You may remember Mariko and Choko of Barbara, they were the Web Japan representatives in WCS 2006. I am visiting them in Tottori Prefecture now at an event they have been working on for a while The China Cosplay Competition. This is in fact the 5th installment of a bi-annual cosplay event that they have held here. This is the first time however that they have invited cosplayers from China and South Korea. They selected one of the teams at the event called CICAF in Hangzhou, China that I wrote about in May.

The picture above is from inside the garden, I liked this shot, you can see 2 people posing on the bridge and 2 people in the bridge arch taking pictures of them.
Tottori Prefecture has a facility called Enchouen which was built about 10 years ago and in 2005 became well known around Japan for the filming of the drama Saiyuki (known as Monkey in English) the Chinese traditional story of 4 unlikely heros.

The drama starred 4 famous actors, one of them who was Katori Shingo of SMAP fame. Above is a classic pose by Mariko dressed up as Songoku from Sayuki who was played by Katori Shingo in the TV drama.

I arrived Saturday afternoon and the teams were just getting ready for an exhibition within the garden. Above is a picture of the crowd that had assembled to watch the show.

Here is a shot of the exhibition. 11 members of the 30+ member team from China made the trip out to Japan and their presentation was about a half hour long. You can see them lined up in front of the gorgeous main hall in the park at the end of the show.

From 5:30 there was a mixer event where about 100 cosplayers attended with representatives from city hall, and the prefecture. Everyone is playing bingo in the picture.

More info on how the next day went coming up!