Matsucon 2025 – Cultural exchange and dab in the park

 Greetings!

Matsucon was held this past weekend in Oulu, 9-10 August, Finland. Just like on previous years Pohjankartano school was the con building this time too. It's a pretty good place to host a convention since it's close to centrum and also the train and bus station, it's also spacious and there's enough rooms for all kinds of activities!

Let's get to the summary!

Matsucon's poster/advertisement! 

As one can make out from the cake in the poster, 2025 was some kind of celebration milestone for Matsucon. Apparently "Pocky ry", the registered association or whatever it's called in English (basically the group behind organizing Matsucon), turns 10 years this year! I'll admit to being such a pleb that I didn't notice anything drastically different from the other Matsucons I've been to, aside from the birthday arts of Matsucon's mascots lol. :'D I mean yeah there were guests of honor but as far as I can remember that's been a rather expected/common feature of Matsucon? Well, regardless it was a good year for Matsucon~

But hey, let's backtrack a bit. So me and Firith traveled to Matsucon together by train the day before the con. There was a lot of uncertainty about what the weather would be like during the weekend it literally kept changing every day I checked but I had packed with me Urahara as planned, just in case. It would have sucked if the weather turned out fine in the end and I had omitted my chance at cosplaying. :-DD
Once we arrived at Oulu we came to the conclusion that we were both pretty dang hungry and so we just slid into the nearest pizzeria we could find on the way. Yes, before even checking in at the hotel first lol. I had a pizza and it was so stonks that I couldn't finish it all and had to take the last couple slices with me wrapped in tinfoil. It's good that hotel rooms have minibars but oh lord Metapod my savior did the fridge smell of my greasy garlic pizza afterwards... xD

The rest of the day went by preparing for tomorrow and the rest was random hotel bullshit and trying to wind down after all the traveling. These old millennial bones can't keep up with this one con a week schedule lmao. Thank higher beings there's a break after Matsucon.

Saturday morning came, we woke up at 7:30 and headed almost straight for breakfast. Sokos Hotel Arina's breakfast buffet is very familiar to me by now, lol. The weather seemed fine at this point too.
Once we got back to our room I started putting on my cosplay. I had intentionally left my lenses at home this time because I figured it would be an unnecessary strain on my eyes because over half of my time at the con I would sit inside the green room during my work shifts. Urahara also has gray eyes anyway and usually the shadow of his hat blocks his eyes so I figured I could skip the lenses this time as I wasn't planning on photoshooting or anything anyway and well, I just wanted to be comfy and not have my eyes acting out because of dryness or whatever. I'm very relieved I decided to go without lenses because my eyes ended up being super dry all day – it felt like I had worn lenses for hours except that I hadn't!

Well, once we were done we took a taxi to the con; don't want to sweat off all the makeup before even arriving at the con. Yeah, despite it being August and northern Finland it was still rather hot – sure, the worst heat wave has passed but it still feels like it's warmer than it should be at this time of year? We can all collectively blame climate change I guess.

Matsucon entrance.

I think the clock was something around or near 11:00 when we arrived at the con. Immediately at the entrance I got my worker's badge and then I think we first went to check the Dealer's Hall in the main hall on the base floor. It's like a big open space with merch sellers and artisan tables along with merch for the guest of honors. You could of course also buy snacks and other Japanese treats.

View directly after entering the con. Dealer's Hall to the right.

Dealer's Hall and artisans were both in the same area.

I don't know how other countries do it but Finnish cons typically separate artist's alley and artisans nowadays, although technically they are the same type of sellers. The difference, as far as I know, is that artisan's are "too experienced" to be in the traditional artist's alley in a sense; usually an artisan has a long-running and/or highly successful business with high selling volumes. I think some cons are trying to prioritize giving the artist alley spots to artists who are newer and/or less experienced because the alley tables are cheaper than merch/artisan tables? So yeah, there's a lot of overlap and the line is blurry of when someone is considered an artist versus an artisan (I mean both are independent artists selling their works) but I can imagine this distinction was made in the interest of fairness and to make sure budding artists don't get mowed over by established ones with more experienced portfolios (aka more likely to be chosen by the con), especially because the artist alley slots always fill up crazy fast things you learn when you organize a con and far from everyone who applies gets a spot.

View of the main hall from the other side.

I browsed the different sellers and overall there was a great con atmosphere. It got a bit crowded at times but nothing out of the ordinary. So many sellers were very friendly and chatty, it was fun talking to everyone! I ended up buying a few items and then I think I went to chat with the Cryo tabletop guys (had some questions about the upcoming Maracon, which I'll maybe attend) and after that I had to hurry upstairs to my work station because I had to be in the green room for some briefing 15 minutes before my shift would start.

Second floor's corridor. Cryo's room to the left.

I've worked at Matsucon's green room once before so the briefing was very, well, brief. It's basically the same rules and everything of how to do things and what the work tasks are etc. Working in the green room is quite chill if you ask me but a requirement is that you have a valid hygiene pass certification so yeah, not everyone can apply for this volunteer role. So what do I do in the green room then? Well, the most important one I'd say is to make sure that there's always fresh coffee available because everyone needs caffeine all the time lmao. Of course there's basic stuff like answering food and green room related questions that other workers might ask and to keep the place tidy. Oh, and of course make sure that only people who are allowed to enter the green room are there, aka con workers and those who provide for the con in some way (panelists, security officers, sellers, guest of honors).

Green room edibles. :D Take a pause and eat~

One thing that made me chuckle was when I was in the green room just doing random small tasks and some other worker just says out loud "should we be trusting of Urahara being in charge of our foods?". xD I mean yeah the character is highly sus but I promise I'm not sus lmao!

All my work shifts on Saturday were 2h shifts followed by 2h free time and so when I stamped out of my first competed shift at 14:00 I went to do a speedrun of the Artist's Alley on the second floor (green room was on the third floor). Just like on previous years Artist's Alley was located on the second floor and split into two halves, one half on one end of the corridor and the other on the other end. It works sufficiently well although it can be quite difficult to browse during the rush hours because the hallway is rather narrow. I mean it is a school corridor.

View of the Artist's Alley. Or well, one half of it.

I felt like most sellers in the Artist's Alley were familiar to me this year, maybe there was one or two I didn't recall seeing before, but I still enjoy checking all tables in case there's something new. I feel a bit bad that I couldn't purchase from everyone who had interesting items but I have to be careful with my budget this month. :'( I already lowkey overspent a bit but it was worth it rausku is life.

Funny "feed Naruto/Sasuke" jars at Anocado's table. XD

I don't really know what was different with this year's Matsucon but it somehow felt more cozy, more idk... united? Or at least I personally had a surprisingly good time despite being stuck literally half my total con time inside the four walls of the green room. xD I must admit I liked Matsucon's older volunteer system better where you could choose if you wanted to have shifts on both days or focused into one day and the other day free. I understand why they possibly changed that to have everyone work both days but as a long-time volunteer I used to praise Matsucon in my mind for being the one who did things differently and let the volunteer have a semblance of control of how they wanted to work. As much as I had a good time it also, simultaneously, felt like my con experience was more scattered and sprawled out than before – especially my free time because I never had more than 2h at a time so yeah, I always had to plan what I "could do" and be as "time efficient" as possible to not waste it. Feels kinda counterproductive to stress about free time lol. :') For example I gave up on going to the video game room because time blindness when getting immersed playing is too real.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that roughly during this time (around 2 PM) I had checked the activities and rather spontaneously decided to go check out the "dragon art & samurai dance" program, despite having no clue what it truly was (mainly because Matsucon's leaflet didn't have program descriptions written out, you had to check them through a QR code). I just thought it sounded interesting and I happened to be free during the time slot it was on so I went to check what it was about. I noticed immediately that the room was almost full and there was a Japanese lady in kimono standing in front doing some kind of presentation. I glanced an empty chair in front and sat my ass down and, despite my initial confusion of a mismatch in expectations (seemed like some kind of business advertisement at first lol), it was a very worthwhile experience.

Japan and Finland in unity art statement? Something like that. :3

Eventually another lady in wafuku, Shihomi, took the stage and after introducing herself and what she does I was intrigued. She's an arts and entertainment performer expressing and sharing the teachings of Japanese divinity, zen etc through various art and dance acts. I really liked the way she spoke, it was professional without being dull and heavy; there was clearly a passion of sharing her culture without making it appear "exotic" and "marketable" for westerners. I liked especially how there were spiritual and zen components weaved into the samurai dance performance (which I sadly didn't get photos of because there were people sitting in front of me and catching a good photo of a moving person is hard!) and also after when she did the calligraphy dragon art. 

Dragon scroll painting.

I can't quite explain it but during the performances, especially the samurai dance with the fan, I felt a stir of emotions that came out of nowhere. Maybe it was the atmospheric music that let the mind wander combined with her refined moves and sharp expression but something deeply spiritual felt very tangible in those moments. I rarely get watery eyes but the silent yet powerful energy of that performance moved me.

The dragon painting was also a treat to watch. She freehanded it in roughly 10 minutes, with a prayer before starting and after finishing it. It was mesmerizing in its simplicity and professionalism – of placing trust in the process. I liked the descriptions of the dragon's powers in shintoism and how the direction the soaring dragon's head is facing matters.
She mentioned that the finished scroll was for sale for 500€ (half price from normal quote/value) but that's waaaaay out of my budget. *sniff* I do hope someone who could afford it bought it during Matsucon, it would definitely be a really cool and unique home decor, along with a memory to look back on...

You could buy home lucky charms and other crafts made by Shihomi.

After the painting was done the next activity was a bon odori dance for everyone to join in on. At this point I decided to leave because I didn't see Firith anywhere in the room and I'm too awkward to dance around people lol. Besides, my knee had been unstable lately (I had wrapped it for stability) and I didn't want to take any risks to aggravate it further thankfully con workers are allowed to use the elevator.

I found Firith just outside at the cafeteria and I'm not sure what we did at this point but I think we went to browse the other half of the Artist's Alley? It's a bit hard to remember what exactly I did when because all this time I was just trying to explore as much as possible without overstaying anywhere lol, I had to optimize the shit out of my free time. 

The rest of the con day flowed by without a hitch. Or well, except that in the green room one of the two coffee brewers randomly dropped a spring from nowhere?? It still worked though and no one was entirely sure where it came from lmao. Having a malfunctioning coffee machine would have been a whole new level of disaster kahvin menekkiä ei voi estää. Oh, and at some point when I was in the green room there suddenly came a massive rainfall out of nowhere, like it was raining sideways. :'D Good thing it came when I was indoors...

On Saturday I had the last shift and so when I was done the con closed for the day. Me and Firith had some differing opinions on if we should take a taxi in case it rains again or walk back to the hotel, I voted for the latter. We ended up walking and it was a good idea because it didn't rain and the weather was actually pleasant because it had cooled a bit and so it was rather refreshing. We ended up taking the semi-classic "proof that I had a costume on" photo at the nearby park. And got goofy about it. :'D

Am I hip with the kids or cringe now?

Once we got to the hotel we peeled off our cost--, wait a sec, no we didn't. Before we got to the hotel we grabbed some bubble tea and ResQ app sushi lol. Yes, we still had the smelly pizza slices in the fridge too. xD It's kinda convenient when the hotel is in the heart of the centrum so you just have to walk a few meters to get boba, get food, go to the foodstore or the bar or anything really. 

Back at the hotel the costume flew off and into the shower I went. Firith had planned a meeting with some mutual friends at a bar in like an hour or so and so we had to get ready. We still had time to chomp down the sushi though and slurp our bobas, no stress. 
We went out into Oulu's night life and met up with Gure and Selja and one of their friends. The bar that had been chosen I personally found very uncomfortable at first; it was claustrophobic and the music was way too loud and everyone around us were drunk and loud and yeah, it was sensory overload hell for me. Luckily a spot on the terrace freed up and we quickly moved outside, which was much better because we didn't have to listen to drunks unaware of their own decibel levels. I still despise the guts of random people who start smoking right next to me and blow those cancer fumes in my face. :)

Eventually we parted ways and me and Firith went back to the hotel and watched some National Geographic and binged doritos until past midnight lol.

Sunday morning came and it was another round of breakfast and then we had to pack up everything and leave the room. I had no cosplay for Sunday and that was for the better, just didn't want to sit in the train in costume nor waste precious free time trying to change out of costume at the con.

Matsucon outside area. People hung out outside too. :)

My first work shift was at 11:00 but we arrived at Matsucon before that and so we had some time to wander around and explore. Sunday was more calm than Saturday but that's a given, it's almost always a more laid-back day regardless of the con. 

Feel Japan drop-in workshop.

Already yesterday we were curious about this Feel Japan workshop on the second floor but on Sunday we decided to check it out. You could try calligraphy (kanji on paper), I think I saw some kendama toys and there was this lovely slightly older Japanese lady, Yoko, who apparently lives in Finland and organizes cultural exchange events. You could try out kimono here and get help dressing up, which is a really nice experience offered for those who've never tried it and are curious. I ended up talking with her that I actually collect and wear vintage kimono myself (although I've had a long break on the collecting part) and she and the other lady who was in the workshop got so excited when I dug up an old photo to show them. It's been years since I last had someone so exhilaratingly beam kakkoii at me. x) Aah, so precious! I really should dress up more often, it's been a long time since I last did a proper wafuku coordination...

General view of the main area (Dealer's Hall) from above.

Sadly I didn't have that much time to talk before I had to leave because my work shift was starting. I was hoping to return later but in the end I didn't have time before they closed the workshop. :( Oh well, I hope a similar workshop will be held in future conventions in Oulu so I could check it out more thoroughly – would have liked to try the calligraphy with some guidance!

The video game room~

I took a peek into the video game room at some point but they didn't have U.N. Squadron on Super Nintendo, although there were quite many SNES games available. I hope I one day find a con that has that game available to play, I miss it so much. 

I was tempted to buy that Dragonair... ;_;

I honestly don't remember much what I did on Sunday. I just worked and existed in a daze lol? Conidarra iskee ennen kun coni ees on loppu? :'D No but really, I remember having a decent time and like idling at the Artist's Alley, checking if I missed something on my earlier runs and such. I always triple-check just in case because it feels like you always miss something somehow. 

Organization booths were downstairs, mainly other cons advertising!

I had the very last hour's shift and that meant I was in the green room packing things up, wiping tables etc when we started closing it down when there was like 30 minutes left. Once again there was a loooot of bread left over (I still remember the rieska mayhem many years ago omfg) and anyone of the workers who wanted to could take some home with them. I grabbed what I could carry before I left. xD

After we retrieved our luggages from the cloakroom we took a taxi to the train station. At the train station we saw a random pink abandoned travel bag next to the rails on the opposite of where we stood? No idea what was going on but it was unattended for the whole duration we were there (almost one hour) and it was kinda weird, not gonna lie. I hope the original owner reclaimed it. :S


Anyways, Matsucon this year was a solid experience. I liked the overall atmosphere and flow of the event and I'm happy I went to impromptu check out Shihomi's performances, those really elevated my Matsucon experience and made it more memorable as a whole; I even feel inspired now to paint more and seek inspiration from other channels in life.

My con haul! Kultainen ES on vihdoin löydetty. xD #tietäjättietää

Thanks for reading and thanks to everyone who interacted with me! <3

Matsucon 2025 cosplay plans!

 Hi there!

I've barely had time to recover from the long trip to Mericon and soon I'll be in Oulu at another convention! It's been a really tight con schedule this year but at least after this it'll calm down for a little bit lol. :'D So yeah, Matsucon is coming up now this upcoming weekend on 9-10 August and of course, as a north-dweller, I am attending. 

Just like the past few years I applied to be a volunteer worker again. Honestly I'm quite exhausted mentally but I got one of the relaxed jobs so yeah, it should be fine.

I thought for a while if I had the energy to cosplay but decided that I'll at least bring one of my easiest cosplays to put on – which happens to be among my breeziest ones too, in case it's hot. Which it might be considering the record heats this year. Of course my chosen cosplay has to fit the requirement of being easy to work in too and yeah, not hindering mobility because I will be watching over the green room.

Cosplay revelation ba ba boom~

Character: Kisuke Urahara

Series: Bleach

The sus hat guy returns for a second round after his debut in Nekocon 2023! This is one of my easier cosplays to move around in except perhaps for the geta clogs which can be spicy when going down stairs lol and thus perfect for the Saturday. I might just walk around in normal shoes for convenience though, will bring geta in case there's a nice photo location somewhere nearby. 

But if the weather on Saturday ends up as all over the place as it's been here the last couple days (aka constantly fluctuating between sun, rain and thunder) then I will not cosplay.

On Sunday I will be incognito in casual clothes lol. So yeah, only one cosplay for this year's Matsucon, believe it! 

That's all, see you at Matsucon!

Kisuke Urahara cosplay WIP

 Hello frens!

I finally got around to compile the work in progress post of how I made my Urahara cosplay from Bleach, you know, the sus shopkeeper with the funny hat. Although I gotta say I didn't take very many photos of the process, partly because I forgot and partly because this was a last-minute rush project. We all know how real the con crunch can be so please cut me some slack lol.

 

Oh, and all the photos are taken with my phone's not-so-good camera so yeah, I'm sorry but the quality is a lot more shit than usual. I didn't have my SLR camera with me at any point while I was working on this cosplay, so no can do. Bad photos are still better than no photos and thus no WIP post, right?

Anyways, let's go!

Kisuke Urahara reference.

 

Okay so, this cosplay materialized in a very short amount of time. I had to finish it no later than one and a half week before Nekocon as that was when I left home with mom and stepdad to attend my cousin's wedding in the other end of the country, which meant my cosplay came with me to Gothenburg and from there to Kuopio on our return trip. I don't like doing anything with a really stressful time frame but stress is also a good motivator to get things done.

Because of the lack of time I didn't have time to visit a fabric store. Thankfully mom used to have a fabric store many years ago and what remains from it is in her attic, so basically there's a fabric store at home whenever I visit her. So I went and pillaged the sortiment and almost immediately found a perfect green cotton fabric and a sufficient dark green polyester fabric. 

I know, Urahara's haori is most often depicted as black but mom didn't have any black fabric (unless I wanted a really porno PVC haori lmao) so I had to use something else that seemed passable. My options were dark grey, dark brown or dark green but I found dark green first and decided to roll with it because the colors went nicely together.

Fabrics, check.

I immediately spread out the fabrics on the kitchen table and started measuring and cutting out all the pieces. Urahara's outfit consists of a samue (kimono-like top and pants) set, a haori, traditional geta clogs and his signature hat. I only used a pattern for the pants, the rest I just winged because kimono are basically just rectangles sewn together.

Fabric laid out.

Pants pants pants!

All the pieces laid out plus elastic, cord and threads.

That's all the progress I did on the first day, it was quite late. The next day I used mom's serger to go through all the raw edges. I have to be kind to it as it's as old as I am and if you go too fast it will squeak a lot. Poor thing has seen a lot of use but it's such a trusty, convenient lil' machine. <3

Saumuri goes brrrr

While I was working on my cosplay mom was using the sewing machine to do some embroidery gifts for the wedding and that's when the worst thing that could happen happened – the machine died! Like it would start up but it would not sew a single stitch and just make this infernal noise instead. It was panic galore. Like please not now, we literally don't have time for this! T_T

So I had to ask Sallukka for an emergency visit to their place so I could continue on my cosplay. Mom drove me home and I packed my stuff for the wedding trip. I also frantically searched for Urahara's hat because I knew I had seen it _somewhere_ but I had no idea where as it was literal years ago. I bought it many years ago at a con just for shits and giggles and now I needed to find it for some real use.

After rummaging through all thinkable closets and storages I found it inside a large black plastic bag that smelled like yesteryear!

 

Hat and wig found, wohoo!

I also looked through my shoes and low and behold – I had the perfect pair of geta clogs that I didn't even remember having! I can't believe my luck, I was ecstatic!
Also, I somehow found a suitable wig in my wig stash and no, I have no fucking clue what I originally intended to use this wig for; it was just existing in there. xD

 

Later on that same day Sallukka came to pick me up after they finished work for the day. I sewed the haori together in my friend's comfy abode in Kemi and did some paint tests. We also watched a bit of anime and had a good time.

 

One coat of paint, freshly applied.

Same single coat but dry. Insane difference.

On the photos above you see what a world of difference it makes whether or not the fabric paint is made specifically for dark fabrics or not. This is the same brand with ordinary white on the left and "for dark fabrics" white on the right. The ordinary white is hardly even visible after it dried while the other white is super opaque! I didn't have to think twice on which one to choose.

Mom came to pick me up from Kemi after she got her sewing machine repaired. It warranted a trip to an old gentleman in Oulu with 40 years of experience repairing all kinds of sewing machines.

Back at mom's I started to prepare for painting those salmiakit rhombic patterns. I wanted to make a stencil to guarantee that the symbols would be as identical as possible and for that I needed some kind of plastic or cardboard etc as a base. Mom had no suitable scrap cardboard available but my stepdad had a big leftover roll of 'rakennusmuovi' (builders plastic, construction plastic?) that he used while building the house they live in. It turned out to be just what I needed!

I made my stencil out of this plastic roll.

Stencil design measured and sketched.

I wanted to paint by hand with a pencil so I didn't do the usual stencil approach and instead used the cut-out shape as a measure, drawing along the outlines with tailor's chalk. 

It was quite a nightmare to figure out how many symbols I could do while having the space between each one as identical as possible throughout the whole width of the garment. I almost had a meltdown fr, it was so frustrating because it would never line up just right, no matter how logically you tried to measure and calculate beforehand and then you had to redo and redo and redo and yeah, I just wanted to cry lol.

This was my "spacing them out" approach. It was pain.

Finally got it to be as symmetrical as possible!

One coat of paint later.

The fabric paint was so good that I only had to do two layers to have an opaque, covering result. And this is on synthetic fabric, which I found extra impressive as the paint didn't even specify that it would work on synthetics – only naturals like cotton and silk etc.

Sealing the paint.

I let my paint job dry overnight and then heat-sealed it the usual way. I personally use baking paper for protection when sealing fabric paint on synthetics because the recommended heat-setting is usually "cotton strength" (aka three dots or max heat) but synthetics rarely can withstand that high heat without taking damage. Using baking paper as a barrier also protects the iron itself so it's a win-win in my book.

After that was done I went to try on the haori in the mirror. I noticed quite soon that my sleeves looked dumb as hell because I had apparently had a brainfart when I had sewn them and yeah, I had hemmed the edges the opposite way from how I usually do and I had completely forgot to factor in that the sleeve mouths are quite wide and so the fugliness of my flappy flap flap seam was very visible!

Fix that awkward mistake!

 

On the photo above you can see what I meant by hemming the opposite way of how I usually do. The left sleeve (which I'm correcting/sewing on the pic) is how I usually hem everything and the sleeve laid out to the right is the epic fail brainfart deluxe sew-it-together-in-the-middle-of-the-night abomination that knows no bounds nor decency.

After that hotfix my haori was done, this time for real. Now what was left to do was to sew together the samue. I didn't take any photos because it was really simple and basic stuff. The only thing I did that's worth mentioning is that I took some liberties with leaving slight openings at the armpits, this to make attaching a straight sleeve to a straight body of fabric as easy as possible and, secondly, to make the cosplay a bit more breezy – aka less sweaty to wear. I did the exact same approach while attaching the sleeves to the haori too. I figured it won't really be that obvious unless I lift my arms a lot and well, it's not like Tite Kubo followed many traditional kimono rules when he designed the outfits for the characters anyway so it's not like I'm comitting any terrible kitsuke police offenses here either by just making cosplay life a bit more comfortable for myself – by deviating from references ever so slightly.

Sleeve opening shenanigans.

 

I had originally cut out the okumi panel (the front "add-on panel") for the samue to get extra width in the front for overlap, but upon closer scrutiny I noticed that the okumi seam is completely absent on reference arts and well, Urahara wears his samue rather sloppily anyway and it only narrowly overlaps in the front so yeah, I decided to leave it out as I determined that the extra width wasn't needed after a test wear.

To add the little cords (the ribbon tie) keeping his top closed I just put the almost finished garment on my body, looked in the mirror to figure out the approximate placement, marked with pins and then sewed them on. Of course I acupunctured myself with the pins too.

The pants were super easy to do, just basic 3/4 length trousers with an elastic waist. I used a basic loose-fitting pattern mom had already cut out from a sewing magazine earlier and modified the pant legs a bit shorter and added extra length on top to make the channel for the elastic to reside in.

Measuring and readying the waist for elastic insertion.

And with that my rushed cosplay was finished. 8D Considering how ass-on-fire this whole project was it turned out pretty okay – luckily Urahara is not a very complicated costume to make so yeah, the risk of absolute unhinged disaster was low. I'm still happy I got it done on time as the cosplay turned out to be comfy and fun to wear and yes, breezy too. 

For photos of the completed cosplay check out this mini photoshoot I did during Nekocon. ^_^

Thanks for reading, stay crafty you nerds!

~ Shiro Samurai

Kisuke Urahara mini photoshoot

 Hello hello!

Back when I was at Nekocon I had a quick photoshoot of my new Urahara cosplay from Bleach, which I threw together in panic like a week before departure. xD All things considered it turned out decently and, more importantly, it was comfortable to wear at a summer con. I'm so over the days of sweating to death for the sake of cosplay – I'm getting too old for that shit lol, I just want to be comfortable.

 

I know, I have yet to write the WIP post about this costume but I will do that when I got the time, right now there's a lot going on. But anyways, let's get over to the photoshoot results!

Cosplayer: Shiro Samurai (Kisuke Urahara)

Photographer: Firith

Photo editor: Shiro Samurai

 

I didn't have time before the con to make any kind of props as this cosplay was very last-minute and spontaneous. It would have been cool to have Benihime or at least a fan, a walking cane or any recognizable item that Urahara sells in his shop. Oh well, maybe someday I'll add something extra to this costume.

That's all, stay fresh cheesebags!

~ Shiro Samurai

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.