"Where are my socks!?" - Eura's manga day 2017!

Hello!

I know that I'm super late with my other blog posts but forgive me; my mobile phone, also known as my internet connection, decided to die. R.I.P Sony. At the moment I'm not even writing this on my own computer. ;__;

But, anyway!
A while ago I wrote a blog post (in Finnish) that I'd organize Eura's manga day (Euran Mangapäivä) this year. Believe me, it wasn't very easy task to do - you see, I only had a month to organize everything (which included going to the schools to speak about the event, writing my lecture notes, making the flyers etc.). I was also the main cosplay judge which meant that I also had to try to get some participants to the cosplay competition.
In the end we got four participants... Until one of them cancelled a day before the actual event. I was asked to consider cancelling the whole competition but I kept to it - we still had three participants left!

But let me tell you more about this event...

On 20th of April I picked Shiro Samurai up from Rauma's bus station. He had told me that he was willing to come to photograph the event and act as a second cosplay judge. So, on Thursday I drove to Rauma I HATE driving in cities, really and once Shiro Samurai had arrived we decided to go to one of the local Hesburgers - you see, he hadn't eaten anything during the day since the bus trip from north to south takes 8+ hours. I feel you dude, been there, done that. xD
Once we had eaten we begun to drive towards Eura since I had boxing practice later that evening. A bit after Lappi TL happened something...

Me: "Bla bla bla... Something in general... Bla bla b--- A MOOSE!!!"

And there it was, standing right in front of us - a female moose. It looked at us like "oh, you weren't going first?" and then crossed the road. When I continued driving I noticed that its calf was running back to the forest they had come from. If it hadn't it would've crashed into my car. Almost had a heart attack there, you know.
Anyway, we got to Eura and my boxing practice begun. You see, I've been into boxing for quite a long time now - such a nice hobby! ^^ We also do some boxing in our Krav Maga training <3

After that we drove to Hinnerjoki - it's the place where I live. During the evening we just hung out and spoke randoms since we couldn't stay awake for too long (I had to go to work on Friday). I let Shiro Samurai to sleep in my bed meanwhile I took the couch. I know, it's my house and all but I also know that he sleeps like a starfish and the couch is pretty narrow so... Yeah. Shiro Samurai told me later that during the night he had knocked down some stuff from the bedside table - twice. And I hadn't woken up. xD

21st of April, also known as Friday, was the "stress your brains out and snap at everybody" day. I become like that when I'm very stressed... Not a good habit at all but I can't actually help it. Sorry to everyone whom I shouted at. ^^"
On Friday I also got the news that one of the participants had cancelled and when I got home I had gotten a letter from the hospital (my legs have acted very weird lately, luckily it doesn't seem to be anything too bad)... :I
To get my thoughts off those things for a while I decided to take Shiro Samurai with me to the stable. He had told me earlier that he's always liked horses and ponies but hasn't had a chance to actually work with them before. When I told this to my friend Niina we decided to take him with us to the stable.

So yeah, at first we went to Niina's place dogeja <3 and then continued our drive towards the stable once she was with us.
I decided to work with the Shetland pony and Niina had decided to drive her own pony Penuuni Pena. To Shiro Samurai's surprise she told him that she'd take him with her for the ride - yes, dude, it was planned. :DD When they were... Somewhere (I don't know where, didn't follow them) I ran and walked with the other pony and did some psychological exercises with it. You see, usually when you walk a horse or a pony, you walk on its left side. This time I also walked the pony when I was walking on its right side. Believe me or not, for some animals it's very hard to understand what they have to do when something like that happens, even if it's not a big deal for the human walking them.

After our visit to the stable we speed-visited one of my friends, Janina lisää dogeja <3. Luckily I didn't wake her up this time, that's what I usually do. xD (She got her payback a couple of days ago when she just walked into my room when I had my headphones on and didn't hear anything including her steps and knocking on the door. Oops.)

When we got home I still got some stuff to do for Saturday, the event day. I had painted a banner for the event and failed, I'm not an artist you know and I had to iron it and sew its hem. I almost made everything too difficult, once again, but Shiro Samurai pointed out that there were easier ways to do those things I had to do. He ended up helping me, thanks! ^^
We also watched Vain elämää - a format in which a group of singers gathers together. Each one of them has "their own day", which means that during that day they get to plan different activities for the rest of the group and the other singers perform that singer's songs. This time it was Olli Lindholm's day and since both of us like Yö's music we decided to watch this episode. Worth it. <3

When the episode had ended we went to pick up Gure and drove to the house in the middle of nothing. That house creeps basically everybody out (except Shiro Samurai, it seems xD)... There's nothing wrong with it when it's still the evening but gosh, try to be in that house after midnight. I don't actually recommend it - there are weird scratching noises during the night and some people have said that they've seen someone sitting in the sauna or in one of the bedrooms... Someone who doesn't belong to this world anymore. I'm one of those unlucky people and it certainly creeped me out, bloody hell. 
And why in seven Hells were we there?
We had to cut a wig for Gure - my Chikane wig, actually. The bangs were way too long when I tried the wig on but when Gure tried it on the bangs looked very good. So, basically, we went there for nothing.
At least we had cookies.

The remainder of the evening/night was spent chatting and playing some Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate. I'm new to the game series and console gaming in general - I've mostly played on PC - but Shiro Samurai was kind and helped me when needed~
We stayed up WAY TOO LATE... And that became clearly noticeable the next morning.

Saturday, the 22nd of April.
The event day.
And the morning was just a big chaos.

At first it was quite difficult for Shiro Samurai to get up from the bed. I mean, we were supposed to be at the library at 9 a.m and he got out of bed at 8 a.m... :'D
Then I noticed that I had lost some cosplay items. Luckily this problem got solved but gosh, I almost lost my mind there for a while.
When we were finally ready to leave (after the damn make-up crisis which both of us had) my house we did it rather quickly, picked up Gure and begun our rally towards Eura. And hey, we were just that academic quarter late!
Once at the library we begun to put on our cosplays... And then I noticed that my tabi socks weren't with me. GREAT. Shiro Samurai had the "I have two left tabi socks and I have lost my nail polish" case (he cosplayed Itachi Uchiha) and then I noticed that I had forgotten to clean the nail polish off my toe nails (yes, I had cosplayed Itachi Uchiha a few days earlier). Just... Great.

The event poster including the time table of the day etc. Made by me. 

(All photos + photo edits in this blog post © Shiro Samurai - I didn't have my camera with me.)

A bit before 10 a.m my friend Traveller showed up. She had promised to bring some manga with her and that's exactly what she did - thank you! <3

Manga books for adults...

...and kids/youngsters. Some of these are Traveller's, some of these belong to the library. 

When she begun to put the manga books into their places I went to the cloak room and asked Shiro Samurai to help me with my outfit. You see, I - once again - borrowed stuff from him for my original kimono version of Sasuke Uchiha. Well, I had never worn hakama before and had no idea how to put them on. I should probably practice it since I'll need that skill in the future I got infected with the Hakuouki hype xD
When I had gotten into my costume I went to the public part of the library - and saw our first contestant! <3 She was a bit nervous but well, I can understand it: this was her first cosplay event ever and she had decided to compete. I mean... That courage tho! :'3

At this point I also told Gure - who was the judge of the drawing competition and the main leader of the drawing workshop - what I wanted her to do. She had developed her own criteria for the judging and I was more than pleased with them, thumbs up! Well, she went to the workshop room to get everything ready since she had only an hour to do that... Sorry, I might have made the timetable too strict ^^"
When Shiro Samurai had put on his cosplay I explained shortly what I wanted him to do and in which order; I had decided to prioritize photographing the contestants, everything else came after that.

...well, except for mirror selfies.

The Uchihas of this event~ narutardit saatana. :D

There was a problem with the light though; it was yellowish, no matter where you went in the room. Finally we found a place in which Shiro Samurai could photograph the contestants (the pictures can be seen here) without "The Simpsons" effect.
Oh, when we were taking test pictures - I was the one in front of the camera at this point - one of the pics turned out to be pretty good~!

Believe me or not, that's the same wig I wore for Japan. :D

Okay, so. My day basically consisted of keeping a lecture (about cyber bullying and how does it affect its victims) and checking out that everything went smoothly. And, of course, judging the cosplay contest.
At one point TheKageSama and NtiYuurei (I call them just Kage and Yuurei) appeared. Kage had taken her self-made Lan Fan (the other spelling is Ranfan) armor with her so that we got to put it on the book shelf so everyone could see it. Thanks Kage for bringing it with you~!

Just before my lecture I noticed that the other two contestants hadn't arrived - and the cosplay competition should have started in 45 minutes. Guess that amount of stress and panic... Yuurei promised me that if only two contestants show up she could be the third contestant. Luckily during my lecture the second contestant arrived and just a bit later the third contestant showed up. I was quite happy to see them. :DD
Oh, and there were also some journalists, photographers etc. from Länsi-Suomi (a magazine here in Southern Finland). I answered some question and then they took a group picture of us - Katri (a contestant), Kage, Yuurei, Shiro Samurai and I. I hadn't been prepared for something like this happening (well, now when I think about it it's quite obvious that if something happens here in Eura the journalists will come to that event) and had a small heart attack when they told me that they want to photograph our cosplayer group.

Every now and then I went to check how Gure was doing with the drawing workshop. She seemed to enjoy it quite a lot - at least I haven't heard any complaining from her after the event or during it. :'D

Soon it was time to show the contestants where they should walk during the competition, in which order they would enter the "stage" (also known as the hall & part of the corridor in between the book shelves), where they should pose etc.
And at this point I learnt that I was supposed to host the competition. Luckily my improvisation skills aren't too bad.
Anyway, we - Shiro Samurai and I - judged the contestants by these criteria: how well one could recognize the character, how well did the contestants act like the character and how creative they had been when they had made/gathered together the pieces of their costumes. You see, I had decided that the costumes didn't have to be self-made, I just wanted to see great costumes and people brave enough to take part in the competition. <3

This picture pretty much shows our stage area.

Oh well, it took us some time to decide which one of them should win but I still think that we did the right choice. All of our contestants were amazing and brave - this was a first cosplay competition for each of them! ;__; <3 Dear contestants, if you read this; I really do look forward to seeing all of you in other conventions sooner or later~!
Soon after Gure had finished grading the drawings and it was time to announce the winners of the drawing contest. There had been seven participants in that contest - probably not that much, but better than nothing and well, it's about the quality, not about the number of the participants ;)

And soon Mangapäivä was over.
Guess if I felt empty?
I had been working my ass off that I could get everything ready in time (in a month) for those four hours.

The banner I made. Not too artistic but I only had two days to make this so yeah.

...I will never say again that I don't have any cosplay costumes...

I printed pics of some anime characters and laminated them + put them into their places.

These are just examples of what I did... But I'll tell more "making the event" stuff in the end of this post.

Well.
When we went to take off our costumes I heard Shiro Samurai calling my name. I turned to look at him...
AND SAW MY TABI SOCKS IN HIS HAND.
Those damn socks were under Gure´s bag for the whole day, damn it xD
And, eventually, Shiro Samurai found that damn nail polish from his bag.
We're just one group of genius people. Such Einstein, much wow. xD

I owed Shiro Samurai a pizza for untangling the blue wig Gure wore and I was quite hungry too so we drove to the pizzeria (and Gure visited Alko to buy products for all of us). We decided to share a pizza since, well, I'm not Uncle Scrooge ^^"
Attention! The next photo might disturb some people who are quite sensitive... You can look at it but don't blame me if you get traumatized.

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Yes - there is PINEAPPLE on our PIZZA.

Khm, back to business. :DD

Shiro Samurai had to leave on Saturday evening but there were still some hours left. During that time we played some MH3U and just hung out in my room. Had it not rained (it had been raining and snowing for the whole day) I might have dragged him out for a walk but it was a no-can-do-situation. xP
Well, at 10 p.m we begun our drive towards Rauma (it's the nearest Onnibus stop) and the bus even arrived in time! :'D When Shiro Samurai had left (gosh, it was weird to go home when there wasn't anyone except me and my family - I get used to other peoples' presences quite easily) I drove back home and went to bed. I was tired af. :'D

But, yeah, about Euran Mangapäivä...

I'm really thankful to my boss and my co-workers that I got the chance to organize this kind of an event here. Of course it was stressful - heck, it was my first time doing anything like this. Because of that stress I underperformed (also known as "didn't meet my own standards") - yes, most event attendants told me that they will come next year too if the event is organized and of course I'm happy about it.

Still all I can think about is "could have been like x, should have done y".

It could've been worse, I admit it, but something was missing, something just... Wasn't there. For some reason I felt like I had failed. There were not many attendants - yes, the quality walks over the number but still.
There should've been a lot more activities, I admit that. More panels, probably artists' alley... The list here is endless, to be honest. This event wasn't a complete failure since the attendants liked it, but I'm not very happy with myself and probably wouldn't be even if I succeeded, that's just one of my negative personality traits. Should've done more, should've done better. But at least I learnt something - and no, that doesn't mean that I would think that I can't do this kind of things. This event taught me a lot about organizing things, making timetables and, especially, about myself.
Right now I don't really know what to think about Euran Mangapäivä 2017... Well, it could've been better but at least it wasn't a complete failure. A small event, I admit that, but... I don't actually think that it was a bad thing. Gosh, my thoughts just clash with each other. x__x

But, anyway; thanks to my boss & co-workers for giving me the chance and time to organize this event, Shiro Samurai for photographing & helping me with judging the cosplay competition and Gure for leading the drawing workshop and judging the drawing contest. I would've been so lost without you all. :') <3

Right now it isn't sure if there will be Eura's manga day next year - it depends on so many things. But I really hope that even if I move away the event would be organized, there are so many potential cosplayers around here but not everybody has a chance to travel to a con which is held at least 200 kilometers away or abroad. :'<
But, thank you for reading this blog post~! When I get an Internet which actually works like it should work, I will become more active here again! ^__^

-Firith