05/10/2013 - Paris Manga & Sci-fi Show and Nuit Blanche

Last weekend was the Paris Manga & Sci-fi Show. The event itself wasn't very interesting; mostly just shops, and it was very overcrowded, but I still had fun hanging out with people~

 I didn't bring any actual cosplays to France, so I did my usual lazy thing where I just throw together some clothes and a wig in the morning and try my hardest to look like an anime character:

Skirt: Rose Melody (Taobao)
Blouse: Warehouse
Tights: Lockshop
Shoes: Bodyline
Veil: Piece of material I found in my house lol

 I have no idea what I was supposed to be, but I had fun being it anyway~ 

I actually went alone, but after looking around everything once I ran into Christophe and a couple of his friends, so I joined them. Soon after that we found the adorable Nicole, who I'd briefly spoken to on Tumblr before. She joined us too. c: 

I loooove when people incorporate fandom T-shirts (her wig is kinda hiding it, but it's L from Death Note's logo) into good outfits rather than just wearing them with jeans or something C:

From that point onwards we pretty much wandered around chatting in English (as it's Nicole's first language too) while Christophe made us be in photos with like every single cosplay he (or we) liked haha 

Sashaaaa

We also had fun borrowing weapons for photos~

I felt like a video game character 8D

That night was Nuit Blanche (a yearly event where loads of museums/shops/galleries etc. in Paris stay open really late/all night), so after Paris Manga finished, Nicole and I decided to go home and get changed then meet up later. 

First we went to Notre Dame. I was super happy that it was part of Nuit Blanche, because since I first saw Notre Dame at night (it looks like a beautiful, crazy vampire castle), I'd desperately wanted to go inside it at night. It wasn't very well lit, so there was a lot you couldn't see at all, but it was still super cool! It was my first time going inside, though, so I'd like to go back some time when it's actually light enough to see. I'm generally not a fan of tourist attractions, but Notre Dame is just gorgeous. 

 It was wonderfully creepy with the terrible lighting. 

Notre Dame selfies lol

Neither of us really knew what there was to do because there was so much that there wasn't really a list or anything, so we decided to just wander for a bit and see if we could find anything. We didn't come across much, but I was just happy that I could go inside Notre Dame haha. In the end we went to a crêperie, then wandered around a while longer before calling it a night. 

01/10/2013 - VAMPS live in Paris

On Tuesday, VAMPS played in Paris. It was such a fun day!

If any of you happen to not know VAMPS, I highly recommend them! The vocalist is Hyde of L'Arc-en-Ciel. I've never been particularly interested in L'Arc, but I do like Hyde's voice, and VAMPS is much more to my taste. 

This is the song that made me a fan of VAMPS.

The venue was L'Olympia, which was actually a little smaller than I'd expected. It was a good size.

I'd originally planned to get to the venue at about 12, because I wanted to make sure I had a good view of the stage, but that didn't quite work out as planned, and I ended up arriving at about 2pm. Fortunately, it was a Tuesday so there weren't too many people there. 

That day I went for a vampire-esque make up look, of course. 

I spent the next 5 hours or so going to Starbucks a lot, and talking with other fans a bit. It was a little cold (and I didn't bring a coat haha), but time passed a lot faster than I'd expected it to. 

At about 7.30, they let us in. I got a decent spot a few rows from the front, and slightly right of the centre because I wanted to see K.A.Z (guitarist) too.

Hyde! Even without Photoshop he looks much younger than he is (somewhere in his 40's)! He was also surprisingly tiny. 

As for the live itself, it was great! The first thing that struck me was Hyde's amazing contact lenses, which I failed to capture with my iPhone haha. At first it looked like he wasn't wearing contacts at all, but occasionally (I guess when UV lights shined on them) they'd glow white, like a demon. It was really cool. 

K.A.Z

Their music works extremely well live, so much so that I suspect at least a few of the songs were composed with lives in mind. There are lots of sort of... chanting(?) and shouting parts where the crowd can join in, which was fun. The best live songs were, in my opinion, HUNTING, REVOLUTION, and SEX BLOOD ROCK N' ROLL.

Hyde played the guitar too sometimes

Hyde and K.A.Z are the only official members of VAMPS, but I also want to mention the support members, because they were great. They were all really lively and enthusiastic (usually more so than the official members), and generally very fun. I actually kind of wish I'd stood more towards the left of the stage, because the bassist was great, and I would have liked to see him a little better.

Hyde was the only one to speak to the crowd, but he did it quite a few times, and was pretty entertaining. He made a pretty good stab at French (most of it was understandable, and the pronunciation was surprisingly good), and also spoke some English and Japanese. 

After the live some of us waited outside to see the band off. We were waiting at the artists' entrance, but strangely, they actually left through the main entrance, so we missed them. :< But I still had fun chatting with other fans, and we didn't have to wait for too long~ 

 I bought a T-shirt. It's a little bigger than I prefer, but I really liked the design. 

I love the back

I'll leave you with another video of theirs~ 

22/09/2013 - Tokyo Crazy Kawaii

I'm super late with this entry (as always!), but a couple of weekends ago there was an event in Paris for Japanese fashion and general "kawaii culture". I was busy moving into my new home on the Saturday, so I only went to the event on Sunday.

What I wore (most of my clothes were still in England at that point, so I didn't have much to choose from):

T-shirt: Zara
Shorts: d.i.a.

Heart garter: Creepyyeha

Skeleton garter: Noctex

Necklace: Glavil by tutuHA 

Make up

As the event was new (I think it was the first one, actually), there wasn't a huge amount of things to do, but it was still pretty interesting, and I got to hang out with internet friends who had come from various parts of Europe, which was awesome. C: There were a few music performances, but somehow I missed all of the ones I wanted to see haha. orz I did watch Anna Tsuchiya's one, though. Her music isn't really my thing, but her performance was good.  

Grazia and Claire from Italy, and Steffi from Luxembourg. 

 Takoyaki!

 The Japanese gal unit, Black Diamond, did a short para para performance with a French gal unit. 

美女 men Z. They had a performance earlier in the day, and I wanted to go, but arrived too late ;A;

I chatted with Natsuki for a while and he was really nice aww C: (he also took my photo lol, why). The slightly awkward heart pose was his idea haha

There were a couple of purikura machines at the event. They were pretty expensive, but we split the cost between 4 of us so it wasn't so bad~

We managed to take a photo with KERA model Kimura U!

I have a home!

In my last post I mentioned being homeless, but earlier that day before that I'd gone to visit an apartment. The next day I received a call from the lady who lives there telling me that I could have the room if I still wanted it, and I moved in about 2 hours later! So now I'm living in this adorably French (there's actually an easel lol) apartment in the 13th arrondissement, which is exactly where I wanted it to be. I'm living with a lovely French lady whose daughter has now moved out, which is why she wanted to rent the room to a student. Until I can go back to London and get my stuff, I only have one suitcase of clothes haha, but I'm incredibly happy to have a home now (and I guess I can buy new clothes!). 

My room is way bigger than anything I'd ever hoped for!

The only problem with it is that it's about 40 minutes by metro to my university (which is actually in the suburbs), but I don't mind that. I was originally looking at living near university, but I visited one house there and it was pretty expensive, especially for an area where there is n o t h i n g. I was actually about to give up and live there because I wasn't having any luck with finding anything in Paris, but I'm so glad I was stubborn and didn't, because now I live here and... ugh, I love it so much, and the location is great too, so I think it's worth having to commute to university.  

Bisous~ 

19/09/2013 - Harajuku Fashion Walk in Paris

It's been a while! (Or at least it feels that way.) I hope you're all well~
I've been in Paris for about a week now. I'm still living in youth hostels while I search for somewhere to live, and on top of that, I've had a lot of sign-up things to do for university, so I've had no time to blog. Even though I'm homeless and really busy, I'm having so much fun! (EDIT: I am no longer homeless!)

On Thursday, Junnyan and Moco held a Harajuku Fashion Walk in Paris. For those that don't know, Harajuku Fashion Walk is an event that occasionally takes place in Harajuku, where participants wear whatever they want and walk through Harajuku together, taking photos and making friends along the way.

Unfortunately my outfit was a lot less interesting than I would have liked for this sort of event, because I only brought one suitcase of clothes to Paris, so I just had to make do with what I had.  

There was actually a lot of confusion at the beginning, because Junnyan and Moco arrived late, so I think everyone decided they weren't coming and just started the walk without them, because they'd written the route we were walking on Facebook anyway. I arrived late too, because I had to check into a new hostel that day, so I managed to catch up with Junnyan, Moco, and the 10-or-so other people they were with pretty quickly. So, we walked from L'arc de Triomphe to the Louvre. Despite there only being 10 of us (rather than the 444 who said they would attend on Facebook), it was still pretty fun. When we got towards the end of the walk, we caught up with everyone else, and it was amazing. I don't know about 444, but there were certainly a lot of people, and they all looked fabulous.  

Soon after meeting them, we reached our destination, where everyone hung around for ages chatting and taking photos. I was really happy to meet some internet friends who came from various parts of Europe!

 Haru (France)

Claire (Italy). We had matching horns 8D 

Chiara (Italy)

Lunie (Belgium)

Marie (France), who I've met before~  

Other photos:

 Junnyan, who is not quite as tall as his photos would have you believe haha (but cool nonetheless)

The adorable Moco, who is a lot smaller than I expected and made me look like a titan haha

 Aline

Amazing shironuri by Charlène and Hitsu-Blu (their eyepatches say 'HARA' and 'JUKU')

This awesome guy is English too!

 Marie

 Lesly, who is the cutest thing ever

It was a super fun afternoon! I met loads of awesome people, saw loads of great outfits and a wide variety of styles, and I also got to speak every language I know (and actually ended up playing translator a few times lol), which was fun. c: 

À bientôt!