As the championship nears at the end of July we have 2 WCS preliminaries coming up this weekend, Singapore and France. You can expect direct information from TVA staff Oscar who is going to Singapore with TVA mascot "Toiro", seen in the picture below.

From France the WCS 2007 champions from last year Isabelle and Damian will be attending Japan Expo in Paris and take in "le spectacle". Looking forward to hearing how things go!

As the pair get on their way TVA staff Oscar wonders if Toiro's is nervous considering this is her first trip abroad?

Singapore has the same humid heat as Nagoya so Toiro felt right at home. When she got to the event location she gazed on as the organizers worked hard to made the final preparations for the next days events. On Saturday there was an Anime Song event and a Karaoke contest.

Above is a picture of Yumi, a translator for the event who took Toiro out for dinner. After dinner Toiro retired for the evening and Yumi went back to work. (Ganbatte!)

Saturdays events started at 1pm with an anime song karaoke contest. Oscar and Toiro could hear Japanese anime songs resounding throughout the hall.

After a speech by the main organizer Stephanie there the first of the 32 groups took to the stage. One of the singers in the 22nd group had a miraculous voice, the crowd really got into the performance.

After the singing was an "atereco" competition. Atereco is where a anime or video is over dubbed by voice performers. People were splitting their sides with laughter.

The days events went from 1-7 pm and finished off with the miracle voice Rika leading a chorus of singers in a final song. One more sleep before the main event!

On the day of the preliminaries Oscar and Toiro started off the day by hanging out on the balcony and going down to the beach before the main event.

At the stage, the cosplayers were ready to do their thing. There was a nervous tension in the air.

There was a large crowd assembled to watch the performance as you can see.

And voila! Here are the winners of the Singapore preliminary Goh and Gerald. They performed Sailor Moon and in fact they met as a couple exactly one year previous to their performance. According to their profile which you can see by clicking here this is Gerald's second time cosplaying ever! To win the performance and get a chance to perform in Japan, they must have some raw natural talent. Looking forward to seeing the couple in Japan.

The France preliminary round took place over the weekend from July 3rd to 6th at Japan Expo in Paris. Congratulations go to the winners Laura and Cecile who performed from Clamps "Clover"! There are some great pictures of their performance here in the news file. Team France 2007 - Damian and Isabelle - took in the event and will let us know how things went in the very near future!

I am off to the WCS Preliminaries in Osaka. This will be my first time to the event so I am looking forward to it. I'll let you know how things go!

This year the event is being held at the Kyocera Dome; home of the Orix Buffaloes baseball team. There were rehearsals in the morning and then before the preliminaries they had a bingo event. Everyone gathered around the main stage while the MC was calling out the numbers and handed out prizes. Here is a shot of that:

There are 9 performances today, they have done 3 up to now. The first was a powered up version of Evangelion from the Tokyo preliminaries.

The third group were actually 2 TV personalities doing Sailor Moon!

The performances are finished now, they were over in a flurry and from their comments afterwards it seemed like everyone did their best. Some said they had a good time some were a little nervous or gave it their all on stage.

In the final performances there was an appearance by the Nakamura Family. The 4 family members were the Nagoya representatives in WCS 2005 and it is good to see them still actively cosplaying! This time it was the mother and eldest son performing "Keroro Gunsou" as you can see below. It was great to see the son older, taller and in a cute costume with 4 little dolls in a row with movable arms:

The winners of the Osaka round have been determined with Mino and Yui's performance of Code Geass coming out on top. They faced some tough competition but I think what put them over the top was the extreme emotion that they put into their performance and also a kiss scene to start things off. Here is a shot of them when they found out they won:

I don't think they expected it with the other good performances that day. Here is another view of them posing with the placards showing the prizes that they one, a Brother Lock Sewing Machine and a trip to the WCS championship:

There was one cosplayer dressed up as the Tower of the Sun, a symbol of Osaka that was erected at the Osaka Expo in 1970.

I had a chat with him and it was really weird. He handed me a crumpled handwritten name card at the end of the conversation from an opening that appeared near the statues midsection. That made my day.

Here is a shot of the location where the Osaka event took place, quite elegant.

I had a couple more photos I wanted to make sure to share with you from Osaka. First we a cool shot I took of all of the contestants right before the announcements for the prizes. You can see the winners giving peace signs 3rd and 4th from the top right.

Here is a final shot of all of the teams with the prize winners who are up front.

Thanks for a great show Osaka!

With the build up to the main event July is always a busy month. I seem to disappear off the face of the earth in July for my friends. I am on my way to participate in the Shanghai preliminaries taking place tomorrow. Fortunately it is only a 2.5 hour flight from Japan. The presentations in May were amazing I'll do my best to show you how things go!

Here is a pretty sucky shot of my plane.

Landing at PuDong airport I headed for the super high speed magnetic levitation train that goes in to Shanghai. I have been to Shanghai a couple times but never had a chance to ride the train so I didn't know what to expect. It was pretty smooth considering the speed we were traveling at and felt more like an electric subway than a train like Japans bullet train. I got on after 5:30 though so the top speed it went to was 300 km instead of its top operational speed of 431 km. Too bad.

With some luck TVA staff member kiss-Y got into Shanghai this morning and he got a chance to visit the China Joy event location and see the stage. I pinched a couple pics of how things look. Here is the site:

And here is a peek at how the stage looks:

Very large, tomorrow should be a good show!

There was quite a lot of traffic this morning and we arrived later than we had planned but we finally arrived. Getting out of the taxi it was already sweltering hot. It looks like the location is an exposition complex as there are other events going on at the same time.

There are 4 seperate preparation areas and everyone performing in the morning and afternoon are frantically getting ready now.

Here is a shot of someone carefully applying makeup to a cosplayer.

The WCS stage has been pushed back to an 11am start.

All of the 10 teams came up on stage to loud cheers from the crowd. The show is about to begin.

The first group were performing as characters from Sengoku Basara and had amazing costumes.

Next up were a pair dressed as knights from Sengoku Mussa They put a lot of emotion into their performing and it seemed like the had a lot of supporters in the crowd as everyone really got into it and cheering their names.

The third team performed a very tightly coordinated fight scene.

The fourth group were dressed in military gear as characters from Bio-hazard and put together a very physical fight scene. I have seen a few performances but that was really intense. They must have taken some form of martial arts training.

After that is a pair that is actually taking part in a TV Documentary. They were dressed seductively and incorporated very skillful use of movable back screens.

Next up was a performance from Monster Hunter. The duo used 2 sets of weapons and a very unique fight scene in their alloted time.

The judges have taken a break now and we ran into a group of maids advertising a new cafe In Shanghai. In the picture Oyama-san is in the middle of the group; he was instrumental in getting China involved in the WCS event in 2005.

Xiao-Mei was a member of the first Team China in 2005 at Expo Aichi. Great to see her still performing, she will be up on stage in the afternoon. You can see shots of her and her team on stage during the final in 2005 here! Scroll down to about the middle of the page and you will find a little write up about team China.

The final presentation had all of the performers up on stage and take a final pose. The award to be representatives for WCS 2008 was Jao Chin and Jan Lee who performed Sengoku Basera.

Now the next step is applying for visa, not much time with the event in Japan starting in 12 days! Congratulations and see you back in Japan.

Kaka from the China Team in 2006 was performing from the Monster Hunter group, I caught up with her and sends her greetings. You can find out more about her performance in 2006 here! To get to her profile you will have to go to the 6th page of the China report. Click the link at the bottom.

After having a look around, ChinaJoy is an Expo for digitally related media. There is a lot of video and online game booths and I found a few of the larger presentation areas had cosplayers dressed up as characters from the game participating in the marketing effort. I haven't been to game events in other countries but I wonder if the same thing can be found at similar events. Here are some pictures of cosplayer I found around the 3 large convention halls.

I like the second picture, you can see the boredom on the faces of the cosplayers. Of course they have been cosplaying for hours now, this kind of work is not like a short 3 or 5 minute show.

At the venue I bumped into one of the China representatives for this year: Jan Lee. She was fanning a team member who was dressed up in a bulky costume and about to go on stage.

Kind of a poor picture you can see Jan Lee giving the peace sign behind the guy with the big ears.

Into its 8th year the ChinaJoy event seems quite a big deal in Shanghai right now. At a news stand I saw a paper with cosplay from the event on the front page.

Interestingly if you can see in the caption at the bottom of the picture there is a caption in Chinese with the word "cosplay" visible in romanized characters. They do not have Chinese characters for cosplay yet.

After the 30 to 50 member teams leave the stage there can be a mass of people trying to take pictures of the. Considering the stage managers want to keep the main stage moving smoothly, having a side stage specifically for a group picture is a good idea. Here is a shot of a team posing and getting pictures taken of them at the side stage.

The 2008 China Representatives Zhang Li and Zhao Chin are in fact members of a larger 40+ member group from Nanking. On the last day of the China Joy event they had the full group cosplay event and I got a look at the full team performance. I think they increased the volume of the speakers by 10 decibels each day because today half of the crowd were covering their ears in pain. (^,^;)

In this shot you may be able to make out Zhao Chin in the same outfit as in her WCS preliminary performance amongst a group of warriors.

In the picture above you can see Zhang Li with her low cut body suit on the far left and Zhao Chin behind the female announcer up front.

Chun Bai was at the ChinaJoy cosplay event and participated along with his WCS 2006 team mate Kaka in the Monster Hunter performance. I met him in Hangzhou in May and made a mistake in his identity, thanks to Anna for picking up on that (-,-;)

You can see his re-edited greeting in May here and his 2006 profile here! (scroll to the bottom of the page, click on the report, scroll to the bottom of that page and click on page 6 for the profile)

Below is a shot of him suited up, he is on the right.

The ChinaJoy event finished yesterday but looking through the pictures I took there are still a few I would like to share with you. This one is of the video running behind the 2 large video screens behind the main stage. In contrast with how popular anime, games and cosplay is in China there is not a lot of Japanese manga and anime around. This is very unlike many countries around the world where Japanese manga and anime is a mainstay. Cosplay is a very safe enjoyable way of promoting cultural intermixing and having a little advertising about the international feel of the WCS event behind the stage was beneficial I think.

Here is a pericura machine that I found in the ChinaJoy venue. Pericura is popular in China but until recently most of the machines have been second hand ones from Japan that somehow found their way into the country. Of course there was no maintenance that came with the machines so when a few of us went and took some pericura at another machine it was missing pens and in a bad state of disrepair. With the recent increase in economic strength of the country there is greater demand for luxury objects like a proper pericura machine you can see in the picture below.

Here are some pictures of some of the cosplayers I saw around the event site:

I went to a couple hot spots to buy figures and other manga/anime related goods, here is one of them Wen Miao. Its a bit of an overstatement to compare this area with Akihabara but its the best it is the old lady of otaku shopping in Shanghai and a place you should go to if your there.

Above is a shot of the shopping district. Essentially a regular street that has many small shops along the side. When manga/anime hit a boom period in China in the 80s/90s this area was very popular but has recently had store closures as the popularity has settled and other more modern shopping areas have opened.

This is one of the shop fronts, many shops are simply residences with the first floor remodeled into a small shop and packed with goodies. The family sometimes lives on the second floor, in this picture you can see the father in the bottom corner eating dinner outside with his family.

This is a shot inside the same store, one of the rooms is packed with Gundam models.

Above is another store front with many figures on display.

This is a store that specialized in gachapon machines, they had about 50 in total, all with Bandai toys.

I visited one other place - Otaku Building - which I will introduce later!

On parting I asked the China representatives for a message for everyone. Zhao Chin says she is very happy to be going to Japan and Zhang Li said "Anime Saiko!" which could be translated as "Anime rocks!" See you soon in Japan.

This is a shot of the Maglev train speed display on my way back to Pudong airport. I took it back to the airport after 9 am so It went up to the top operational speed of 431 km/h. This speed felt a little rougher and faster than the bullet train in Japan. Thanks Shanghai!

One other place that we visited in Shanghai that had manga/anime related goods was a building referred to as the Otaku Building. I wish that I had some shots of the outside or other parts of the interior but I only got the 3 shots below. It really wasn't much to look at from the outside, Shanghai has a lot of new buildings and old buildings, this one was definitely one of the latter. Below is a shot of a sign showing the way to the shops which were on the second floor.

You can probably make out the word "otaku" across the top unless you can read Chinese in which case you will be able to make out a whole lot more. Basically there were about 30 small shops throughout the second floor of the building. There were many figure and plastic model shops, some cell phone and manga character card shops among others. Here is a shot of a display in one of the figure shops.

One thing to be careful about is copies that are mixed in with the original figures. Anyone who knows their figures however will be able to tell the difference, the quality of original figures is unmistakable.

Overall the Otaku Building is not the flashiest of places to shop but with it and Wen Miao along with other smaller locations, Shanghai has a lot to offer. Whats more it is a quite different from any other country as they have a similar yet different perspective on manga/anime related goods. China is just across the water from Japan and the direct very Asian commercial influence goes back for many years. If you are in Shanghai do check out these 2 locations.

The big event is coming up next week and there have been some cool changes on the WCS web page. First of all the report on the Singapore preliminaries is up now you can see that here. Its only in Japanese at the moment but if you click on the gray bar at the bottom of the page you can see a whole bunch of pictures from the event.

Information on the the August 2nd cosplay parade and the championship on August 3rd have been updated in English. If you have the means to get out here on the 2nd and 3rd, you can find whatever information you need on these 2 pages. Worth noting is the announcement of the guest judges and commentator: Yumiko Igarashi, Rika Matsumoto and Toru Furuya. If you have any questions at all you can ask me here and I'll do what I can to get you an answer.

One new thing that is happening this year is there is going to be 10 judges who will be chosen from online applications. The form is only in Japanese and the application deadline is Sunday evening July 27th at 12 midnight so there is not much time at all. According to the Japanese WCS blog there have been a flood of applications over the past couple days. If you are going to be around and cannot read the Japanese, run it through an online translator and do apply, you never know, you could take part in selecting the winner this year! The 10 judges will be announced on Monday the 28th.

Finally this year you will be able to see streaming video of the event. If you take a look around on the internet you will be able to find a lot of video from previous years and preliminary rounds which is super cool. The video that you find on the WCS home page is put together specially for you in the TVA editing room. DJ Iwan is the person putting it all together and I count myself as one of the many fans of his work. Right now you can see a compilation video of the performances from WCS 2007. It brings back some great memories, and there are parts that I had forgotten about. I like the crane camera shot of the China team, their singing was so incredible.

Enjoy!

Damian and Isabelle, the winners of the WCS championship from 2007 were very helpful at Japan Expo this year, they also helped me by asking team France for this year a few questions leading up to WCS 2008. I will split the 2 interviews up as they were interviewed separately, today we have Cécile's and I tomorrow I will post Laura's.

Here is a picture of Cécile and Laura on stage with Damian and Isabelle.

Question: WCS 2008 is coming up, what is the current overall state of your preparations?
Cécile : We are impatient at the idea of going to the WCS in Japan.
Now we are preparing the packaging of our costumes.
Q: What manga and anime do you like and why do you like those titles? What are your favorite characters and why?
Cécile : I like universe of Hayao Miyazaki (princess mononoké is my favorite). I like doing Clamp and my favorite characters is Mokona because she's funny, cute and unpredictable. I love the two characters I perform together with Laura : Suh and Oluha (I don't know if it's the story I love or them but this manga is really wonderful and so poetic!).
Generally I like the romantic and funny stories. Which speaks about subjects that touch fantastic universes.

Q: What was your criteria in choosing your costumes, either the ones for the championship or otherwise?
Cécile : I chose the characters for their personality, their colors and their form because I like acting but it needs to be a little like me and what kind of person I am too. Accessories and other details play a factor in the decision too.

Q: Could you tell me what your performance at Japan Expo was like?
Cécile : It was a song. We change a little bit the style of oluha, more rock but the same kind of lyrics. At the begining It's Suh (me) who speak to her strange bird, she tell him a story. She turns around there is Oluha who is like a statue. This is our interpretation of the real meeting of Oluha and Suh. After that, the music changes and the two characters dance together. Oluha sings and Suh is happy to see her. but at the end Oluha die because it's her birthday like in Clover.

Q: How was the reaction of your family when you won the competition?
Cécile : Really happy and impressed!

Q: What do you find fascinating about Japan?
Cécile : The culture, food, cities, all is different in Japan. It's on the other side of the planet, I have never had a chance to go there so for me it will be a really enjoyable experience. Particularly for cosplay which is followed, appreciated and very well received in Japan.

Q: What do you hope or expect to find once you have arrived in Japan?
Cécile : I don't know, it'll be a surprise for me I think. Some friend told me that that it is very hot and humid in Japan.

Q: Do you like Japanese food? If so, what do you like?
Cécile : Yes, a lot! I love sushimaki and yakitori.

Q: Could you please provide a comment to your present and future fans and readers of this blog?
Cécile : thank you for your support, I hope we'll do a good show. Live your characters, be happy and never stop cosplaying if you love it ,it is a kind of art that promotes friendship!
Thank you!

Next up responses from Laura.

This is the continuation of the Team France interview with Laura:

Here is another shot of the pair, I didn't have any other pictures of them so I snagged it from their WCS profile.

Question: WCS 2008 is coming up, what is the current overall state of your preparations?
Laura : We are now preparing the (big) package for our costumes! We are also finishing a new costume for the parade. We are working on our performance in order to improve it for the championship! We have so many things to do!! :P

Q: What manga and anime you like, why do you like those titles? What are your favorite characters and why?
Laura : We both like every one of Miyazaki's movies and every Clamp's mangas. We like the fantastic and poetic universes that are created in those works. But we love so many other titles: Angel Sanctuary, Fruits Basket, Paradise Kiss, Hanakimi, Love Hina, Last Exile... Our favorite characters are Suu and Oluha from Clover of course, Sakura and Tomoyo from Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles and lots of others. We like those characters because of their elegance and their magic.

Q: What was your criteria in choosing your costumes, either the ones for the championship or otherwise?
Laura : First we chose characters we want to play! Acting is the most important aspect of cosplay for me. Others criteria is:
-Aesthetic: Costumes have to be beautiful for us
-Sophistication: Are there many details to work on?
-Challenge: It has to represent a technical challenge for us

Q: Could you tell me what your performance at Japan Expo was like?
Laura : It was like a dream... we acted like never before. We recreated a scene from the manga and represented the relationship between the two characters. We imagined a poetic and dramatic performance. We hope that the public in Japan will like it.

Q: How was the reaction of your family when you won the competition?
Laura : They've never seen us cosplaying before and they were very impressed. My parents were with us when the results were announced and they jumped with happiness when the result came out!

Q: What do you find fascinating about Japan?
Laura : Everything in Japan is fascinating: People, traditions, cities, art, the landscape, high technologies... Japanese culture melt together traditions and modernity. The traditional side is so beautiful! I wish i could see a tea ceremony.

Q: What do you hope or expect to find once you have arrived in Japan?
Laura : We hope to meet lots of people and to live a great experience. It will be our first trip in Japan so we want to see everything!!!

Q: Do you like Japanese food? If so, what do you like?
Laura : Oh yes! I love sushi and maki, Yakitori, Sashimi... and every food related to green tea. I would like to try Takoyaki!

Q: Could you please provide a comment to your present and future fans and readers of this blog?
Laura : Hi! thank you so much for your support. Keep loving cosplay and have fun!!! Thank you all!

We are on the eve of the big event but I want to get the interview from the Denmark team out to you. I will give you the entire interview so it is a little long but its got some good stories so enjoy!

Question: WCS 2008 is coming up, what is the current overall state of your preparations?

We have been working on our act a lot recently, and we have finally finished it. The costumes have been altered a bit here and there, just to make them look even better.
At the moment we are finishing our parade and interview costumes. The costumes are not finished yet, so we are very busy making them. I (Liuwina) haven’t had much time to make the costumes because I work full time, just to be able to keep my head above water money wise.

Even though there are some things not yet finished, we are both more than ready to go to Japan!

Q: What manga and anime you like, why do you like those titles? What are your favorite characters and why?

Liuwina: There are so many great anime and manga, I just don’t know how to choose, so I will just list some that comes to mind: Sailor Moon, Wedding Peach, Full Moon wo Sagashite, Tsubasa chronicle, DearS, Chobits, Tokyo Mew Mew, Love Hina, Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, Death Note, Marmalade Boy, Candy Candy, Kodocha, Tenshi Na konamaiki, Pita ten, Ranma ½, Inu Yasha, Karen, Missile Happy, Fruits Basket, Hellsing, One Piece, DN Angel, Jubei-chan, Kage kara mamoru, Cutey Honey Flash and the list just continues. But my all time favorite manga is Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon! I love this manga! Takeuchi Naoko-san is my favorite mangaka! She makes such wonderful stories! And Usagi Tsukino/Sailor Moon is my favorite character of all because she reminds me so much of myself ^__^ I love cosplaying Usagi/Sailor Moon, because I feel one with this character. I can relate to how she is a hopeless romantic, and she is so clumsy. I like the way she just LOVES cookies, and also, how much she is willing to do for her loved ones. Usagi is like my alter ego.

Risa: There are so many great anime and manga that I like, so I’ll just mention a few.
I like D. N. Angel, Okane ga nai, Neon genesis evangelion, Tokyo Mew Mew, Gravitation, Loveless, Chobits, X/1999 and the list goes on.
I like those titles, because the characters have their own special traits and personalities. And they make the series fun to read and/or watch.
I really don’t know what my favorite character is. It really depends much on my mood. But one of my all time favorites is Dark aka Daisuke from D.N. Angel. Daisuke is fun and cute, and I can relate to his clumsiness, because it reminds me of myself on a bad day. When Daisuke transforms into Dark, he is a more raw type, and you can really imagine him kicking ass on his opponents, while smiling stylishly and then nonchalantly leaves. I think he’s funny to read about and because the two characters are so different from each other. I think they fit really well with each other and I like the transformations.

Q: What was your criteria in choosing your costumes, either the ones for the championship or otherwise?

The reason why we chose Tsubasa Chronicle, is because it has such wonderful costumes! CLAMP are brilliant in making wonderful outfits in their stories. I found some wonderful artworks on the Internet and in the end decided on the outfits we thought were perfect. Normally when I (Liuwina) choose a character to cosplay, it’s a character that I feel I can relate to. It’s important for me to be able to feel “at home” when I’m in character.

Q: Could you tell me what your performance at J-Popcon was like?
We had only 2 weeks to finish our costumes, so everything was very stressful. We finished everything just an hour before we had to go on stage, and upon arrival, Risa tripped over something made out of iron, and her foot was badly injured. She was in great pain during the show, but she did everything she could, so no one would notice. During the show, Liuwina was supposed to move backwards and go down a few steps off the scene, but she miscalculated and just fell off the stage! Some people in the audience even thought it was part of the show!
Anyways, Liuwina thought, the show must go on, and just went back up on stage! Nothing should stop us from doing our best in this show. And when they announced that we were the winners…It was just amazing!

Q: How was the reaction of your family when you won the competition?
Risa: my parents congratulated me at first, but then they forbade me to go to Japan, and I got so angry with them, and we fought over it for a couple of weeks, until my mother finally gave in and let me go to Japan. Ever since then they have been very supportive of this trip. The rest of my family is very proud of me winning.

Liuwina: My parents were really happy for me, especially my mother, who always helps out with the costume making. Everyone in my family was very proud and happy about the victory. Everyone thinks it was so fantastic that we won this, especially because they know it’s a dream come true for me to win DCS and go to WCS.

Q: What do you find fascinating about Japan?
Japan has just always been very fascinating in every aspect; the language, the traditions, the modern technology, the culture, and last but not least the popular culture. Gothic Lolita styled clothes, anime and manga. I (Liuwina) really want to go on a working holiday in Japan, because I study Japanese at the Danish university, though at the moment I’m taking a break from my studies, because I have some financial problems.

Q: What do you hope or expect to find once you have arrived in Japan?
We don’t really expect to find anything special, we are just hoping to come to Japan and have a hell of a good time. We want to go see as much as we can while we are there. After the WCS is over we are going on a tour around Japan, to see all the great tourist attractions. We are going to Nikko, and we have heard that there is a summer festival in Nikko at the time we arrive. So it is just going to be great!

We are of course also going to visit the shopping districts in Tokyo, to shop for anime/manga, clothes and cool collectors’ items.

Q: Do you like Japanese food? If so, what do you like?
Liuwina: Japanese foods are great! I love Teriyaki chicken, sushi, nigiri, okonomiyaki, udon, and nikuman! I can’t wait to eat all the delicious Japanese food!! There is so much I want to taste!
Risa: I’m a vegetarian, but I do eat fish, so I do like some kinds of sushi and I also like noodles.

Q: Could you please provide a comment to your present and future fans and readers of this blog?
We can’t wait to go to Japan and give you the best show ever. It feels so great to know that there are so many out there who is going to watch us participate. I just hope that you guys will cheer for us.

Minna Ganbarimashou!

The cut off for audience judges came and went yesterday, there was a lot of applications for the positions of great responsibility. The lucky judges will be contacted and an announcement will be made in the near future.

There have always been staff shirts and Aichi TV goods in previous years but starting this year there will be WCS t-shirts and a WCS towel on sale at the championship on August 3rd.

TVA is also running a campaign, from all people who become a member of the TVA cell phone club, 10 people will get a free t-shirt and towel! (I wonder if it will work internationally?)

This year both the English and Japanese blog will be updating events more often than previous years. I am doing the English and DJ Kissy and Nimura will be doing the Japanese blog. Check both of them as all three of us will be at different places at different times so you will get to see things from different angles. If you can't read Japanese, try running it through an online translator and you can get the gist of it.

I caught up with everyone the evening of the 29th when we sat down for dinner. Team France, USA and Brazil had some free time in Tokyo and visited Akihabara, Tokyo Tower and Asakusa. In the picture below you can see Cecile and Laura of team France on the top left, Jessica of team Brazil top right and her partner Gabriel bottom left. Team USA is sitting across from each other in the middle, Sonnya giving 2 peace signs with the hat on the left hand side of the table and across from her Renee giving one peace sign.

To see pictures of each teams arrival at Narita or when DJ Kissy first met up with them check the J blog!

Everyone was pretty tired after their travels, particularly team Brazil who spent 27 hours getting to Japan. Before hitting the hay I caught up with some of the participants huddled around a computer in the hotel lobby. Here is a picture of that.

You can see Gabriel showing some of the pictures of different characters he has cosplayed on his picture blog.

Make sure to keep an eye on the J blog as "26" will be at Centrair airport tomorrow morning to welcome the cosplay teams coming in there.

It took a little time to get everyone together but here we are on the micro-bus on our way to the TVA office in Tokyo.

Before the meeting and press conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Renee and Sonnya wanted to go outside in the streets in their costumes where I got this picture of them. They were nervous until the camera came out and the pose came very naturally.

Before going to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs the cosplayers from USA, France and Brazil were filmed taking a walk in the streets of Tokyo, this is how it looked:

We got into the micro-bus and we went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. First everyone sat together in the waiting room and had a chance to get to know special guest Natsuki Kato a little. Everyone was a little nervous but Kato-san was well versed in her manga/anime so she hit it off with the representatives quite well.

After moving into the next room Kato-san, the Vice Minister Onodera and Renee from Team USA gave formal greetings. The Vice Minister commented on the importance he found in not only promoting the economic and technological side of Japan but also the youth culture aspect.

Finally there was an opportunity for the 30 some odd reporters and media representatives to ask some questions and finished with a photo session. Interestingly enough, the gentleman at the end Mr. Monji was the Director of Operations at the Ministry, he had just come back from Iraq 2 days before where he was the ambassador for Japan. Quite a change 48 hours can make!

This was my first meeting with team Thailand, they were in the hotel lobby talking to a reporter from Asahi Newspaper. The reporter talked to a few different teams for around an hour.

I had a chance to meet and talk with the teams during the day at the hotel. Some were heading out to go over their stage performance with the stage manager and others had done so the day before and had some free time.

Above is Maria and Nicolas from the Spain team. I think I caught something about Nicolas being a priest?

Here is the Singapore team Goh and Gerald, very kindly demeanor.

Tersa and Ingrid from Team Mexico had a rough time getting in, I got a call from TNT GTR organizer Mario yesterday saying they were at Akihabara trying to get to where we were, Shinjuku with 8 large pieces of luggage and no taxi would pick them up. Things eventually worked out and they got to Nagoya safe and sound.

Above is a shot of Seung and Kyeuong from the Korean team. Nice look about these guys and are a couple sweeties!

Most teams had some free time today, some people went to a massive fabric shop in Nagoya that happened to be closed today. Others went to Mandrake, a manga/anime/figure shop - but that had closed down! People were in good spirits though checking out the surroundings.

Above is the Italian team, Martina and Nadia. They had an interview with NHK and Martina's parents also came out, it looked like they were having a good time.

Here is the German team Annie and Katharina, they had some difficulty with their luggage and the Lufthansa strike. In the morning the Connichi organizer - Fritjof - was telling me about the problems with the baggage just as it rolled in the door. Good thing, hard to do cosplay without a costume!

Here is Lisa and Liuwina from Team Denmark looking good in their yukatas.

Zhao and Zhang from Team China actually arrived at 4 PM today just before I headed off to the TVA office in Sakae. They were accompanied by Zhao's mom 2 event organizers and Jo-san their translator.

The teams from Osaka and Tokyo still have work today so wont be in until Friday night, looking forward to seeing them too!

Before heading off to the general meeting and karaoke party after everyone gathered in the lobby and I got this picture.

Everyone including cosplayers, organizers, TVA staff, photographers, translators and mothers got together at 6pm and sat down for the general meeting. We started off by introducing ourselves which took the good part of an hour.

After that we quickly went through the schedule for the next few days and got to the main part of the main event, the lottery to pick the performance order of teams in the championship. This year things were done a little different from last year, the goal was to create a random draw with an even spread of teams from different parts of the world. It was a little complicated and left room for rethinking for next year but it was a new concept.

Finally we discussed the details of the next days trip to Nagoya City Hall, the Prefectural Office and Centrair Airport.

After the meeting we had planned to take the subway to the karaoke party but with about 50 people all moving at once we realized that wouldn't work so we started hailing taxis. Upon arrival at the Joy Sound karaoke hall a VIP from sponsors Brother and Joy Sound said a word and the event began.

Below is a shot of how one of the Korea event organizers Mr. Lee looked when surrounded by people taking pictures of him.

People went up singing songs in Italian, Spanish, Chinese and Korean and with the eating, drinking and talking the time flew by. The last 15 songs had to be abbreviated as we were running out of time and had to get going. This is the a shot of the final song, everyone held hands and belted out "We are the World". It was quite cheezy.