I was originally planning on cosplaying for Japan Day @ Central Park 2010.  Although I had only gone one year before, due to it being in a public park where anyone could enter (no entrance fee!) and the overall vibe in general, I had more or less decided that I would wear school uniform costumes rather than anything too elaborate.  Since I had worn Tomoyo the first year I had gone, that left my two Rei school uniforms and Utena's school uniform.  Well, having to wear a pink wig falls under my very loose definition of "elaborate", and I had already worn Rei's winter uniform to Central Park once before (the Pretty Senshi Photoshoot), so that left Rei's summer school uniform.  It was a good idea in theory.

As luck would have it, as I started my way north, I spotted a man, Larry, wearing a red "Japan Day @ Central Park" T-shirt, so I asked him if I was on the right track to find East Meadow Park.  It turned out he didn't know either!  Apparently the organizers of Japan Day (and at least one of them is the Japan Society, which is how the man had come to be a volunteer) hadn't exactly drawn maps for their volunteers, either.  I told him that I was sure it was at East Meadow Park, and that I was sure it was north, and that I was pretty sure I was heading north.  We decided to walk the rest of the way together, and soon found a map that confirmed we were heading in the right direction, but also confirmed just how far we still had to go.  While walking, Larry told me that he would be volunteering at the yo-yo balloon fishing tent from 1:00 PM onward, and invited me to stop by.

I said goodbye to the group I had traveled with and decided to take a tour of the tents and see what was available before I decided to do anything else-sort of get the "lay of the land", so to speak.  The first tent I came across was the Kimono and Yukata tent.  There was already a pretty long line!  Once you got "inside", there were kimono dressers to help you try on kimono, yukata, and obi.  I'm not sure if any of the kimono were for sale, or if they had any of the accessories such as the undergarments or obi-jime.  I got as close as I dared because I wanted to see if Yumiko-san was working there (not that I had heard she was going, but because I always associate her with kimono events, especially since I had met her at a Japanese autumn festival at Stony Brook so many years ago), but I didn't see her.

The second tent was the charity tent.  If you donated $20, they would plant a cherry tree (I'm not sure where, certainly the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens has enough of them!) in your name, and you would receive a free Japan Day T-shirt with cherry blossoms on it!  I was sorely tempted, but I didn't have a lot of money on me, and I'm kind of running out of room for T-shirts anyway.  They WERE very pretty, however, and certainly for a  good cause.

The next tent gave you a chance to have your picture taken with Hello Kitty!  The line for this was the longest I had seen so far.  Hello Kitty herself wasn't there at the moment, but there was a sign up saying that she would be back shortly, and the people on line were waiting very patiently.  I took a picture of the first cosplayer I had seen so far (other than the teenagers I walked in with, of course) and spoke to a nice girl who I thought was dressed in Lolita fashion (but wasn't, she just dresses really cutely!) before I decided to continue on.

Before I got too far, however, I heard my name being called.  I turned around and saw my old college friend Geoff!  I had previously run into him at the Sakura Matsuri at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in May of this year, and as we had parted he had asked if I was planning on attending Japan Day, but we hadn't really talked since so I wasn't sure if he was still going.  Not only was he there, but he was another volunteer!  At least some of the volunteers were on hand to hold those "End of the line" signs on sticks that you may have seen at other anime cons for registration lines and waiting to get into panels.  Very handy!

I knew he would be very busy with his volunteering duties, so we only talked for a little while to make sure we had each other's phone numbers, and then as Hello Kitty returned he offered to let me jump the line and have my picture taken with her before she went back on duty officially, but I didn't want to set a bad example for (nor disappoint) the kiddies on line behind me, so I said my goodbyes and went on my way.

At the bottom of the curve of the circular track on the right were two tables housed under one tent, the Wellness Check Up and the Stamp Tent.  I never did get to try out the wellness checkup, but I believe they would give you a basic health check in order to promote, well, wellness.  The Stamp Tent I didn't get to figure out until later, but apparently, every tent that housed an activity (such as the Kimono and Yukata tent, or the Wellness Check Up) would give you a stamp to put on your program (which I'm assuming came in the "con swag" bag you could pick up at the Press tent).  If you collected all of the stamps, you could return to this tent for a free prize!  I really wish I had known that ahead of time, but even still, I might not have wanted to wait in those long lines!

Not far beyond that was the Volunteer Tent.  Let me tell you, they had SOO many more volunteers than I was expecting!  I have no idea how they even found them all!  And they all had color-coded T-shirts, although I have to admit I never did figure out what the colors represented.  (Most people were in red T-shirts-hopefully they didn't die!  Okay, bad geek joke over.)

But the festival went on all day, and I already knew from Larry that the tents were being managed in shifts, and when you think about all of the behind-the-scenes go-fers and the sign people...well, I can just imagine how many hundreds of people it takes to put on an event like that.  When you would walk around the park, you would see them everywhere, most working, but even those who were off duty would be hanging around, enjoying the food or other parts of the festival.

I skipped the main stage area for now, as there wasn't anything going on at the moment, and looped around to the left side of the field to check out the tents on that side.  They were giving out tea!  For free!  Normally I'm not that big of a tea-drinker (my Japanaphile tendencies aside), but I'm a big fan of free stuff, and the day was so hot and humid (and my dress so much warmer than I expected it to be) that I accepted a bottle of Mango Oolang tea.  Even at atmosphere temperature, it was DELICIOUS!  It's made by Teas'Tea, and I recommend it highly, I have to remember to try to pick up more!  I drank it whenever I was feeling a little lightheaded throughout the day, and saved some for Louis to try, and he ended up loving it too.

Further up the path was a tent with Japanese Traditional Instruments-mostly drums.  When I first passed by the tent, there was a long line to get in as they were actually allowing visitors to try playing the instruments for themselves (I wish I had done that now!) but when I passed by the tent with Dave later, there was a taiko demonstration going on.  I can't believe what amazing music can be made with only percussion instruments!

The next tent housed the Robot Sumo Battle.  While still very cool, the robots were FAR smaller than I had anticipated-don't get me wrong, I don't think I was really expecting to see Tom Servo and Crow duking it out, but the robots looked like they were made out of Erector sets, with each piece being about the length of one of my fingers (and I'm pretty small.)  In addition, visitors didn't get to bring any robots from home nor assemble any themselves, but rather given the opportunity to pit already-created robots in battle within a small circle on the table against each other.  All in all, though, it looked like a lot of fun!  I just hope there were robot medics on hand in case any of the fighters got hurt!

The origami tent was much larger than I had anticipated, and the tables were broken up into Beginner and Advanced Origami, with staff on hand to teach you how to construct various origami sculptures, from simple cranes to complex dodecahedrons.  They had plenty of origami paper available, and you could either bring your creation home with you, or donate it to Mount Sinai's Children's Hospital.  How kind!  The man monitoring the donation box was even wearing a little origami hat.  I can't believe how many different things you can make with origami!

After the origami tent was the Calligraphy tent, and it was absolutely beautiful, adorned with examples of fine calligraphy.  They had traditional brushes and bottles of ink as well as instructors available for visitors to try their hand at Japanese writing, though as I didn't get to give it a chance myself, I'm not sure what examples they were using to teach, whether it would be your own name in kanji, or a simple word.  However, it must not have been too difficult as I saw both adults and children of all ages giving it a try.  And really, it's hard for anything not to look gorgeous when you see that vibrant black ink on that gorgeous textured rice paper!

Set next to the designated picnic area (although really, people were picnicking wherever they could find room, particularly under the shade of the trees!) was the Headquarters tent.  Luckily they didn't have a lot going on there, as this was the place to look for if you had a lost child, or a lost wallet, or anything else approaching an emergency nature.  Still, it was good to know where they were if you needed anything!

A little closer to the main stage were two booths housed under one tent.  The first was an Environment exhibit designed to teach children about easy and fun ways to "go green", including letting them design an eco-friendly reusable bag that they could then take home with them.  The second was Traditional Toys table, which let you play with one of the oldest toys ever discovered, cup-and-ball, and others such as spinning tops.  Unfortunately I don't think any of the toys were for sale, though you can probably pick them up elsewhere.

There was a small area cleared out behind the main stage, I'm not sure if this was officially designated or if it just kind of sprang up organically.  When I first made my trip around the track it was mostly empty except for a lot of the performers taking their chance to rest, relax, and eat, but on my second trip around there was a man from a martial arts dojo performing feats of strength for the kiddies.  I'm guessing this area more or less became a "street performer" area, because you would see the most interesting people there!  The fact that there were rubber "tiles" put down to make a slightly softer floor made it the perfect area for martial arts demonstrations and goofing around alike.

The next three food tents featured Soka Senbei Rice Crackers, which I've never had before but sound delicious, gyoza dumplings (I've had dumplings before, and shumai, but I'm not sure if either of those are "gyoza dumplings"), and Sanuki Udon Noodles, which I've heard is actually a perfect warm-weather food.  But again, the lines for all of the food were SO long that I really didn't feel like trying any of them--plus, I was expecting Louis to meet me for a picnic at around 2 or so, and I didn't want to ruin my appetite!

My next phone call was to see if Dave had made any progress on his journey in to Central Park.  In a strange twist of events, we ended up reversing our roles from the Sakura Matsuri earlier in May: that day, I had promised Dave I would meet him early, but ended up being later than I expected due to JenyBean's car breaking down.  When I called Dave, he was on his way to the park on a bus out of Grand Central Station...that had broken down.  He was at least a half an hour away!  I decided to make one more tour of the tents around the circular track to make sure I hadn't missed anything, to take more photos, and to take advantage of the one thing I didn't want to leave without trying, before he got there.

Target acquired, I decided to wander the great field, away from where the tents were located, to see if I could take more photos. Surprisingly, there were a LOT more people in kimono and yukata than I was expecting-almost as many as there were at the Sakura Matsuri, and at least as many as there were people in cosplay! To be fair, however, there were a lot of people that might have been in cosplay that I didn't take pictures of, because a lot of the newer anime has more "plain clothes" looks to their outfits, so it's getting increasingly harder to tell the difference between "Street fashion with a Naruto headband included" and "Actual cosplay costume". I don't mind either, of course, but people who aren't in costume do tend to look at you a little funny when you ask to take their picture!

By this point, I was getting overheated to the point where even the mango oolong tea wasn't helping, so I found myself a spot on a park bench under the shade of a large tree, and decided to wait for Dave.  While I was sitting there and reading Sherlock Holmes (again), this lovely older couple started up a conversation with me, asking me about my dress (which, let's face it, can be attention-getting), and about other people in similar dresses, and what were those crazy outfits some other kids were wearing, and why were so many people in kimono?

While I was talking to the nice couple from Detroit, another girl dressed in Lolita came over to ask me about the tents and the food and the events, and mentioned that she was waiting for her friends.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: the best part of these kinds of events, from the free, distantly related kind to the full on anime conventions, is not the free stuff you can get or even the events that you can participate in, but rather the people that you meet.  You meet all sorts of people from all different walks of life that you might not cross paths with in any other setting, but since you have that one interest in common, you're able to meet each other and share it.  That, really, is what makes these events for me, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

As I was settling myself back onto my place on the park bench, I decided to give Dave another call to see where he was.  Sneaky boy that he is, he started telling me that when the bus had broken down, he made the "executive decision" to get off and walk the rest of the way, but while he was in the middle of his story, I got the funny feeling that someone was behind me, so I turned around and there was Dave, approaching me not five feet away!  At least I caught him before he put a hand on my shoulder and completely startled the life out of me.  Since I knew the lay of the land so well by now, I acted as unofficial tour guide and showed Dave all of the tents that I had previously visited.

After completing our circuit of the tents twice (once to get the feel, twice to get the details), both Dave and I agreed that we really didn't want to wait on any of the extremely long lines (plus, they had run out of sushi, and the tea was completely gone as if it had never been there to begin with.  I'm willing to bet supplies were running low at the rest of the tents, too), so we decided to just take a small walk around the park and catch up.  Dave had not come equipped to do a proper photoshoot, but between our recent conversation on whether a ten minute photoshoot was viable, plus the fact that I was wearing a very pretty dress in his absolute favorite color, we decided to ditch the crowds and hold an impromptu shoot of our own just a little ways away.  That shoot, Elegant Gothic Alice, can be found on the Photoshoots page.

Want to know the funny thing?  I got to my "home station" around 4 PM, and as I was exiting the station a drizzle had just started.  I walked quickly, not minding too much because I was going to be home soon anyway, and could change out of my wet clothes and dry my hair if it came to that.  As I got home and closed the door behind me, the skies opened up and the rain POURED DOWN!...for all of two minutes.  After that, the thundershower passed and we had broad sunshine.  The ground was too saturated for a proper picnic, however, so Louis and I spread a blanket on our living room floor and dined on tuna sandwiches in style and comfort.