Kemin mangapäivä 2026 – Buttons, butts and bubble teas

 Hello there!

Kemin mangapäivä (aka Kemi's manga day) was held this past Saturday, on 7th March, for the second time since its revival from a decade of hibernation. Of course I was dragged went there to show my support for a local anime event and yeah, I was kinda needed as manpower too.

Let's get on with the report!

Event poster. Mascot by Nette Nikula.

I woke up early as heck on Saturday morning and mom drove me to Kemi, where I arrived roughly around 9:30. I didn't post any cosplay plans prior to the con because I wasn't set on what to cosplay and yeah, decided to just go with whatever mood I had on the actual day. I ended up choosing the comfiest, most low effort cosplay I had and packed my jedi robes with me.

When I arrived at Kulttuurikeskus, aka the con building, Firith let me in as the doors were still locked. I almost immediately went upstairs to put on my costume and after that I prepared our items for the Matsukirppis (second-hand shop hosted by Matsucon's crew), which mainly meant putting on pre-printed price tags. There were some small chats here and there to make sure all the volunteer crew knew what to do and soon enough the doors were open to the public!

Entrance view feat. Artist Alley.

Some more artist tables and a hoers~

Even though I was a worker I didn't have a specific job schedule or anything, I was mostly a stand-in to help Sanna with the pin workshop, which was a drop-in activity where anyone could make button pins – it was really popular last year and, err, a helper was requested for this year and that helper was me. :'D Some people might remember that I hosted the drawing room last year and well, due to our immense shortage of staff it had to be one or the other and yeah, that's the reason why the drawing room was reduced to a drawing corner and also why there was no drawing contest this year. Simply not enough crew you can count all of us on one hand pretty much and we had to prioritize.

Entrance to Kohtaamo, aka where the pin workshop and other activities were.

Sanna did the first hour or so of the pin workshop while I was free to explore, which mainly meant checking the Artist Alley. It was fun and giving to talk to all the different artists, everyone was so lovely! The clock was roughly 11:00 at this point and while I was browsing the artist tables the first colorful visitors had started to show up, which is always so nice to see. Me and Firith ran around taping Mangapäivä advertisement posters all over Kemi and Tornio and even all the way to Seskarö island in Sweden just a couple weeks before so yeah, it's always a relief to see that people actually knew about the event and we didn't do a lot of work for nothing. xD 

One thing that I couldn't help but notice was the boba tea stand! I had heard from my friends that there's a freshly opened bubble tea shop in Kemi centrum and it was so nice to see them having a booth at the event to promote their new shop! The actual shop is located at the market square area and I heard it was very popular during the Mangapäivä hours; they had to redirect customers to the shop because they kept running out of boba and also because they didn't have all the different flavors available on-site. There was this dude who had to run between the two locations to resupply the Mangapäivä boba booth with more drinks whenever the stash emptied!

MiSu boba's flavors. Yum!

I talked quite a bit with the owners and they were so friendly and genuinely passionate about what they were doing. Seems like it's a small-scale family business run by two young siblings and their mom and dad for support. Honestly a super wholesome bunch, I really hope they succeed! Can't tell y'all how happy I am to finally have a bubble tea shop closer than fucking 100 kilometers away. xD Especially now that the quality has dropped in the boba shop in Oulu since they changed names...

I had time to drink my strawberry boba in peace before it was time to set Sanna free and take over the workshop so she could go explore. But before I could roll in I had to get acquainted with the pin machine, which meant I had to make a prototype pin myself so that I could handle the machine and do pins for all the kids and visitors. You see, the pin workshop was always supervised by an adult and that meant that either I or Sanna took care of the machine – to keep the workshop running smoothly and to avoid anyone hurting themselves. The machine is entirely manual and works by pulling some levers and turning a metallic part around that you put the pin's upper and lower halves onto, including the artwork and a plastic sheet. It's hard to explain but it was quite easy to use once you got the hang of it, just had to be careful to memorize all steps (aka make sure you do them in the right way and in the right order) or you'd mess up and that would suck because you'd then ruin something that someone put time and effort into drawing and/or coloring and I'd hate myself for making a child sad. :'( I had to keep my anxiety at bay because yeah, I was so scared of ruining someone's artwork but luckily only one mistake happened and it was entirely the machine's fault, not mine. It's an old machine and sometimes it will have a hiccup even if the user does everything correctly...

Pin workshop with Sanna sitting at the edge.

Matsukirppis and Matsucon's organization booth.

On the photo above to the far right you can see the drawing corner – despite its shrunken size it was quite popular. Mangapäivä didn't have any panels or organized meetups this year so yeah, aside from the cosplay competition there wasn't any scheduled activities to keep track of. The activities that were available were the pin workshop, the drawing corner, a photo booth (what is 'kuvauspiste' called in English??) and there was also a Nintendo Switch one could use for free in the library's youth room, aka the same room in the back where the drawing room was last year. Matsukirppis, drawing corner and pin workshop were all in the Kohtaamo area btw so yeah, it was busy in there!

Guest book. I continued the Buttman tradition huehuehue~

Working at the pin workshop was actually surprisingly enjoyable. It was fun to see all the different personal drawings and statements people did – I mean I saw everything ranging from Kemi's city hall to boobs so how can I even begin to complain about creativity? The youth will be fine. And there's a resurgence of yaoi and yuri fans omfg. Me vanhukset muistamme.

General view. Kyösti's cafe was open and you could even get ramune!

I ran into some familiar faces too like Joni and Sallukka of course but also my former study counsellor Kaisu from back when I studied at Lappia AMK! It was so nice to see her again because yeah, it's been ages and we used to play Ingress and Pokémon Go many years ago and eat kebab together haha, fun times. She's retired now and seemed to be in good spirits, here's to hoping I'll see her more often in the future!

Once the clock was nearing 14:00 I waddled my way to the auditorium upstairs to go watch the cosplay competition. I planted my ass on a chair relatively far away from the stage which, in hindsight, maybe wasn't the best idea because the music came from the back and it was quite loud, which made it a bit hard to hear what the hosts were saying in the front. It wasn't terribly overpowering or anything but yeah, just an idea for an improvement next time because it was distracting and my neurospicy brain can't focus when there's conflicting sounds.

All contestants on stage.

As one can expect from such a small event's cosplay competition there's not gonna be a lot of entries and it's also gonna be a very short and simple show consisting of a catwalk ('lavajuoksut' as we say in Finnish) and posing and then the winners were announced. No big spectacles, intermissions or acts. Of course all the contestants were pre-judged before the competition even started – Firith and Sallukka were the judges. I was asked if I wanted to judge before the con but it was later deemed that I was better needed elsewhere because yeah, event's short on personnel and two judges were sufficient for this scope.

I think it's very important that we have these lower threshold competitions mixed in with the big ones. With small competitions the primary focus is usually to get experience and stage confidence and it's not necessarily a must to have made all parts of your costume yourself to even be able to enter. Not every contest needs to lead to high-stakes qualifiers and global championships. We need to make sure there's still a place for shy beginners to dip their feet in without overwhelming performance pressure crushing them at the doorstep.

General view.

With the cosplay competition over we were down to the last minutes of the event. I was very happy with how the day had gone and yeah, it's so nice to know that our efforts bore fruit once again and was appreciated. I might not have had the biggest hand in arranging this event but yeah, I've been there beneath the curtains helping with what I could and providing some much needed moral and emotional support to the main organizer. Huzzah!

Kääk! (inside the library, which was open normally during the event)

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that at some point, when I was inside the library, Olli (spoiler alert: he's the singer of local metal band Dethropia), who was manning the desk, suddenly asked me in Finnish if I'm Jesus while I was in my unspecified aka random jedi outfit. xD I assumed he was being cheeky and referencing to that one famous Star Wars photo meme that's been floating around the internet if you know, you know and I was like "naaaahh not exactly" lolol! It was all just really silly fun even though it came out of left lane. Random moments are the best!

Random jedi patrolling. (photo: Firith)

Once the con day was over Firith went to grab our unsold items from the Matsukirppis and soon after I went back upstairs to the changing rooms and swapped back into my everyday clothes. Changing out of costume was extremely quick since I had no wig nor makeup or anything – I mean, the level of can't-be-arsedness I felt on the morning was high due to massive sleep deprivation lol. I got a ride back to mom's place where I then had the first grillikota grilled foods of the year and muurikka pancakes for dessert, heck yeah! A great ending to a great day.

Bonus pic: my beautiful button pin. 

With everything else pretty much already said I want to mention before I go that yes, the surprise announcement that was made during the end of the cosplay competition is true – there's a bigger event arriving in Kemi in 2027. ;) I might have something to do with it... *whistles innocently*

Thank you to everyone I interacted with! Thank you for reading!
~ Shiro Samurai out.

Lens review: Princess Pinky Yellow Werewolf

 Hi everyone!

I wanted to do this review already sooner but I kept getting distracted by all kinds of events in my favorite video games lol. Oh well, better late than never so here it is, my colored contacts review featuring the Princess Pinky Yellow Werewolf lenses!

Let's-a go!

Base curve: 8.6 mm
Diameter: 14.5 mm

Water content: 38%

Life span: 1 year (I recommend 6 months)

Some of my earliest readers might remember that one of my very first circle lens reviews featured a very similar lens, also from Pinky Paradise, called Orange Werewolf. This is, in fact, not the same lens although the stock photos look almost identical! I'm mentioning the site I bought these from because I'm almost certain that it's their own brand of lenses and thus not available anywhere else – this is not a sponsored nor affiliated review by the way, although even if it was it wouldn't make a difference in my honesty.

One lens in.

The 'werewolf' style lenses have long been a staple design when it comes to crazy and animation style lenses, they've been around for a good time and over the years various brands have done their own versions of this base design. Werewolf lens designs are super opaque, feature a wild burst-like design, a yellow inner center and a bold main color. It's definitely that kind of lens that turns heads and has no intentions to be subtle and ordinary!

The color is extremely bright and highly visible even from greater distances and in poor light conditions like during nightfall outdoors and such. The pupil opening is a tad narrower than on your average circle lens but it has no kind of fade effect or such so there's a sharp cutout which can be kinda jarring to some. But then again, that's rather typical for this style of crazy lenses in general – they ain't exactly aiming for naturalness. 
Oh and there's a slight enlargement effect but at least on my eyes it's rather negligible. The black outer rim helps frame the eyes and make the lenses look even more intense and beastly.

Lens photos ahead ~

All photos taken by me during a February morning with a clear sky.

There's no color filters or such on the close-up photos and that's so that the colors would be as true to real life as possible.

Indoors, natural room light.

Indoors, yellow room light.

Bathroom light.

Flash photo.

Indoors, facing a backyard window. (not sun side)

Outdoors, back against the sun. (facing a wall)

Outdoors, facing the sun.

The comfort is all good; I wore these twice to anime conventions for a full day with little to no issues. I have naturally really dry and sensitive eyes so for me being able to do that is already a big win, especially without the crutch lifesaver that is eyedrops lol. I don't remember them being itchy or anything of the sort and they held their moisture rather well throughout the day. One thing worth noting though is that, just like with many other crazy lenses, these will give you yellow corners at the outer edges of your field of vision in average and poorer light conditions (due to the smallish central opening) – this is normal and nothing to be alarmed about if you're a new cosmetic lens wearer.
It's also very easy to insert these lenses correctly since the print looks faded out on the 'wrong side'. They're thin and comfortable, I would buy them again if needed for a cosplay or just for fun.

All in all this is a solid lens, especially if you're on the lookout for yellow and/or orange lenses. I've always been rather easily excited by really colorful and vibrant lenses myself and these are definitely a 'hell yeah!' in my book. If you have any kind of affinity towards monster looks and creepy stuff I'd say this is a great lens to try out. This is obviously also a great lens for cosplayers, ren faire costumers and any kind of live-action roleplay and geeky dress-up stuff in general – you can use these for anything from vampires and anthropomorphic wolves to orcs, merfolks and even James Cameron's Avatar Na'vi characters.

Distance photo!

Check out my other reviews here: Orange, Green

Short summary:

Color: 10/10 

Screaming yellow with some orange undertones, you don't get much stronger color payout than this.

Design: 8/10 

Beast-like design to mimic predator eyes from the animal kingdom. Very cool and does its job!

Opacity: 10/10

Super dense pigmentation, no doubt. Flawless coverage of your real eye color.

Enlargement: 5/10 

For a crazy lens these are perhaps a teeny bit on the big size, or at least the black rim adds to that illusion.

Comfort: 7/10 

Thin and I don't feel them much at all, wearable for a full day of fun at events even on dry peepers like mine. Be aware of colored corners in your vision.

Naturalness: 0/10 

These are not even supposed to be natural so just... no. Nonono.

Thanks for checking out this review, stay tuned for more!

Shiro Samurai out.

Lens review: Sweety Twinkle Eye Gray

Hello everyone~

Let's start this new year with a circle lens review – the Sweety Twinkle Eye Gray! These lenses I bought literal years ago and well, totally forgot about them. The packaging doesn't even show the expiry date on the outside so it just didn't occur to me that so much time had passed. Yes I have massive time blindness lol. Sadly it seems that these lenses have been discontinued but oh well, I will still review them for posterity and our collective memory haha. I mean it's a nice lens and maybe there's something similar out there.

Let's gooo!

Base curve: 8.6 mm
Diameter: 14.5 mm

Water content: 40%

Life span: 1 year (I recommend 6 months)

As far as I'm aware the Sweety brand is Uniqso's own line of lenses and not found anywhere else. This is my first time trying this brand although I think a lot of designs have come and went since I bought these lenses.

These lenses are not very typical, as in they're not really colored in the usual sense of the word – I mean it says 'gray' in the name but that's not the color of the lens itself, which is black, but rather the color of those sparkly stars. So in a way I'd like to say that this is an enhancing, dollyfying lens rather than a standard colored lens. Needless to say these don't make your eyes gray, they make your eyes black with silvery and glittery sparkles.

One lens in.

In terms of the design itself there's this slightly twisting burst design with streaks running towards the pupil, giving a somewhat intense gaze. There's a moderate size increase which is in line with the expectations for a dolly and cute lens. The black is very black, although it does very softly fade towards the center for a less jarring look. And yes, those glittery stars are really reflective and shiny!

Lens photos ahead!
All photos taken by me during a wintry morning with a clear sky. All close-up photos are free from color filters etc and that's so that the colors would appear as true to real life as possible.

Indoors, natural room light.

Indoors, white room light.

Flash photo.

Bathroom light.

Facing a window indoors, not sun side. (it turned blue)

Outdoors, back against the sun. (facing wall)

Outdoors, facing the sun while under a shadow.

Outdoors, facing sun directly.

Due to my expiration oopsie mentioned at the beginning I only wore these lenses enough to take the photos for this review and then I immediately discarded them, despite them being comfortable. I really recommend against wearing expired lenses, even if they've been sealed all that time – it's an uneccessary risk and especially when you put it in perspective, also known as that you'd be risking your vision for saving like 20 dollars. So to all poor cosplayers and fashionistas out there reading this – don't wear old lenses to an event even if they seem fine. It's much better to just buy a new pair.

With that said I didn't test comfort and thus I can't grade it accurately. What I can say though is that for the roughly 10 minutes I wore these lenses they seemed thin and generally comfortable, nothing out of the ordinary. I didn't feel them in my eyes and my rough estimate would be that they would have been fairly comfy for an outing, if they had been fresh for wear.

Overall the Sweety Twinkle Eye Grays are a nice lens, shame they don't exist in the market anymore. It has a fairly unique design with the glittering stars and would have been a nice complement for anyone who's into lolita and other sweet and/or girly alt fashion looks. I might not be the best person to model these but hey, I'm an all-eater when it comes to trying circle lenses and I like reviewing all kinds of designs and colors – the more unique and fun the better! 

Distance photo~

Short summary:

Color: 5/10
It's a bit hard to grade color because of the fact it's not a gray lens per se but instead a black lens with essentially gray highlights. It's nice for what it is and does and.. yeah, the black is very black at least lol.

Design: 7/10

It's sweet and has a soft-looking appeal despite how much black is in the design. Lenses look cute and lively, not dreary and dark!

Opacity: 7/10

The black parts towards the edges are very opaque but there's quite a lot of your real eye color showing through the center. If you don't think of these as a color-changing lens the opacity is good.

Enlargement: 5/10

There's a modest size enlargement, further magnified by the illusion the blackness creates.

Comfort: 6/10

Appeared to be of ordinary comfort for the brief time I wore them. Thin and didn't really feel them.

Naturalness: 3/10

Can't really call these natural, too big and extra for that. Maybe if you have very dark and large eyes would they be passable but not otherwise.

Thank you for reading and stay tuned for more reviews coming up!

Shiro Samurai out~