One of the motivating factors for me to get to Japan is to attend various doujinshi events. This time, we were able to get to two separate (and vastly different!) events. The first was the 7th Maiden’s Garden Yuri-only doujinshi event in Kyoto.

Although the event was in Kyoto, we stayed in Osaka.  We had a nice view of Osaka Castle from our hotel window, and took the opportunity the night we arrived to walk around town and get reacquainted with (and introduce my wife to) Osaka. Bruce and I were amazingly, able to remember a great deal from our visit in November 2010 (to see the Maria-sama ga Miteru Live-Action Movie.) Later, that night, walking back to the subway from the Shinsaibashi, the wife spotted Oscar on a salon sign:

The day before the event, we had the unparalleled pleasure of accompanying our friend Komatsu-san and the lovely and talented Ransui-san around Kyoto, on a singular tour. You see, in Smile Precure, the five main characters do a whirlwind tour of the city and see all the sites. Ransui-san decided she was going to recreate that episode. So accompanied by Cure Happy, Cure Sunny, Cure Peace, Cure March and Cure Beauty, we started at the bus station and saw the Kyoto Tower, visited Yama Arashi Park where we ate green tea ice cream,  and went to the Kinkakuji – the famous Golden Pavilion. We then left Komatsu-san and Ransui-san to go out to Kiyomizu temple by themselves, while we headed back to our hotel. We had a fabulous time tagging along . Thank you Komatsu-san and Ransui-san for letting us join your tour!

The Kinkakuji is a magnificent postcard – totally worth seeing, with every angle carefully cultivated for maximum artistic impression.

Bruce, the wife and I spent a short time wandering Osaka and eating as much as we could there. We did manage okonomiyaki for dinner one night. ^_^

The next day it was raining pretty steadily, but we headed back to Kyoto for Maiden’s Garden. The event was grouped with several other events in the same space, including a PreCure event, one for Madoka, Nanoha, Strike Witches, and even a Mai HiME/Zhime event. Here’s a pdf copy of the MG7 catalog pages – the table rows were split into Black Lily, White Lily and Mountain Lily, which I found kind of cute. You can see the tabs for the other events in the catalog along the side. To get into the event, you buy the catalog (which contains the circle listings for all the events taking place.

So while MG7 was small, all the events grouped together meant we had a fair amount to look at. First we went over to Fantastic Yuri Rhythm, Ransui-san’s circle and picked up her new books. She’s amazingly talented.

It was pretty gratifying to see so many circles I knew well there. even some I hadn’t seen in years, like CHC.

Here’s some of what I picked up at the event, starting with this spiffy Mouretsu Pirates coffee travel mug:

I followed this up with a trio of my fave circles – Sakuraike, UKOZ and Raku-Gun.

I bought this thing totally and only for the cover:

I was pleased as punch to find something new (and not obviously porn) by Pen-Pen Gusa Club, along with this Lyn/Jenny thing I couldn’t pass up from the not-series specific, but all anime parody/totally 18+ section of the event.

And I bought this one because of the title:

I told the guy at the table that I am a researcher, but I don’t think he believed me. He had “ewww, creepy foreigner” face on. ^_^;; I also bought a fabulous “Promises are forbidden” (約束禁止) Kyuubey strap, but it self-destructed before we got back to the hotel, so I’ll have to make myself a new one.

Overall, while on its own Maiden’s Garden is small, grouped with the other events, it makes a good afternoon’s entertainment. And it’s a great way to meet Yuri artists. ^_^ I wholeheartedly recommend MG, if you find yourself in the Kyoto area when they next hold an event.

Advertising Poster, Fujisawa

OMGOMGOMG! We have a very special Special Report today! Yuricon Staffer and Okazu Superhero Bruce P. took a little summer trip to Japan and wanted to tell us all about it. Here’s his report of the Aoi Hana x Enoshima Electric Railway Special Event!

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I recently had the opportunity to attend ‘Aoi Hana Meets the Enoshima Electric Railway’, an event held in Enoshima in connection with the publication of Volume 7 of Shimura Takako’s beautiful manga series. Actually, I made the opportunity. As a fan of Yuri, and Japan, and railways, and with Aoi Hana being my favorite series, nothing could keep me from attending this event (although a ride to the airport that never showed up came close).

The Enoden (i.e. Enoshima Electric Railway) runs from Kamakura along Sagami Bay to Enoshima and on to Fujisawa. This area is the setting for Aoi Hana, and the Enoden is the little train Fumi and A-chan take to school. In real life this is a seashore vacation area with a lot of young out-of-town summer visitors, and the Enoden is happy to promote itself to them with different events. An event for anime and manga fans is a perfect fit. Put on in association with Manga Erotics F, publisher of the series, ‘Aoi Hana Meets Enoden’ was as close to perfect as you can get without coffee mugs.

So on a hot Saturday morning I took the train called ‘Romance Car’ from Shinjuku to Fujisawa. Filled as it was with excited shore-bound families, and with scenery consisting mostly of trackside apartment blocks, there was little romance involved. It did stop briefly at the town of Shin-Yurigaoka (‘New Hill of Lilies’), which I took as a good sign. Five stops on the Enoden brought me to Enoshima, and after a short walk I found Enoden House, the principal site of the event. It was an hour after opening on the first day, and there was quite a crowd. Enoden House consists of a single large room; it was devoted half to toy train items for sale, and half to the event. There was a goods counter, the line for which extended out the door when I arrived (admittedly it wasn’t very far to the door). Items for sale included Aoi Hana lunch bags, tote bags, a variety of clear files, very nice post cards, pins, and copies of the manga and anime (but no coffee mugs). Background music from the anime was helping to put people in a festive mood. Festivities at the cash register were intense.

Enoden House

On the walls there was an art exhibit, consisting of original B&W ink drawings used in production of the manga, and framed copies of the manga’s color illustrations. To each of these color illustrations Shimura-sensei had added character sketches and an autograph. They were being raffled to folks who made purchases. You were allowed to turn the red drum, the number of turns depending on how much you had purchased; you cranked away, hoping for the lucky token to fall out. If it did, you could select any of the autographed illustrations on the wall for your own. I ended up with 27 turns. And zero framed illustrations. Good exercise though.

It was very hot, and Enoshima, being the shore, had sea breezes and stuff shops and food and drink and ice cream places and was really very pleasant. So I spent the day in the area, visiting the island with the tower you can see in some scenes, and late that afternoon stopped back at Enoden House to see how things were going. It was relatively uncrowded at that point, allowing for better viewing of the artwork, and of the adventures of ‘chibi A-chan’ and one of Enoden’s mascot figures, which looked like a fluffy throat lozenge. They had been photographed ‘posing’ at different spots along the railway. Some people were still buying, and by that time the DVDs had sold out.

Vol. 2, p. 150, trackside entrance to sweets shop.

Tokyo was so hot and Enoshima was such a delight that I went back again the next day. I walked around finding some locations used in the series.

Vol. 2, P. 149

Stopped one last time at Enoden House; it was not as crowded as on Saturday, most of the illustrations had been claimed, and the manga had sold out. Two more turns of the drum. More exercise. Zero framed illustrations.

The Enoden House exhibit was fun, but there was something that impressed me much more. As part of the event special posters with illustrations and quotations from the manga were put up in all the stations on the Enoden line. These were in addition to the quite nice general advertising poster for the event.

There are 15 stations, and there were 15 different one-of-a-kind special posters. Each one was incredibly elegant and beautiful. Apparently fans had been involved in the selection of the scenes and quotations.

To see them, and even more to see them hanging there in the wider world – and not, say, just in the back of a manga shop – was actually breathtaking. As a fan I was deeply impressed and grateful for the effort that had been taken to produce these posters, and with the elegance of the result. They were hard to photograph because they had a shiny, reflective surface, but I wasn’t the only one buying tickets to ride to all the stations just to take photos of them. The Enoden line didn’t mind a bit.

Was it worth the trip? You bet it was.

Erica here: Bruce, thank you for the report and the pictures! As a fan, I completely understand what you mean about seeing these up in the wide world. I’m so excited that this series has – and will for a few more days – brought tourists to Kamakura and Enoshima. And those posters. Wow. Thank you again and I can’t wait to see your swag!

First of all, my apologies for having no pictures of the event, as there were signs everywhere forbidding picture-taking. I had lost my camera early in the trip and my wife’s is too large to use surreptitiously.

Girls Love Festival (website is in Japanese) is one of two Yuri-only doujinshi events being held in Japan. Girls Love Fest is in the Tokyo area and Maiden’s Garden (website in Japanese) is held in Kyoto.

I had never had a chance to attend either of these, so I was both excited and a little apprehensive about this one. ^_^ But it turns out I need not have been worried at all.

Girls Love Fest has a list of participating circles on their website, so I knew going into it that there were a few people I wanted to meet or see again.

Bruce, my wife and I took the train to Kamata station, where we found the PIO building without difficulty. Outside was our dear friend Komatsu-san and we waited for the last our party, a lovely, talented and funny young lady, Ransui-san, who draws doujinshi herself. We were treated to a preview of her upcoming PreCure works, which are incredibly cute!

We watched the line of attendees go in when the event opened and were not terribly encouraged by the female/male attendee ratio. It appeared that very few women were attending, but when we finally got in, there were more than it appeared on the line. Circles seemed split 40/60 female/male and attendees were more like 30/70. So, not as many women this time as Komatsu-san said there were last year, but it wasn’t a bad split.

You have to purchase a copy of the event catalog to get in to the event – the catalog acts as your “ticket” into the event space. It wasn’t that expensive, and very nicely printed.

The room was a convention center hall, half was one show, half the other show. GLF was on the window side. Because the show was small, the aisles weren’t crowded, so it had a nice, airy, open feeling.

Everyone we talked to was so nice! Lots and lots of smiles. We gave away Yuricon “I Love Yuri” pins to the show Boss, and a few circles we knew and some folks who had come to the Yuricon 2005 event in Tokyo. (I had ordered more, but thanks CafePress for taking more than two weeks to ship a bag of pins, so they arrived too late.)

We were able to say hello to Circle Sakuraike (Kimochi no Katachi Volume 1 and Volume 2) and of course buy their books! and slowly, relaxedly wander the aisles. There wasn’t as much 18+ material as I feared. In my heart, I sort of expected the event to be mostly loli-porn, so I anticipated being disappointed with the doujinshi for sale. But, I was pretty much wrong. I was glad to be wrong. ^_^

The event theme was “magical girl,” so there was a lot of Madoka work, no surprise, and a fair dollop of PreCure. A little Nanoha, much less than I expected and surprisingly a pretty decent showing for Maria-sama ga Miteru (thus proving that Yumi is pretty much magical. ^_^) There was one lonesome guy selling Strawberry Panic doujinshi and only one Vocaloid seller – all of us commented on how strange that was. We all expected way more of that.

I got fangirly squee-y when I came across Amano Shuninta’s (Sweet Guilty Love Bites) booth. I saw the doujinshi first, and recognized the art style, then blurted out, “OMG, is this Amano Shuninta?” at which the adorable woman standing there raised her hand. I asked her to sign a doujinshi, and bought everything, pretty much, then gave her a “I Love Yuri” pin. ^_^ I also found Momono Moto (Kimi Koi Limit) gave her a pin, tried to buy a book, but she gave it to me. Thank you! I really wanted it for the CD it came with, I think it’s a game, that looked kinda fun. Girl Prince and Princess on the cover. I’ll see if I can make heads or tails of it. ^_^

I also asked some random artist to sign her work, because it was so cute. She looked shocked, then embarrassed, but she did it. That was also very cute. (^_^)

Kogado, the company that created Yuri game Soulfege was the only corporate presence there, they were advertising their new Yuri game, White Robe Lovers, which takes place in a nursing school. If there is a faster way to turn me right off, I can’t think of it. That whole nurse fetish thing just leaves me cold. But, what was notable, was that Kogado had an itasha there to advertise the series. In the front window of the car was a URL which struck as all as amusing, but none of us knew whether it was unintentional or not: http://blog.kogado.co.jp/patheticar/. Either way, we agreed that the URL was truth in advertising.

Before we left, we all agreed that next year we’ll go to the Maiden’s Garden event together. Komatsu-san and Ransui-san left us to go to take in a PreCure musical show, so we said our goodbyes to them and left GLFes, with piles of doujinshi, fan novels and memories of many smiles.

I would encourage any of you to attend this event – it was friendly, relaxing and fun, just as one would hope it would be. ^_^ Thanks to everyone who made it possible and to everyone who sold there. And many, many thanks to Komatsu-san and to Ransui-san for joining us on our adventure!