Happy New Year everyone, I spent the new years holidays snowboarding, here is a picture from the hill.

This is Hakuba Goryu mountain in Nagano, you can see the ski hill below and Hakuba village in the distance. Hakuba is basically a series of many ski hills running along a long valley in Nagano.

I also had a chance to go to Tokyo and Kyoto over the holidays as well and stopped by a few places in Tokyo. Look forward to entries on Maid Cafes, Mandarake, Harajuku and a very funky car.

Well, back to work tomorrow. (-_-;)

OK, I thought I would stretch that last New Years message all the way to the Chinese New Year. Gung Hey Fat Choi!!! Time to get back to it because there is plenty going on. The first preliminary of the year has already been held last weekend in Thailand on January 18th I will get you information on that when it comes in.

For now I still haven't filled you in on my Tokyo trip so I will do so now, today I will talk about my pit stop at a maid cafe.

I have never been to a Maid Café so I thought I would take the opportunity to pay a visit and see what they were all about. I visited Jems Café with near Akihabara station.

Upon first entering the Café we found a framed picture full of playing cards of the staff. There were 30 servers working at the café part time so either some of the staff had more than one card or some of the cards were of previous staff.

I went with a couple friends, one of the original China organizers - Oyama-san and a friend of his. We sat down and looking around, there were about 30 tables in a 5 meter by 20 meter space. Customers were sitting at about half of the tables. There were guys on their own or with a friend and at a couple of tables a pair of girls were enjoying coffees as well.

We got a chance to talk with the manager and ask a couple questions, he explained that about 10-20 percent of customers are female and maybe 20% of the staff working there are active cosplayers. He went on to explain that the Café was created 4 1/2 years ago and the staff would dress up in costumes according to the season.

The standard was of course the maid dress, but during the Xmas season they would wear Xmas costumes as you can see in the picture above and during the New Year they would wear a Japanese style maid dress. (wish I had a picture of that)

I had heard that at some cafes that for an extra charge you could get a picture taken with a maid or for 300 yen or so you could play a game of “rock paper scissors” with them or get a hand massage. He said that there were no such services at Jems, they took a no frills approach to their service. I guess with there being quite a few cafes in Akihabara, it is important to do things in a unique way and quite honestly it set my mind at ease that I wouldn’t have my poor “rock, paper, scissors” skill challenged!

There are lots of cafes in Akihabara and if you are in town I would definitely recommend paying a visit to one. I actually bumped into one of the staff outside handing out flyers with maids from other cafes so if you get one of their flyers the cafes are easy enough to find.

I have heard that there is a new butler café in Ikebukuro so next time I am in town I will try to stop by and check that out!

I had a special request from Casper to go and check out Harajuku so I did go and check it out. Unfortunately, maybe because it was a weekday or Xmas Eve, nobody was there.

I did go there so I thought I’d take a picture anyway. I will be going to Tokyo again in the upcoming months so I will make sure to come by Harajuku again!

The preliminaries this year was held at "Comic Party 14th" in Bankok on January 18th. The event has been organized by Negibose since 2006. Considering 2 years ago a coup in the country made for tense conditions and only 5 teams entered the preliminaries, this years 25 teams made for some healthy competition.

A pair of familiar faces came out on top, Pennapa Thanornpradit was one of the duo from the 2007 Thai team and Jittraporn Distaprom was half of the 2008 pair. They again proved their superior abilities with a performance from Guilty Gear 2 Overture.

I did a little poking around and you can find all 25 performances in Bankok diligently uploaded to YouTube by propsops. Give them a search and click through to their homepage they have a whole bunch of pictures of the event to.

Looking forward to seeing you again over the summer Pennapa and Jittraporn!

When I was in Akihabara with friends and up at the figure shop that I introduced previously we went across to another part of the level that were selling a very special type of doll called the Super Dollfie doll.

This is the 10th year anniversary for the Super Dollfie dolls. They were first made in Japan by Box Kabushiki Gaisha. The first thing that you notice when you look at them is their amazingly realistic features and expressions. The next thing you notice is their amazing price. A full sized doll is 60 cm and goes for about 85,000 yen Doll fans who have taken part in the WCS event would come out with their own dolls and their affection was clear.

Above is an image of the Super Dollfie store front in Akihabara.

There are Super Dollfie doll exhibitions at Tokyo Big site (the same place where Comikette takes place) 2 or 3 times every year with a daily attendance of about 20,000 people. There are other smaller events around Japan and with growing popularity abroad there have been exhibitions in New York, Austin along with more informal get togethers elsewhere.

The dolls eyes are fascinating and seem to pull you in with a melancholic gaze. They can be made of glass or acrylic and come in many colors. You can buy a pre-made doll or you can buy a body base and then separate clothing for it. People who get really into it will make their own clothes or sand off the make up to re-apply it themselves.

I will be attending TNT GT3 in Mexico City and the WCS preliminaries there. I am only bringing 2 carry on bags and checking the 2 large duffel bags that you can see below.

What do you think is inside?

I arrived in Mexico City at 1pm and we went to the hotel first. Due to Chinese New Years celebrations and a demonstration we couldn’t get near the hotel so we went straight to the event. When I arrived, the first thing we saw was a side stage with a line of people waiting to get up to the front. I went around to the back room and met the 3 invited international cosplayers. Elsch from Germany, Otohiko from Japan and you should remember Nadia who was one of the WCS 2008 representative from Italy. I had arrived just as they were getting up on stage for an autograph session.

In the meantime I took a walk around the hall space and took some pictures of the booths they had, there were about 3 or 4 rooms filled with them selling figures, anime and manga related items, there was some heavy metal shirts and stuffed up dolls. They had some cosplay related goods.

Above is a shop with a lot of teddy bears and dolls.

Popular cosplay around were Naruto, Bleach and Pikachu among others. There were a great many Naruto characters and some of them took to the same side stage that Elsch, Otohiko and Nadia were doing signings an hour earlier.

They came up on stage in pairs and did a few ad lib skits, they attracted quite a crowd and it looked like they were really enjoying themselves.

Wandering around the TNT GT3 event there is a big main stage that right now has various bands playing, often dressed up in costume.

Some of the guys in this band were dressed up as the heros of “Lucha Libre”, the very popular pro-wrestling phenomenon here in Mexico. The same stage will be used for the WCS preliminary final on Monday.