(Elijah)
So we recently went to an anime festival in Nippon Bashi which is basically a mini Akihabara in Osaka. Since my phone is broken and I still wanted pictures I decided to use my SLR camera for the first time since being in Japan and oh man did I feel like a tourist. Anyway I took like 300 pictures or something close to that and they're all here now so enjoy!
(Austin)
As Elijah already mentioned, we went to an anime and cosplay festival. There were SO MANY PEOPLE. Of course, comparatively there were more people at Comiket, but it was still an incredible amount of people. The cosplay in Japan seriously is just really good, and it is more than just the outward appearance that these people put on. A good majority of them really acted the part of the character that they were depicting. And then did a good job at it.
If you don't know, the term "Cosplay" is a contraction of the two words: Costume and Play. Quite literally: dressing up in a costume. The term is usually synonymous with dressing up as anime/manga related characters, but it isn't limited just to these genres.
We arrived just outside Nippon Bashi in the late morning and after a brief walk we started seeing cosplayers on the outskirts of Nippon Bashi. After getting into the thick of it, we started taking pictures. As you can see... we took quite a few. I only posted a few of mine near the bottom of this post since Elijah captured most of it and Elijah's camera produces better pictures than my phone. Sorry for any duplicates! We went to the festival with our friends: Ryosuke, Rachel, Georgia and Yusaku. There were so many people so a few times we got separated but luckily we were able to reconnect each time.
We eventually took a break and went to a local restaurant and had lunch. It was a ramen restaurant and they also served unlimited rice and kimchi. Kimchi is a spicy food from Korea that is very popular. We all sat and ate and relaxed after walking a long time. However, as soon as we finished we headed right back out. We went to many stores that we had skipped over while taking pictures. Since we knew that we would be coming back soon we didn't really buy much, but Elijah and I both bot a pack of playing cards.
As the day went on and it started to head towards the evening, we all walked back to the station where Georgia and Yusaku departed from us with plans to watch a movie in a local theater that night. The rest of us (Rachel, Ryosuke, Elijah and I) headed back to Hirakatashi (our college town) for dinner and drinks at a local izakaya (basically a pub). After we were quenched and nourished we went to the Karaoke place that was up 2 floors in the same building as the izakaya and had an all night karaoke session. It was a ton of fun but maaaaaaaaan I was tired the next morning.
Festivals, especially anime festivals, are extremely live events in Japan. I'm really glad I got to go to this one.
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