A number of cosplayers who have participated in the WCS event in the past visited CICAF in Hangzhou near Shanghai, China during the past Golden Week. CICAF was the host for WCS China representatives in 2005, 2006 and 2007. You may remember we visited the massive event in 2008 with WCS 2007 German team Anna and Katharina, you can see the posts here and here!

This year we went with (from the left) Alles,Tomi, Rie, Taketori, Shiguma, Akira, Goldy, Liz, Renee, Yuri and Eria.

Above is the massive 25 meter x 25 meter stage, the performance is Sangoku Musso. You can see the distinctive character of cosplay in China with their use of screens on stage for scene changes.

Here is another picture of the stage from another angle, coincidentally a Sengoku Mussou 3 performance. There were over 80 performances over 3 days averaging 15 minutes each. Judging was quite a challenge - for the dedicated it was an 8 hour a day effort.

This is Yuri and Rie, (WCS 2009 Champions) in the middle flanked by 2 cosplayers from China that they became very close with.

Akira and Shiguma are to the bottom right in this shot, surrounded by a Vocaloid team.

Here Goldy holds Eria in his arms as Rie watches on in shock. This was the booth area where a few of the cosplayers were selling goods to fans.

You may know this character as 'Qoo' from the popular Japanese drink. The cosplayers from Japan loved the character, especially the fact that it was inflatable and the feet of the person inside were sticking out.

I came across an advertisement for a sister event for the Italy preliminaries Romics. CICAF is the largest animation event in China with 700,000 guests this year - this is an ad for 'I Castelli Animati' in Rome.

Above is a picture of Shiguma signing for a fan while at the judging panel. At times behind some of the cosplayers there was up to 10 fans crouching looking for a signature.

On the last day we met up with Zhao Chin who was a special guest at CICAF this year, here she is posing with Renee.

It was a blast to go with such a large group of quality cosplayers and made for a good opportunity to find out about a very different approach to cosplay in a country very close to Japan.

The preliminaries for Korea are taking place this weekend at Everland outside of Seoul. They are doing something interesting this year as the 2nd round of selections for Singapore will be held there as well. 6 teams have made the trip from Singapore and will be performing on the same stage as the teams competing for Korean representation. Singapore will have their finals in the upcoming weeks and as soon as I get pictures of the event I will post them here for you.

Two other finals are scheduled in the next few weeks: Thailand and China. With the civil unrest in Thailand however the preliminaries are in jeopardy we will have to wait and see if things settle down enough to hold them at the scheduled date. This is not really a time to be concerned about that however, above all we hope that everyone is alright and safe in Bangkok.

The China preliminary this year is scheduled for the weekend of June 5th and 6th. It will be held at the Japan Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo which is a return to the roots of the WCS. The World Cosplay Summit was initially created as a showcase event with an eye on the Aichi Expo held near Nagoya in 2005.

Lots coming up so keep checking back!

I arrived in San Jose today, the weather is fresh compared to the humidity in Japan right now.

Here is the train station where we changed to Caltrain which you can see rolling into the station. It was a much larger train than what you see in Japan.

This is the terminal station for the Caltrain. It had a very traditional look about it with a high domed ceiling and wooden rafters. The stained glass windows and painting of 1800 century settlers set a traditional tone. We hopped into a taxi to the hotel from here.

This is a view of the Santa Clara mountains from the hotel, very beautiful!

We met up with Laura in the evening and talked about the preliminary on Sunday. She brought something with her that was really impressive, a complete file of all 15 teams performance resumes. At the end of the day the file has no impact on judging but it was awesome to see how much attention to detail the teams played, even down to their applications.

For dinner we went to The Old Spaghetti Factory in town. They do have the same restaurant in Nagoya but Yokota-san hadn't been there for 20 years. I asked her what was the biggest difference with the restaurant in Japan and she said it was "darker". I guess so, family restaurants in Japan are usually lighter.