Recently I took a trip to Hangzhou near Shanghai where until 2007 CICAF had sent the China representative team to the World Cosplay Summit. While here I heard there was a new cosplay cafe so I thought I'd stop by for a visit.

Here is view when you step into the cafe, you can see a couple groups on the left playing board and card games which are very popular in China right now.

What would a cosplay cafe be without costumes? Here you can see one of the staff members holding up some of the costumes that you can rent.

You can hang out with the costumes on or take perikura in the machines you can see here.

There is a wide selection of manga and board games that you can borrow and enjoy while hanging out and enjoying a meal or drink.

At the back of the cafe is a stage where you can do karaoke, do larger photo sessions or play video games on the large screen that you can see at the top of the picture above.

Those who were out for WCS 2005-7 may remember Rakuten who is the head organizer for the CICAF event in Hangzhou. I stopped by her place for dinner and met her son for the first time, what a cutie!

Connichi, the host for the WCS preliminaries in Germany are starting now. The German team for WCS 2011 will be selected during the cosplay stage on Sunday evening.

Here is a shot of the entrance to the Kongress Palais in Kassel where Connichi is held. Very majestic!!

Here is Puka at one point during the event. Usually in Japan he is very relaxed but he was on fire at Connichi. Go Puka!

During the entire event Patrick and Yuna were manning the WCS booth, here they are at work.

The representatives for Germany 2011 were selected at Connichi. They are Iris and Anabelle the same pair that represented Germany in 2009. Their international experience showed in their performance as it included many different factors and was well performed. See you in Japan next summer!