comics had booths and were selling their wares. Self-created Manga is not an uncommon phenomenon but having it accepted and side by side with traditional Manga is good to see. It shows that the love for Manga and Anime is alive and well regardless of the tense surroundings that the 5th Comic Party took place in. Congratulations!