The Tokyo Festa we went to at Grand Central Station ended up being a lot smaller then I anticipated.. To begin with, I was the only one in costume, which I guess I should’ve guessed, but still made me feel a little awkward. Luckily, it was only my Card Captor Sakura school uniform, so maybe some people didn’t even realize I was in costume (fat chance) and nothing hugely elaborate and eye catching, but I still felt a little out of place. And it was REALLY small. There was a booth set up for…dammit, what are they called now, the Japanese street fairs that you always see in anime, with the carnival-like games. Anyway, I did the “cup and ball” thing, and got the ball in the cup on the second try, so they gave me a pen. :) Then, I did the “throw the fan so it flips upside down and knock over a little figure” game, and on the second or third try won myself another pen. They had a little ring toss game, too, but honestly, how many pens do I need? :)

They painted some huge (like...7 feet tall) calligraphy with black paint that had sparklies in it. I didn’t get to watch them do the actual painting (we were mid game by that point), but I got to inspect the canvases really closely later, and they were absolutely beautiful, even if I had no idea what they said. (B-chan says one of them said “Japan”. That would make sense.)

The other booths were barely booths. There was an anime booth, and all it had were some posters for some anime I’ve never really heard of (one called MindGame? The other one’s title was written in Japanese so I couldn’t read it), for another Gundam series (later on I was to witness just how many god damn Gundams there are, and no I didn’t not intend that as a play on words, it just came out that way), and for Astro Boy (also more on that later.) After we had been there about an hour or so, two cosplayers showed up, hired (I guess? Volunteers, perhaps) to stand in costume in front of the posters. They had beautiful costumes (one was a really accurate Nanami school uni, the other was Chii, but I didn’t recognize her, because it was one of her artbook outfits and she didn’t have the “ears” on), but they seemed less than thrilled to be there, and were a little…distant? cold? haughty? when I asked them for their picture. And when I asked them if they were from around here, Chii said she was from Connecticut, and the Nanami was from Pennsylvania (or vice versa, I forget now.) So they’re busing in cosplayers for a tiny festival? Weird. But I could be wrong about their personalities (maybe they were just physically cold), and their costumes WERE really nice.