Nekocon 2023 – Nostalgy and energy drinks

 Hello geeks of all flavors!

Nekocon was held this past weekend on 15-16th July in Kuopio, Finland. I've never been to Nekocon before but this year the stars aligned and I got a chance to visit! Oh and for those not in the know Nekocon was held in Kuopion musiikkikeskus (Kuopio Music Centre) which is familiar to many older congoers since Animecon used to be held there back when it still existed. This fit quite well with the con's nostalgy theme too, lol. But anygays, let's start from the beginning!

 

Nekocon's dates were quite perfect for me as the week before I had departed with mom and stepdad on a long road trip to southern Sweden to attend my cousin's wedding in a small city near Gothenburg. Mom had decided that, for a change of pace, on the return trip we would take a cruise liner over to Finland and drive from Helsinki back up to the north (Finland is less elongated than Sweden, so it's actually a shorter drive). This fit perfectly for me as mom could just drive through Kuopio and drop me off there while they continued the journey back to Tornio.

Seaside view inside our cabin on M/S Viking Gabriella.

On Friday morning we arrived in Helsinki and then started our 5 or so hours car trip to Kuopio. Firith had booked a hotel room for us two to share at Rauhalahti Spa Hotel, which is located roughly 6 km away from the event building. We decided that Rauhalahti was the best choice as it was about the same price (or even cheaper!) than most other normal hotels within a reasonable distance from the con and well, free admission to the spa and gym was included in the price so why the fuck wouldn't you choose it? :'D 

I arrived to the hotel before Firith (he got delayed because of neighbor's missing cat problems) but luckily I managed to get access to the room anyway. I was very much amused to find out that our room number was 313 – that's Donald Duck's car plate for the uncivilized. And within my group of friends some very special Donald Duck animations are like our holy bible – we quote them unashamedly like it's a part of our most primal DNA. 

Kääk!

By the time Firith arrived my parents had already left (they stayed to eat dinner in the hotel's restaurant) and I was just vibing alone in the room. It didn't take too long before the hotel room exploded as our cosplay stuff invaded every free surface! Ah, that organized nerd chaos took me back in time. *sniff*

We spent the night going for a quick dip in the spa, chatting, playing some Nintendo Switch and having a drink or two.

Ryyb ja pärr pärr et vanhukset jaksavat.

Then came Saturday morning. I slept quite well except for the fact that the air circulation in the room wasn't very good so yeah, at times I would wake up in the middle of the night because of sweating like a pig on a spit-roast. Thankfully morning showers clear up that greasy feeling. :))

One of the big advantages with having a hotel room over the con's own sleeping accommodation is access to hotel breakfast – my con morning isn't complete without Karelian pastries and scrambled eggs, no joke.

After hotel breakfast (and a Karen who got mad at me for having long hair) we went back into our room and changed into our costumes. I might or might not have chugged a Monster to function. Both of us had decided to honor the con's nostalgy theme – I did Kisuke Urahara from Bleach and Firith did the Just Be Friends version of Luka Megurine from Vocaloid. I'll admit that due to how pressed on time I was to finish my costume before departure I actually didn't have time to do any makeup tests prior. So yeah, I just had to improvise and hope I wing it enough to win it.

We drove to the con (it was very easy route!) and once we got there we looked around until we found one of those free parking lots as there were two different types and the other option was one that was free but only for 2 hours. We also noticed immediately that there was an absolutely massive queue to the ticket exchange booth and we both decided "fuck that shit" almost in unison and went to photoshoot our costumes instead while waiting for the queue to disperse.

 

Cosplay selfie! (photo by Firith)

I didn't keep track of time on how long we camera'd near the bushes but it worked out quite well because by the time we had wrapped up the shoot then the queue was also gone. I will post the photoshoot results in a separate blog post later, by the way. ^_^

We walked over to the booth to the right outside the main entrance to get our con tickets. It's been so long since I last had one of these on my wrist!

Nekocon con ticket.

Nekocon main entrance. Notice how the nostalgy theme is
wonderfully brought out on that billboard art.

The moment I stepped inside the building I felt a weird and wonderful sensation of new meets old – new con in an old building I had visited before. Exactly 10 years have passed since I last stepped foot here and I immediately remembered how suffocatingly hot Animecon was and that musty and moist eyepatch sweat from my Masamune Date cosplay in 2012. xD

I did immediately notice though that, although Nekocon was also occasionally crowded, it was never as crowded as Animecon was (at Animecon it literally felt like you were running out of oxygen indoors lol). I even heard that Nekocon didn't manage to sell out all their tickets so that does explain things but yeah, imo it's better when it's not overstuffed cuz that's quite anxiety-triggering.

Near the main entrance (cloak room to the right).

Upstairs you found the Artisan's Alley and some dealers.

The first thing we did was go up the stairs and check out the Artisan's Alley. I first thought it was the Artist's Alley until someone pointed out the difference to me, namely that apparently the artisans are invited by the con to sell their art while the artists have to apply through a system and hope they get chosen..? But the way they sell stuff and what they sell is otherwise indistinguishable from each other.

Artisan's Alley upstairs.

Digimon booth upstairs. I'm soooo Gomamon!

Not all booths in the Artisan's Alley area were art and craft sellers, there were a few that were organization booths like one for the local tabletop/roleplay community. There was also this one charming Digimon themed booth although I'm still not sure what its purpose was? Maybe it was some kind of recruitment booth for a future stage production or something, I really have no idea I'm sorry I'm such a pleb.

Upstairs were also a few dealers like Puolenkuun Pelit and if you went up another set of stairs you found the official photography booth and there was also a polaroid camera booth that you could use for a fee of I think 2€.

Dealer's Hall upstairs.

There weren't really any panels or lectures that interested either of us on Saturday so we actually didn't spend all that much time at the con. We mostly just checked the Artisan's Alley and the Dealer's Hall both upstairs and downstairs and then we thought we had seen enough for the day and went back to the hotel. Although if I had known already on Saturday that the other half of the con was located in the Lumit building, including the video game room, then I probably would have stayed a lil' bit longer. Please don't ask how I managed to miss that; I didn't check the con's information booklet that closely I guess and I was kind of in a brainfog all day ngl. Besides, I was quite tired (I've been on sick leave for two months because of mental health difficulties) and the idea of going to take a dip in the spa was very tempting to wind down after a hot summer day.

 

Dealer's Hall downstairs, aka main floor.

More dealers.

If you wanted books or manga there was a dealer for that too.

And there was a dealer for retro games!

Just next to the Dealer's Hall on the main floor was a cafeteria I think.

I have no recollection of what the clock was by the time we left the con but it can't have been much more than late afternoon or the early evening hours. We both just really wanted to peel ourselves out of our costumes and jump into the pools. Thankfully Urahara as a costume was pleasantly cool to wear, the samue style outfit I made from cotton fabric so it breathes well and it's not thick either. Maybe finally, in this wise and ripe old age, I have learned to not wear three layers of kimonos to a summer con.

But before we could run to the spa we had to deal with one issue – namely hunger. As we both are quite short on spending power we drove out to Kuopio centrum to look for a place to eat. We originally wanted to go to this sushi buffet place we saw online on Google Maps but when we arrived there we agreed on that it was a bit too salty for our wallets. I really didn't want McDonald's and the other places we found either looked very sus, had already closed or didn't have anything interesting on the menu for an agreeable poorfag-verified price. So we drove back to Rauhalahti, defeated and disappointed... Until we remembered that there was a Scan Burger grill at the spa. And the prices were affordable joten läskeiltiin. :D Gotta give my respect to the customer service guy (I think he was the chef too), he was so chill and funny and the food was really good too! 10/10 worth it.

After eating we jumped into the spa again and just relaxed there until it closed and then we went back up to our room.

I finally found the Käärijä drink!

It was so nice to come back up after melting away in the hot pool and the jacuzzi. We had some drinks and I tasted the Cha Cha Cha pina colada for the first time and I gotta say it was pretty tasty – it's quite soda-like and mild but you can still clearly taste the pina colada flavor. Of course a proper pina colada is better but this was very refreshing and bubbly and I would buy it again.

Sunday morning came and I was dead once more. Luckily a trip down to the breakfast buffet makes me temporarily human again. No Karen this time, thank god. Although there was a kid screaming for full lungs and I'm not sure how much better that is lol.

Once we were done eating we returned to the room to finish packing our bags for departure. And had another energy drink. We decided to leave the room a bit earlier as we needed to be at the con 11:30 anyway as I wanted to attend the Tolkuton Plays Muumimetallia music program. We ran into Sallukka and Don and the former was a sweetheart and helped me reserve a spot for the Moomin metal as I did not have Kompassi logins and was a bit paniccc as it had not been informed that one needed a ticket, thank you. ;_; 

But we were a bit early still and needed to kill some time and this was when Sallukka told us about the Lumit building, which held the actual Artist's Alley and the video game room, and so we rushed over there. Luckily it was super close, almost behind the main building.

 

Nerd alert! No but really, people played TCGs here.

Lumit is not a really spacious building, there was like one open area for all the TCG and board game enthusiasts with video games towards the wall and the other half of the area was occupied by the Artist's Alley. I was very happy in my geeky little heart to see how Nekocon had amassed quite a large variety of both new and old game consoles!

The right corner was for newer game consoles...

... while the left corner was for the beloved old-timers!

I was tempted to play a few rounds of oldie goldies but it was a quite popular activity and I didn't have a lot of time before the concert would begin so I let that nostalgic desire fade out for now and went to check what the artists were selling.

Beginning of the Artist's Alley in Lumit.

Other half of Artist's Alley.

I gotta say the air circulation in Lumit was a lot better than upstairs where the Artisan's Alley was in the main building; I didn't feel like I was running out of air and my clothes were sticking like glue to my skin. There were both new and familiar faces among the sellers and there was a pleasant vibe going on.

The clock was nearing 11:30 and I had to extract myself from my company and run to watch the Moomin metal show. I was the only one who wanted to see it (Sallukka and Don had seen the debut at another con; this was Tolkuton's second gig I think) because the others preferred to go to the guest of honor Seppo Pääkkönen's lecture about his voice-acting career.

Tolkuton to the left and Hevimuikkunen (as Hobgoblin) to the right.

MÖRKÖ! Every Finnish kid's nightmare fuel.

Tolkuton is a charismatic and funny guy and this is his one-man music project, as in that he's the only musician. Hevimuikkunen was there to make it interactive, whimsy fun and he would set the mood by appearing and disappearing in different iconic Moomin character-inspired costumes for every song – we got to see Snufkin of course, the Groke, a burglar Stinky and the Hobgoblin along with a few others. It was quite ambitious and I found the whole number entertaining and full of heart. 

Tolkuton would most usually wield his electric guitar but he would use a keyboard a few times too. Of course, because Tolkuton is the only musician, it meant that there was a pre-recorded tape that he would jam along to but it worked sufficiently well and you gotta give props to his stage presence and ambition. He would interact with the audience between the songs too and I swear to god he sounded a bit like Allu Tuppurainen's Rölli character a few times. x) I would say the whole spectacle was like 70% show and 30% music as Hevimuikkunen stole the show as you'd sit there and eagerly await what his next act would be – the Witch 'Clarissa' in spicy high heels and a corset with a C3PO face mask or a massive inflatable Hattifattener with crudely drawn eyes billowing up with the help of an air fan and then having said Hevimuikkunen in witchy drag violently puncturing it with a broom. You never knew what kind of wacky shit was coming next and that was the best part of the show. XD

The only slight gripe I had was that there was a discrepancy in the Nekocon information booklet about how long the show would last – the actual visualized schedule showed 11:30 to 12:00 while the program info said 11:30 to 12:30, but the show actually went overtime and didn't finish until 13:00. Personally I didn't mind much as I wasn't in a hurry to another panel or lecture, but for those who had other programs lined up it might have been a headache.

Once I came out from the Concert Hall I waited around a bit for Sallukka, Don and Firith to resurface from the Seppo Pääkkönen experience. Apparently it was amazing. 

We had one hour to kill before Bardic Inspiration would start, another music program. 

Bardic Inspiration!

I realized my expectations were soooo off the mark the second I stepped into Kamarimusiikkisali. I don't know why I even thought it was realistic but I was expecting like a ragtag bunch of people in LARP costumes rolling into the scene with hurdy gurdys, cellos and mandolins lmao. Instead we got a lady with a gorgeous voice in a red dress and a pianist. Not what I expected but a high-quality performance nonetheless! 

I gotta say though that I was quite disappointed because in the information booklet it mentioned Monster Hunter but not a single song from said franchise was performed (and that was lowkey the main reason I attended). :'( I didn't know over half of the songs but the singer was so good that it didn't really matter tbh. My favorites were Snake Eater from Metal Gear Solid and Weight of the World from NieR: Automata, neither of which I was previously familiar with.

Bardic Inspiration only lasted for roughly 30 minutes, as scheduled, and once it wrapped up it was time for me to leave Nekocon behind. Big thanks to Sallukka for providing the car ride back home as we live in neighboring towns. <3 The Škoda was so much better to sleep in than mom's Nissan lol!

Shit, I forgot! Here's my con loot:

Archon Zhongli charm by qpeura, Alhaitham and the
orca I'm sorry but I don't remember. ;-;

These two prints and the above same chara charms all by si3art.

 

To sum it up my experience with Nekocon was very positive. I might not have spent a lot of time at the con but the time I did spend was very enjoyable. The buildings were utilized well and the overall feeling and mood of the con was safe and pleasant. I also appreciate that there were not one but two music programs as I'm not too interested in traditional panels, lectures, AMV competitions etc but will likely jump at any concerts! This means I had something to look forward to aside from just hanging out and meeting friends. I would definitely consider attending Nekocon in the future too, especially if it stays in Kuopio as it's not too far south, hehe.

Thanks for reading, have a great upcoming weekend!

~ Shiro Samurai out.