Konekocon 2025 – First winter visit to Kuopio

 Hello everyone!

Konekocon was held this past weekend on Saturday 1st February in Kuopio, Finland. Konekocon is essentially a mini version of Nekocon that's held on the summer in the same city. I've been to Nekocon twice before but never to Konekocon so yeah, I thought I should check it out at least once so that I know whether I've been missing out or not. Spoiler alert: not really.

Let's get to the summary~

Entrance to Lumit, the con building.

The night between Thursday and Friday I spent over at Sallukka's and Dongrieg's place in Kemi, to make it easier to catch the train on the morning. We had a pleasant time just chilling, talking and I also watched them play Monster Hunter Rise together and now I'm tempted to grab it too the next time it comes on sale. :') I played the early demo on Switch way back and it just rubbed me the wrong way back then, I hated so many of the changes as a long-time hunter and decided it would be the first installment of the series that I'd skip. Well, now I saw my friends play and I was quite surprised to see that none of the annoying things in the demo seemed present, almost as if it was a completely different game? It looked like *gasp* Monster Hunter – and the new things suddenly seemed managaeable and not like forced gimmicks you had to use at all times. Completely changed my opinion right there and then lol.

Anyways, we eventually went to sleep (Dongrieg went earlier, me and Sallukka ended up talking about con stuff until way too late lmao) and then it was Friday morning. I was the only one out of us three who was heading for Konekocon (they had just been at Desucon Frostbite the weekend before!) so on the morning I packed my stuff and had Sallukka kindly drive me to the train station. Had a panic moment when I didn't find my phone in my pockets once I sat down in the car (we were already on the verge of running late) but luckily it had not fallen out on the yard – it had just slipped out of my pocket and I was sitting on it. Classic. xD
We got to the train station just in time when the train arrived. I saw Firith waiting on the platform. We got to our seats and then the journey down to Kuopio started... or well, first there was a stop and train change at Oulu, which meant we went to the Asian market on the other side of the street and bought some mochi and coconut jelly drinks.
I honestly don't remember much of the train trip itself, I think I mostly just idled on my phone and then suddenly we were in Kuopio lol. Our hotel for the trip was Sokos Hotel Puijonsarvi, which was a first visit for me.

There was a goldfish aquarium at the hotel's reception!

Of course we got a hotel room that was like the furthest away in the corridor (and no, it still wasn't quiet because some kids were running amok), yay. Anyways, because we had been traveling the whole day we hadn't really had an opportunity to eat properly so of course we were really hungry. We dropped our stuff in the hotel room and almost directly started to look up restaurant options; Kuopio is not really a familiar city to either of us but after staring intensely at Google Maps for long enough we just decided to head out and go with what we found first that looked inviting. Yeah, in truth we couldn't agree on if we wanted pizza or a Chinese restaurant lmao.

Spoiler broiler! We went to a Nepalese restaurant instead!

Fuck me this food was good. ;__;

We found this super convincing Nepalese restaurant hidden inside a shopping center that had these huge decals plastered outside saying "Finland's best Nepalese restaurant" – now it can't be bad at least. :'D There were a lot of people eating inside too and that's always a sign of quality. So yeah, we totally went with this one and oh boy it was a good choice, so much yum yum! For anyone curious who happens to be in Kuopio now (or in the future) and wants to know the sauce name of the place – it's called Mandala and it's located in kauppakeskus Apaja. Well worth a visit, just be aware that it's slightly on the expensive side.

Once we were done we headed back to the hotel for the night. A nice thing was that we had access to National Geographic in the room so we might have watched a lot of programs, including WW2 history (what happened to the submarine USS Scamp) and a program about king Herod from the Bible. It's a good thing that I don't have National Geographic at home or I would probably watch it too much lmao, almost everything's interesting dangit!

Okay, Saturday morning was upon us. I slept poorly, no surprises there. Quickly put some clothes on and headed for the breakfast buffet, which was really good (on par with the Sokos hotel in Oulu). I was disappointed when I saw a handful of random women with multiple macarons on their plates, only to find out that there were none left at the dessert table when I went to look. :C *sniff* Oh well, I don't complain when there's fresh cantaloupe melon available!

Once we were done with the breakfast we went back to our room to put on our costumes. My costume for the con was Yamato no Kami Yasusada from Touken Ranbu. I managed to find the scarf before departure but it was in a weirdass place and terribly wrinked to boot, but thankfully Sallukka let me iron it before I left Kemi; I don't have an ironing board at home – scandalous for a cosplayer, I know!
I don't know what was wrong with this con morning but my makeup just wasn't having it. Like I had done all peelings and moisturizers and prep-work the night before but still the foundation just looked blotchy and shit lol. Not to mention that my eyeliner was particularly assymetrical too, rääh! Normally I might be a bit of a perfectionist but when even Firith said that the wings are noticeably different that's when you know it's bad lmao. I wasn't the only one struggling with putting my costume on though so I take pleasure in that shared suffering lololo

Once we finally were done we took a taxi to Konekocon. Sadly we arrived a bit too late and so we missed the Digimonien Avara Luonto program, again. :'( I wanted to see it already on its first outing at a previous con but it just didn't work out and now we were too late again. I'm just not a morning person so yeah, trying to catch con activities that are on the first couple hours after opening is hard when you have some serious insomnia issues.
It was a bit confusing when we arrived in front of the building because there was basically no one outside (which, on one hand, is normal because winter and cold) and so you have that split-second of doubting if you're even in the right place. It looked so empty. The lack of any posters or anything indicating that something was happening inside was also a bit weird. If you didn't know that it was the correct building you might have just walked past it, that's how plain and unassuming it looked.
Oh well, quite literally the first thing we did after we got our con tickets exchanged was that we went back outside to snap a couple proof photos that we had costumes on.

When you try to be cute but look like you need tramadol.

We had no intentions to have any proper photoshoots because neither of us felt like it – makeup game wasn't on point and that bothered us both enough to feel like it wasn't worthwhile. So yeah, once we got the photos we needed we headed back inside and I changed out of my winter shoes and into my geta. I dropped my shoes off at the cloakroom (honestly it felt nice to only have a bag of shoes to drop off and not half your belongings lol) and then we beelined to the Artist's Alley.

View from the entrance. Ticket desk to the right.

There were no info booklets so instead you had the activities
and info plastered on a few walls around the con.

The Artist's Alley was located upstairs in what looked like a school's gymnastics room. I gotta say I felt a bit dumb because I was so disoriented and confused when I went upstairs the first time – I didn't get it at first that it's the same Lumit building we had been in at Nekocon because we entered from a different floor and direction and because the spaces were utilized differently. So for example what was the Artist's Alley in Nekocon was a lounge area in Konekocon and what was the Artist's Alley in Konekocon had been the video game room in Nekocon. :D

View when entering the Artist's Alley.

Closer view of the middle table area.

Artist's Alley was easy to move around in because it was located in a big gymnastics room and the tables were located along the edges and a group was roughly in the middle. This made the traffic flow well and it never felt crammed nor suffered from poor air quality, which was nice. Oh, I should mention that the gymnastics room didn't only host the artists, there were also some merchandise dealers like manga sellers, Pokémon TCG sellers and an authentic kimono seller whom I was so socially awkward with that I was tormented by that encounter for the rest of the day #help.
I liked that there were some sellers and artists that I hadn't seen before and also some that I've only seen like once or twice!

General pic of the main/lounge area.

After plowing through the Artist's Alley and combined Dealer's Hall we just sat down at one of the tables in the main area for a little while and then we went to look for the 'conikirppis', aka the flea market. I'm not sure if we were just late (clock was roughly 13 something) and everyone had already raided it clean or what but I gotta be blunt here and say that this was by far the worst kirppis I've ever seen at a con. Like it was so empty that it was a very weird sight and what was left was clearly stuff that people wanted to get rid off and no one wanted to buy (*coughloneharrypottermerchcough*). I mean it looks a little bit depressing when you see more table surface than products on the table. It was full-on empty, no joke.
There were a few figurines in boxes that I think were probably fair buys (didn't check price or look closer because the series didn't interest me) but there were some things that just made me shake my head in disbelief when I saw the price tags. I'm not gonna go into specifics but lets just say clearly self-made stuff that either were falling or had fallen apart (or was just poorly made) and with outrageous asking prices considering the condition. It was just... baffling. No one buys near-broken stuff for like 30€, that's some serious delulu.

More tables to sit and lounge at.

After the flea market we headed up another floor to get to the video game room and were most of the activity rooms were. Or well, one of them was a "silent room" option, which I gotta say is a very nice concept because sometimes you might just need to retreat for any reason and it's good that there's a space provided for this kind of needs – especially since it seems rather common that congoers are on the neurodivergent spectrum. This kind of increasing thoughtfulness makes me happy.

View towards the silent room.

Just next to the silent room was the video game room. It was a moderately small room with a few consoles, mostly newer generation. There was at least one PS5 (maybe two), a Nintendo Switch, a PS2 and then one console with a rhythm dance mat. There was a relaxed atmosphere in the room and the guys running it seemed very chill too. I wouldn't have minded playing some Mario Kart on the Switch (I don't have it myself) but the trio of friends seemed really immersed and so I didn't want to bother them and have them potentially ending their session early. I ended up just watching them playing for a while and then I moved on to try and find the karaoke room. There was Tekken 8 that was vacant but I didn't feel like throwing punches.

Gaming room feat. gamers.

I just aimlessly wandered around upstairs and I happened to find one of the panelist rooms that had one of those character improvisation panels running ("how to be in-character", basically) and when I walked past that room I soon came across the karaoke room in the far back. I'm surprised that the karaoke room was so far away from everything else but I guess it was probably one of the few bigger rooms to host it in or something? The room was indeed quite sizeable, I'll give it that. There were several groups of people just hanging out there and the overall mood was laid-back and casual.

The karaoke room and one of Nekocon's mascots singing.

We stayed in the karaoke room for a while because it was free music and also because Firith was on the fence on whether to dare sing or not. It didn't end up happening.

I gotta say that one thing that we both couldn't help but notice was that the average age of the visitors seemed to be a bit lower than on your average convention. It felt like there were a lot of kids and minors running around and because I'm a millenial I felt like a goddamn dinosaur in comparison lmao. I mean yeah it's nice to see that the younger generations are getting into the anime subcultures yada yada but man did it make me feel like an old fart!

Upstairs were also these nice "private boxes" were you could hang out.

View when you arrived upstairs, there's a scene just downstairs.

We eventually noticed that the clock was quite much and decided to head back down to go check out whatever that one Miku Hatsune program was. I'll admit I had no prior knowledge and basically went in blind with the only assumption that it probably featured dancing. I'm not sure if I even had any expectations and that's probably a good thing because I just went in with the hopes of being entertained to some degree. The show was called Snowflake Harmony and it was held on the con's last hours. I wanted to attend at least something and this seemed like it could be fun – and so I tagged along with Firith, who's a big Vocaloid fan.

Snowflake Harmony first solo live debut.

I'll admit I'm probably not the target audience for this because as far as my Vocaloid knowledge goes I only know some of the characters and only barely know some of the most popular songs. Thankfully that did not stop me from having a good time because the Miku cosplayer, who was the sole performer, was super adorable and energetic. She seemed to be a minor but had impressive theathrical talent for her age, which was most apparent in the funny short skits between the dance episodes where she would act out typical teenager scenarios with believable use and range of different voices and emotions. Very charismatic! I didn't catch what her social media tags were but if you see this just know that you did a great job and you have talent for acting! The dancing and lip sync were well done too and seemed to be the correct choreographies to the featured songs (according to Firith at least, I have no knowledge about this haha), it looked like she knew the lyrics by heart because the lip movements didn't seem random at all. We sat in one of the first rows so had a pretty close view to pay attention to that kind of stuff. x)

After the show ended we sat down near the cloakroom for a moment and contemplated our lives. Or more like what to do now. Originally Firith wanted to watch the cosplay catwalk, which was one of the last activities and would start in like 30 minutes. I wasn't really interested and soon enough we both agreed to leave because we realized we were rather tired and yeah, getting out of cosplay and grabbing something to eat was more enticing.
We called a taxi back to the hotel and left Konekocon behind. I don't remember much from the rest of the evening except that my eyes were so dry ngl they were dry already on the morning before I even put lenses on that I joked something about feeling like that flat fish that has the weird migrating eyes and Firith said "eli meno vitun punakampela" and I think that's something I can live by. xD

We went to grab pizza nearby in a place called Green House (yes it had a lot of plants to make the name legit), I honestly recommend because it was cheap and the pan pizza was delish!
The rest of the night we watched some more National Geographic and had some coctails and sweets. Our train home was on the following day so we got to enjoy another hotel breakfast buffet no daim chocolate cake :c.

Iltakevennys.

I have somewhat conflicted feelings about Konekocon, to be honest. It wasn't a bad con per se but it just felt bland and lowkey uninspired I guess? There weren't a lot of decorations (and what existed was Nekocon's stuff, so it didn't even feel like Konekocon had its own identity/branding) and this is probably gonna sound weird, because it's more commonly the opposite issue, but with Konekocon it felt like the building was too big for the con – almost all areas were so spacious that it felt half-empty. I know that they only sold roughly half of their tickets so there were like 500-ish attendants but yeah, I constantly had that feeling in the back of my head of "wow there's almost no one here". Don't get me wrong though, Lumit is a good building for hosting a con. It just felt barren and I really think more decorations would have helped with mitigating this. I can also make an educated guess that Desucon Frostbite being the weekend before ate up a lot of potential visitors, putting Konekocon at a bad time slot.
Perhaps I had too high expectations (partly due to Nekocon and also other winter versions of cons like Närcon Vinter) but I digress, it just felt lackluster and there wasn't really that much to do either. When I looked around it seemed like a lot of people appeared bored and like they were just sitting in groups scrolling on their phones waiting for something to happen instead of socializing. I think having some non-stop workshop activities like a drawing room, manga-reading corner or some kind of casual competitions (gaming tournaments etc) etc would have made the experience a lot more whole.

Honestly, if you live far away like me then I'd say don't bother with Konekocon and save your money. If you live close or are new to the scene then by all means go and support it! At least I can now personally cross Konekocon off my list of events to try out and not be bothered by that pesky "what if" voice anymore. It's not good but it's not bad either, it's just meh. For now at least, and that's only my opinion and experiences. I hope Konekocon grows better in the future, hopefully into its own boots and away from being just a shadow under Nekocon.

Thanks for reading, remember to not eat yellow snow!
~ Shiro Samurai

Konekocon 2025 cosplans!

 Hello everyone!

My con year will be started with Konekocon, the miniature version of Nekocon. January is almost done already (where did it go fr) and that means that Konekocon is just around the corner. Yes, it's literally held on the 1st February so it's about time that I settle on what to cosplay! I'm not sure if I'm mentally ready just yet but time is asking no one and everything has been booked already so it's yolo and let's go. I've had some absolutely awful insomnia episodes lately and I'm constantly out of energy so yeah, I'm not feeling it right now but I hope it will be a bit better by the time I start packing for Kuopio.

It took me a moment to decide on what to cosplay, mainly because I quite literally kept forgetting when Konekocon actually was and so I was in a constant loop of fooling myself and thinking that there's plenty of time to come up with something lol. Oh well, I wouldn't have had time to create anything new anyway (and recycling is pop!) and so I looked at what I could possibly rewear that wouldn't be too cold since yeah, it's still winter. I didn't want to wear something that I've recently worn out either and a bunch of my older costumes are still in need of repairs so yeah, that narrowed the list down quite conveniently. :')

Character: Yamato no Kami Yasusada
Series: Touken Ranbu

I'm going with Yasusada and, more specifically, his uchiban outfit or at least that's what I think the alternate outfits are called. This costume was last seen in Närcon 2017 so it's about time to bring it back out again I'd say. I should have all the pieces safely lying around, the only question mark is the scarf – I have no clue where it might be lol. I should have enough time to find it though so it'll be fine...

Because Konekocon is only a one-day event, unlike Nekocon, it also means that I'm only bringing one cosplay with me. Yasusada should be quite guaranteed unless some unforeseen disaster hits; although I will in all likelihood bring an extra pair of shoes with me for swapping whenever I go outdoors – I just don't want to fall and dislodge my arm if it's slippery outside it has happened more than once and I'm quite paranoid of it happening any more times.

That's it for the starter post of the year, Konekocon report coming next so stay tuned!
~ Shiro Samurai out.

Närcon 2017 – I lost my kigurumi virginity

*insert witty greeting here*

I'm back home from Närcon and currently going through the con hangover, lol. For those not in the know, Närcon is Sweden's largest convention and every year it's held during the last full weekend of July in Linköping, which meant that this year it landed on 27-30 July. ^_^ 

Närcon actually sold out their tickets this year (which I don't think they've done a lot before?) and so I read somewhere that they estimated that there would be approximately 10 000 visitors. In any way, it's a really big convention in Scandinavian standards and actually more like a festival than a convention.

Before I get to the summary I want to say that this is a really photo-heavy post (60+ images) and the fun thing is that during the con I always felt like I took really few actual con photos. :'D

Pre-con

Närcon for me started on the night between Tuesday and Wednesday before the con. Firith had come over on Tuesday and I packed all my stuff on the same day. I'm always late with this. We quickly decided that the night would be an allnighter since by the time the clock had passed midnight we were still up oops and we had to wake up at 3:00 in the night, at the latest, to make sure that we had plenty of time to walk to the bus station to take the bus to Piteå. No way am I sleeping less than 3 hours and waking up all fresh and ready to walk to the other side of town. xD

Start of the journey: walk to the bus station à la midnight sun.

We were pretty dead once we got to the bus station because yeah, heavy luggage is heavy. We had plenty of time to spare (better be too early than too late) so we just sat outside and chilled. The bus came at 4:40 local time and we jumped in. Most of the bus trip went by just chatting about randoms because, weirdly enough, we were surprisingly non-tired at this point. :D

When we got to Piteå the clock was pretty exactly 8:00 and the reason we went to Piteå was because we had planned a carpool with Vicktor, one of my con friends, and Piteå was the earliest place where he could pick us up. Once we got out of the bus I pretty instantly spotted him and me and Firith walked over to his red car, dumped our stuff in it and began our journey even more southwards.

Obligatory roadtrip photo. Starring the
Höga Kusten Bridge, of course.

The trip went well, except that my extreme tiredness from the lack of sleep kicked in after 12:00 something. xD We ate pizza along the way and I don't actually remember so much from the trip itself, except that me and Vicktor talked a lot about LARPing.

It was pretty late when we arrived at Linköping and, before anything else, we headed straight to Närcon to claim our con tickets in advance – it makes it so much more comfortable because then, once the con officially opens, you don't have to stand in line to get your ticket and you can just walk past the line through a different entrance.

Närcon 2017 con ticket, featuring origami design.

Once we all had our tickets (which went really quickly) we drove to a Scandic hotel nearby, where Firith was staying. He jumped out of the car and then Vicktor took me to my sleeping place – my big sister's apartment. You see, my big sister is moving to Germany really soon and this was my last chance to bunker at her place during the con stay, so of course I took the opportunity!

I bid goodbye to Vicktor and dragged all my stuff to big sister's living room, where I would sleep. I laid out all my stuff on the tatami floor and then I slowly spread it everywhere, lol. Don't we all? xD

For a couple hours or so I went through my stuff, prepped it for the con morning and then big sister warmed me some leftover food and then we spent some time together, mainly me watching her play Horizon: Zero Dawn on PS4.

Thursday

The first con day dawned. It was mission impossibru to get out of bed as early as I had hoped. :'D I don't think I managed to get out of bed before the clock was close to 10-ish, lol. Big sister was interested in tagging along to go check out Närcon (you could buy one-day tickets at the entrance) and so, to make my life easier on the same go, she followed with me and acted as a guide on how I should do to get to Campus as effectively as possible. To be honest I was really scared about how I would get to the con by myself since I don't know the town at all and yeah, at one point it looked like I'd have to bike there. 

Walking down this lovely river road...

... until it starts looking like a town. Notice the ship, it's actually
a bar and bistro. So cool!

She showed me the way to Resecentrum (aka Centralstation, the train & bus station) and we took bus number 12 to Campus, aka were Närcon was held. The first bus literally left when we were in front of it (we ran like mofos!) and so we had to wait approximately 30 min for the next one, lol. I also had to inform Firith that I would be late for our planned meetup outside C-huset, Närcon's main building. You see, Närcon consists of several university buildings and a large outdoor area and it's really hard to find people, unless you plan a meetup with them.

Once we got to the con I waited at the entrance until big sister managed to purchase her one-day ticket. Once she was done she went her own way while I went to find Firith. We had promised to change into cosplay together since he needed to borrow some of my face cleaning supplies and I needed help with putting on my cosplay. And yes, I decided to cosplay on Thursday but because I couldn't come up with a cosplay –and because Firith had an extra cosplay that he couldn't wear at the con– I ended up borrowing his Teutonic Knight Prussia (Hetalia) costume on a whim. xD I don't mind, Prussia is pretty cool haha. I even had red lenses ready because of my Kashuu cosplay.

Photographer is Firith, I'm of course the cosplayer and
I also edited the photo.

It took forever for me put on my cosplay and I messed up my makeup and had to redo half of it. <_> Accidentally put too much primer and my foundation just slided around, it was horrible. We tried having a quick photoshoot but it didn't work out and we both were stressed and were just fumbling around the whole day; it was a mess. On Thursday we didn't get to do much, in other words, and mainly just walked around and died from the heat. I actually don't have any clear memories of what we even did, except for just checking out the con briefly and then just... fumbling even more.

Närcon's upper outdoor area. Food courts were here etc.

Same as above, different angle. Närcon's grill in the background.

This food stand sold medieval pizza and more, really cool!

The main "campus road", leading to the sleeping accommodations etc.

As you can see it was a really sunny day and –even though these con pics are actually from Friday– Thursday's weather was pretty much the same. I didn't take any general con pics on Thursday.

One thing that I do remember was raging at the bubble tea prices. Warning for foul language: you see, last year it cost 50 SEK, which is already really expensive and yeah, this year it was just... disgusting. They had split the cost (clever little shits...) and marked the price with small letters below the tea flavors and the bubble flavors separately, which meant that you paid 55 SEK for just the tea itself and then an additional 5 SEK for the bubbles – in other words, you had to pay separately to get fucking bubbles in your fucking bubble tea, which upped the price to 60 SEK!?! I mean, if I want bubble tea I want it with the fucking bubbles and why in Odin's balls should I pay extra for those when it's the damn point with the drink?? >_> Yeah, instant boycott for me.

Närcon's outdoor map.

At some point big sister called me and said that she was hungry and asked if we wanted to eat together. Of course me and Firith agreed and then we ended up going to that little pasta house outside Närcon's area. Me and Firith shared a chicken pasta and, well, the price was decent for the amount of food that you got but I must give major minus points for the fact that the pasta itself wasn't salted. I demand salt in my life. :C

I don't have so much more to say about Thursday, really. Except that I left kinda early because big sister got tired and wanted to go home and I followed with her because yeah, I got a free bus ride (would have to pay had I gone alone cuz she had the bus card) and didn't have to worry about getting lost on the way back. ^^"

Friday

Again I didn't manage to get up early; I swear I'll never be a morning person. :)) I packed my Yasusada cosplay into a big backpack that my sister let me borrow, put the shoes and some other stuff into a plastic bag, took my camera bag with me and left for the con – this time alone. I was hesitating a bit but luckily the way to the bus station was pretty easy, as long as I followed the same river path that we took yesterday.
I think I arrived at the con around 12-ish and met up with Firith again outside C-huset. He was wearing his Cob cosplay from the Ghibli movie Tales from Earthsea, except for the makeup and the wig, for the same reason as yesterday. Again we raided a toilet together and I let him use my face cleansers etc and helped with untangling the wig and drawing on Cob's face markings. :D I then put on my Yasusada cosplay and at least this time I was spared from a makeup disaster, although it took a really long time anyway.

Sadly no Yasusada photoshoot, but here's
a cosplay selfie as proof that I wore him. x)

Once we were finally done we headed out to photoshoot Firith's cosplay immediately. He had earlier told me that he had seen a Therru cosplayer when he arrived at the con and we both were like "omg wtf bbq!" because neither of us expected to run into any other Tales from Earthsea cosplayers! All along during the photoshoot Firith was complaining about how Cob's shoes were murdering his feet and he just wanted to take the costume off, but the only reason he kept it on was in hopes of running into the Therru cosplayer again. The chances were slim because there's a lot of people at the con and many different buildings they could be in.
We had a lot of trouble with the photoshoot because the sunlight was so harsh that my camera literally didn't want to photograph properly; I tried all kinds of settings and manually adjusting and everything was just... shit. I eventually got fed up with it, gave up and then Firith told me to try his Canon instead. Fun thing here is that my camera (I'm Nikon master race~) has always been the better one during our cosplay shoots but now, weirdly enough, his Canon worked much better. My camera only took selfies decently, as you can see. We were both like "omg what the heck the Canon is beating the Nikon??" but at least we got some good shots. XD

I didn't photoshoot Yasusada because of the intense sunlight and yeah, I was so uneasy anyway during the whole day. I also didn't wear my proper juban (ideal one for photoshoot) because of the heat and instead wore a martial arts under kimono so yeah. ^^" I must admit that cosplaying cute/young characters is a bit out of my comfort zone, I'm so used to doing certain character types that I have a hard time acting all cute and innocent...

This kiosk stand (selling lemonade, candies etc) was my favorite
because they played awesome metal music, loud! \m/

Josbaren (juice bar), as popular as ever.

The rave forest. I never saw it in action but I assume it was a success.
Last year it was in a different place so I was a bit confused, tbh. xD

Spiderman bouncy castle!

If Thursday was fumbling day then Friday was fumbling deluxe. A lot of the time was spent just trying to make ourselves sort-of-comfortable in our cosplays and then Firith got blisters and shit on his feet and had to go to Närcon's first-aid room ('sjukstuga' in Swedish) and later on he had to go back to the hotel to change out of costume. I spent quite some time waiting for him to come back and Friday was just... all over the place. It went by really quickly and I just felt so out of sync somehow, if that makes sense? I couldn't really find the time to settle down and actually enjoy the con.

At some point we went to check out Artist's Alley, which was located in Key-huset, quite far away from the rest of the main buildings. If I'm honest few things interested me, mainly because I'm not into the current popular fandoms at all. I dislike most of them, lol. It felt like a lot of the artists were selling stickers and prints and those are among the things that interest me the least... ^^"

Artist's Alley, pretty much entrance view.

It was really cool to see Humon Comics in the Artist's Alley thou! They were actually one of the Guests of Honor and told me that they had sold out most of the pins (all the Nordics!) and all the posters early. I know that big sister managed to grab a poster but I only had time to check the table on Friday and by then most of the cool stuff was gone. xD I found a really rad Gandalf Odin pin that I bought – gotta have something!

Humon Comics' table at Artist's Alley.

I found this one artist called Afternoonfika who was selling absolutely adorable stuff! I just loved the art style, it's so freaking cute! ;w; I stayed and chatted at the table for quite some time and both the sellers were super nice and friendly! I ended up buying phone charms for both me, Sacchan and Frozen Angel. Just couldn't resist the cuteness.

Here's three photos of the items that Afternoonfika was selling: 

Super kawaii charms!

Big prints/posters!

And stickers! The Eeveelution set is so cute~

I adore the focus on marine animals, I've always had a thing for those! When I was a kid I drew comics with fishes and crabs and it kinda just stuck with me. xD

One thing that I noticed that was different on this year's Närcon when compared to earlier Närcons was that there were more big decorations and stuff that you could interact with and such. It gave a really comfy and nerdy feeling!

This Batman statue was in C-huset, close
to some Finnish dealers.

Totoro!!

And this huge Onix! It served as a meeting point for Pokémon fans.

Darth Sidious statue close to C-huset.

There were more of these character decorations as well, like those green pipes from the Super Mario universe that you could actually climb up on and then go inside the pipe. My big sister actually fooled around in one of those and asked me to record it. xD Närcon overall had a lot of activities and stuff that you could do (like borrow water pistols!) but sadly I'm such an awkward, shy and boring person that I didn't utilize anything of it. :'< A random congoer actually tried to spontaneously "fake shoot" me with some kind of rubber band (not sure) in one of the merchandise rooms and because I didn't react on it I got the comment "you're boring". Well gee thanks, I totally needed to hear that right then because I was actually feeling anxious. -.- I wish I was more spontaneous and social but I'm such an introvert and I can't help it...

I don't remember exactly when but at some point towards the evening I changed out of cosplay. Big sister is awesome and let me borrow her Rilakkuma kigurumi and so I had at least something to wear instead of just being a filthy casual. x) I had never worn a kigurumi before, shit is lit!

Bear power!

We didn't do anything particular on Friday either, except that I finally started playing Pokémon Go actively! I'm still struggling with understanding some of the basic things but I'll get there!

I ordered a yakiniku from Yatai (by ShinNori) for dinner. Really good!

Regarding Närcon's overall atmosphere it is like a festival more than a convention, as I mentioned above. It's very welcoming and people are generally kind and helpful and ready to make new friends.
I did feel like there were fewer food options this year (or maybe I just missed them) and some sellers that I saw last year weren't at Närcon this year etc. I also didn't bother to photograph the merchandise since probably like 80% of what was being sold was the same or similar to last year's, so if you want to see the potential merchandise more in detail then just check out my last year's con summary.

One of several outdoor merchandise sellers.

Now this was something I didn't see last year!

Really creative painting additions, haha.

We stayed at Närcon until something close to midnight before I took the bus back to my sister's place. I was nervous about walking all the way back alone and it was really dark outside, which makes my paranoia kick in even more. I've always been really afraid of walking outside alone at night. It just creeps the shit out of me and it's even worse if there's someone walking behind me etc. Luckily I didn't bump into anyone but sadly I turned too early and ended up getting lost. I had to activate roaming mom don't kill me and use Google Maps to find my way back to sister's place. Once there I spammed the Pokéstop in the backyard until my bag got full and then I went to sleep. xD

Saturday

I think I woke up slightly earlier than on the previous days – personal success! :D
No but really, I went to eat breakfast and such as normal and then I looked out of the window and noticed that the weather was much cloudier than on the past days. On Saturday I had originally planned to wear Kashuu but already on Friday evening I made a Twitter post saying that my back was hurting so much from carrying around a heavy backpack for two days in a row and now it even looked like the weather would be against it as well. The thing with Kashuu is that, unlike my Yasusada cosplay, Kashuu's outfit consists solely of vintage silk and thus rain could easily damage the outfit and yeah, I've had to deal with water damage/stains before on silk kimono and it's not fun. I also wasn't sure if I could be bothered to do heavy makeup three days in a row – I guess I'm getting old, lol.
It's a shame because I was really looking forward to wearing him but I don't want to risk anything with such unstable weather and my back was seriously hurting so much over the course of Saturday that, by the end of the day, I was praising all lords in the heaven that I didn't have a heavy backpack with me on said day – I barely managed to walk home that night and I had light packing. But more about that later, I'm getting ahead of me!

View of the outdoor area close to C-huset. Notice the dark clouds.

A part of the "campus road". Notice the guy selling cotton candy! :D

There is always room for Darth Vader.

I got to Närcon and I was wearing the same Rilakkuma kigurumi as yesterday evening. The weather was chillier than on the previous days which, at least for me, was welcomed because I didn't have to toast. The more of the day that passed the happier I was with my choice of not bringing a cosplay – now I finally had time to settle and properly look through what the con had to offer. In other words, I finally got rid of that disorganized and spaced out feeling. I guess it was partly related to stress and anxiety because I've noticed that, over the years, I've had a harder time to enjoy cosplaying without being horribly self-conscious and it, in turn, sucks out the enjoyment of the hobby and the convention itself. I wish to get out of this circle but it's really hard and yeah, I might one day just write a deep-ass post about this whole situation...

This year I remembered to check out A-huset, were all the
gaming happened. Here you see the rhythm/dance games.

Spel & Sånt were the only sellers at A-huset.

Old arcade games!

More games!

A video game room with everything from the original 8-bit Nintendo
to the new stuff! I wanted to play but all the consoles were taken. :'(

Same room as above but viewed from the other side.

A-huset seemed really nice and I would have stayed there and played if there was a console that wasn't taken, lol. It was also quite hot in there (bad air circulation) and it... smelled. But seeing all those retro consoles was really tempting, I must admit. Video game rooms are always so busy whenever I visit them, it's so hard to find a free console to play on and thus I rarely bother to stay and wait because who knows how long the people playing will keep on playing – it could be 15 minutes and it could be for the rest of the day.

Most of my time I spent either in C-huset or walking around outdoors. On Saturday I was inside for the most part because yeah, the weather was not the best. I didn't attend any kind of panels, shows or such and that's simply because I'm a boring person and I'd rather just hang around and enjoy myself than sitting still for hours in a room and listening to someone babbling on. I'm surprised though by how few familiar faces that I spotted during Närcon – I hardly saw any of my friends?

C-huset inside, after entering from the main entrance.

Bandai Namco's booth.

One of several corridors filled with merchandise dealers.

C-huset is basically a maze of corridors.

Here people played TCG, tournaments etc and chilled.

On Saturday I did most of my geeky purchases, which meant that I spent a fair amount of time going through the myriad of rooms in C-huset were all the sellers were. Even though I've been to Närcon many years I still manage to get lost in C-huset's corridors every year, it's amazing. xD

I must mention that I saw a fair amount of sellers who were selling obviously counterfeit goods. There was this one room with My Little Pony and Pokémon merch and while I can't say much about the authenticity of the pony stuff the Pokémon stuff was so obviously fake that I didn't know if I should laugh or cry. I regret that I didn't take any photos but I remember a "pokédoll" styled ugly-as-fuck Eeveelution (I think it was Leafeon) that appeared really squished and it literally had its eyes way under its mouth and nose – it looked retarded, to say the least. Another funny one was a Haunter plush, its body was deformed and looked more like a Boo from the Super Mario universe, except with Haunter's color, face and additional arms on it. xD I recognized several of the plushes from stock images I had seen Chinese eBay users use, like Latias and Latios.
There was also a normally sized Togepi plush which looked pretty okay, at least when compared to some of the less fortunate fakes, but what instantly gave it away as a bootleg was that it had the freaking pokédoll tag, which is normally reserved only for Pokémon plushes with a really specific shape and proportions. Geez.
The worst part was that I overheard some people behind me talking with a tone of voice that implied that they were gonna buy something from said seller. I cringed.

I just wonder how come Närcon hasn't banned this seller already? I'm pretty sure I saw them last year too... (and the worst part: it's not like they were the only seller selling fake goods)

Eeveelution plushies. One of the few apparently legit sellers.

Random manga and such. Notice the Batmanga. :DD

Cute self-made amigurumi items.

Authentic The Mountain brand t-shirts!

Geeky doormats, now that's new!

More doormats.

T-shirts. I was a bit tempted by the Ōkami one.

Small cute purses.

Retro games galore!

I found Metapod merchandise. My life is now complete.

This skirt was badass. If I wore skirts I'd wear the shit out of it.

There was a room with a shitlot of figurines. The Monster Hunter
ones were especially interesting for me.

Another kinda weird merchandise story that I have is that on Thursday I bought a Pokémon TCG blister pack from a seller for 115 SEK, which is pretty dang cheap. On Saturday I went there again and this time they had the other foil card from the same blister set (I bought Yveltal first and then they had Xerneas later) and now the guy told me a completely different price, 140 SEK, for the exact same item? Weird. Oh well, it was still cheaper than on an ordinary store and kinda rare since it was an older blister by now so yeah, I bought it anyway.

Once I was done with all my purchases me and Firith mainly just sat outside and chilled; we had fun watching some people dance to some older songs that were playing outside C-huset. It sounds dumb to say it but for the whole convention we pretty much did nothing but walk around and check everything. We didn't participate in any kind of activities and still had a good time. xD I do want to try out fun things but as I said earlier, I'm way too shy and awkward to actually do it.

So awesome to see a tournament on an old-school game!

This was a new thing this year! Free entrance too.

One thing that made me happy to see was the Kimono de Jack room! It's a global community for kimono lovers and Sweden has their own KdJ group, just like many other countries do. I've been part of one of Umeå's KdJ meetups and it was really cool to see that there's active people even in the south. The room was filled with real kimono, obi, accessories needed to wear them and a lot of information on where to buy kimono, how to spot fake kimono etc. Really good stuff!

Kimono de Jack room, seen from the corridor.

Kimonos...

... and even more kimonos.

Did I say there were kimonos?

It was quite crammed inside and I had to watch how I moved so that I didn't accidentally bump into any precious garments, haha. I stayed and talked with the two ladies (who of course were dressed up in kimono) and we had a nice chat. Really friendly people and willing to teach any newcomers into the hobby! I really hope that they'll be back at the next Närcon too!

I left Närcon around 22-ish something and Firith came with me to Resecentrum. Saturday was our last day at the convention. Once I left him at the train station I walked back home along the same river road again. I remember when I passed a crossing that a hedgehog walked with me. xD Once I had walked a fair amount of the river road I saw that there were two men in front of me. I felt the anxiety kick in because the other one was smoking and had a bike and they seemed to be drunk. I really hate to deal with drunk people because of previous bad experiences. Once I passed them, still wearing ym Rilakkuma kigurumi, I hear one of the guys say something about a rabbit. They stop me and start asking if I'm from that cosplay thing, what my name is, where I'm going, how old I am etc and I'm just trying to get away as soon as possible. The smoking guy even tried to shake my hand (which I ignored) and tapped my shoulder and it was just really uncomfortable. They even asked what my sister's name was (because I said I was going there, of course not saying the actual street or anything) and to which I came up with a completely random name. He then insisted me to tell the surname too and I just went "eh.." and felt extremely awkward and uncomfortable. He kept insisting and I finally just said that I don't like giving out names to strangers, to which he finally took the fucking hint. He also asked my age and I lied about that too, saying an age younger than I am. Fun fact was that he replied to it "you look very young for being [fake age]". I swear no one believes me when I tell them my actual age, lmao.
He finally let me go after some minutes and I walked away from there, continuing back home to my sister. I soon enough noticed footsteps behind me (that weren't there before) and I almost freaked out. I glanced behind me and noticed a man walking behind me, some meters away. I sped up because I wasn't sure if it was the same drunk guys or some other random man (it was really dark outside) but thankfully, once I turned, he just continued walking straight. I swear I'm fucking paranoid of walking alone at night...

Once I got back to big sister's apartment I started packing all my stuff, warmed some leftover thai soup for food and then went to shower and sleep. On the morning Vicktor would pick me up and we'd drive homewards again, starting from 8:00. I don't have anything particular to say about the trip home so I'll end my summary here. I'm probably forgetting to mention some stuff but I don't care at this point, I just want to get this summary out. x)

~~~~~

 Okay so, overall Närcon was a pleasant experience and I would go there again next year, as per usual. I didn't quite enjoy it as much as last year but that's probably because I was fumbling around a lot and it took a long time for me to settle and get into the proper con mood, so to say. I also feel like this year's Närcon was like a slightly watered-down version of last year's, I can't really pinpoint why but that's the feeling I got – something just felt off and less exciting. Then again, it can very well just be all inside my head because I wasn't in the most peppy condition ever and all the back pains that accumulated over the days of carrying stuff around long distances made things worse. I also barely found any of my friends and it was a bit cumbersome to sleep almost 5 km away from the convention because it meant I couldn't stay as long as I wanted. I guess I got used to the freedom of being in the camping. xD

~~~~~

And before I end this post here is a picture of my Närcon loots (except for an InuYasha patch that I forgot to photograph!):

A Flareon plush, Pokémon TCG, a Hetalia keychain
and a Flareon phone charm from Artist's Alley.

Thank you for reading my summary!

Shiro Samurai out.