I’m sorry for the lack of updates lately. I’ve been busy and it’s been rainy for photos anyway. I attented Animecon this weekend and thought I’d post a tiny little update. I’m still too tired to actually write about it properly, but let’s just say that it was my first con in 9 years. I’m a lazy con person because for me, my anime/manga hobby is quite personal and I’m not very interested in attending panels and the like. (Now, if a favorite seiyuu of mine came to Finland, I would probably travel to see him/her, although I passed on Yamaguchi Kappei-san the last time because I was broke.) However, the con came to Jyväskylä this year so I kind of HAD to visit because I live here. No excuse to pass it up. And I’m glad I didn’t. Paviljonki was an amazing place to have the con at: there was a lot of space although there were thousands of people, and it wasn’t too hot inside the building either. I especially enjoyed the sales hall and artist alley, although I’d thought I wouldn’t buy anything because of the prices (cheaper to just order online), and yet I still ended up with stuff the minute I entered the hall, whoops.

I enjoyed seeing a lot of amazing Finnish artists at the alley and took a number of business cards so that I can find their art again. I was kind of on a 0€ budget but still managed to buy some stickers because who could resist little owls? I so wanted some prints too, but just couldn’t muster the money for now.
It was also fun to spot people cosplaying characters I actually knew. Majority seemed to be characters I’ve never heard of before because I watch different kind of anime and am really picky about it, but it just made things more challenging, haha.

For a very thorough report of the con, go check out mizya’s blog post. I spent time with her throughout and also met up with Petra and Turre. However, as I was carrying a doll on Saturday and Sunday, I opted to not take my 1,2kg camera with me. Instead, I just had my reeaaaally old phone with me that does not take good photos. But good enough for me. Mizya has a lot of good photos, so go check out those.

I took Kiyori dressed as almost!Kirika with me on Saturday and Yukihi (as herself) on Sunday.

This was on Sunday with Turre, Petunia and Mizya’s dolls. We posed them for a photo because a person with a #eikiusita anti-bullying campaign banner came to ask if he could take a photo of the dolls with the banner. I totally support any anti-bullying campaign as I was a shy kid and was bullied in elementary school (not as badly as many others, though), and never completely fit in anywhere later either. I come off strong with my opinions, I know, but bullying is never okay.

Continue reading “Animecon 2016”

Alright, this is my second visit to Ähtäri Zoo this year, and ideally we’d like to make one more towards the end of the year, before actual snows. But we’ll see. We were in a group of four and like city people (which we’re not, me maybe most), we all forgot to take mosquito repellent with us. I don’t know what’s wrong with us, we should all know how horrible the mosquitoes get in this country. And let me tell you, those little demons were infernal. We were all full of bites by the end and our trip included a lot of curse words. Such a perfect meal we were.

Another unfortunate coincidence was that 5 bus loads of school kids happened to arrive at the same time. Sigh. Luckily they moved quite swiftly, although they were many in number. So, they weren’t horribly distracting, not including the swarm of little people scaring the otters into hiding and a group of very obnoxious boys making intentional racket (stomping their feet and chanting something loudly) and then being snotty about it when they were told to stop. I’m fine with kids that don’t realize that they’re doing something wrong as long as they stop when someone points that out, but do NOT be snotty about it when you’re being scolded. The people were bothered and so were the animals, poor things.

I took a gazillion photos again, and ran out of space on my memory card -again. Unfortunately I had my camera on the wrong setting through the whole trip, so it didn’t focus as well as it could have. Oh well, next time I’ll be vigilant. This time it was also super hot, so we missed some animals, but I also saw two of the animals I’ve never seen at Ähtäri before (being active anyway) because we entered right when the gates opened.

And here we go, starting with the wolverines. I’ve never seen them here before, although I’ve always wanted. They got food and were very active and playful. I got a ton of photos with them licking their lips, too (unfortunately none of them properly in focus). So cute, and damn, their fur looked so shiny and nice. ♥

Continue reading “Another Zoo visit”