I arrived at Sonia's house by train that evening, with all my baggages with me: my biggest one (about 16 kilos), the hand bag and a smaller one were full of things. During the evening me and Sonia had dinner in a restaurant called Road House, then we worked on our cosplay boots until 3am!! We were very excited about the travel, the day after we had to leave at 10.55 from the Airport of Bologna!

Departure day! We took a cab for the airport and we began our journey by picking our reserved tickets at the office of Lufthansa at the "Marconi" airport. The first arrive was Frankfourt, where we met all European cosplayers: Pia and Pauline from France, Anne and Paula from German. Together with them were also Rika from France (EuroJapanComics), Luca Raffaelli from Rome (Romics) and Florian from Germany (Connichi). In Japan we should have also meet American's ones: Stephanie and Aimee. From Frankfourt we took a 10 hours direct flight to Japan, Nagoya airport! The travel has been veeery long, we passed the fist 6 hours talking and eating and going around the airplane, but the last 4 ones.. horrible, we didn't know what to do for spending the remaning time. Personally, I wasn't able to sleep..

We arrived in Japan the morning of the 30st! Aichi's team was waiting for us at the gate! They drove us to the Rose Court Hotel, but there was no time for us to relax!! We had lunch in a Sushi Bar and then we changed clothes for taking some pictures in front of the Chunichi Shinbun headquarter (who wrote an article about us some days after our arrival!)

The night they offer us a dinner an the restaurant of the hotel, a very elegant place, with beautiful and very good dishes! After that, me, Sonia, Pauline and Pia went out to see Osu by night.

Osu is a Nagoya's quarter, a shopping area with over 1700 meters of arcaded streets and about 1000 shops filed along them, as a big shopping gallery! Shops open at 10am and close at 8pm, but until midnight you can find some amusing gamecenter where, that night, we made some purikura and played games! Only some supermarkets and coffees are opened all night long. In Japan is full of drinks distributors, with all sort of drinks, tea, beer, milk with coffee, melon flavored and my favourite one: Aquarius!

During the early morning, I was able to take some pictures of my beautiful and confortable bedroom! It was really great: a single room at the 8th floor with a large bed, air conditioned, a small fridge (with cold drinks inside), televison and satellite service, a water heater machine for tea, a bathroom with bathtub and automatic wc..

That morning we went to the Mammoth Flea Market in Nagoya, an Aichi TV event held three times per year; we saw some Japanese rock groups and comedians. The market in front of the stage was very large and there were a lot of things on sale: yukata, dresses, models, puppets, shoes... A very colorful place! On the stage we talked about the World Cosplay Summit, we had a little show and three of us sung on karaoke. I was one of them and I sung, dressed as Komugi, "Ai no Medicine", the opening of the anime. The TV staff also took a lot of photos of us!

Our next stop was an amusement park where we had a little show for children. After that, without costumes, we had dinner in another elegant restaurant, where people can choose if sitting or not in Japanese style. Sonia and me tried to do it, but for us it was a little painful!

The 1st of August was the day of the Cosplay Summit. We were busy since the morning when, at the Aichi Television's studies we had a rehearsal for the 1st stage event. After that, we partecipated to an interactive event with Japanese cosplayers and to an open photography session (where I also met Cosmode staff who photographed us, I hope to be on the next number of december!). Then there was the introduction of foreign cosplayers, a fashion show and other activities. I knew many Japanese cosplayers that day, we exchanged photos and welcome cards with them. Japanese are great costume players, the quality of their costumes is very high, and they are always perfect no matter what character they play. In addition, I cannot feel any competition between them. I think that should be the best way to consider cosplay in every countries!

Then we had lunch with a "bento". (I found out to not like bento very much, but maybe that was because when we eat it, it was always very cold!! But I have eaten a lot of Dorayaki instead! ^_- ). Finished lunch, it was the time for the Cosplay Parade along Osu streets, to the Osu Kannon stage. There was a lot of people that follow us from the streets to the stage all along the parade (I remember a very funny little grandfather who took a looot of pics to us while we were walking!!) Our parade was held in conjunction with the Osu Festival, a sort of Japanese colorful carnival! Unfortunately we didn't have time to see it. As soon as we arrived at the stage, we had a little show introducing ourselves, we answered questions from the MC, we sung (me and Sonia were dressed as Rei and Asuka from Evangelion and you can imagine what our song was...) and we posed for photos. The guest star of the Summit was Toru Furuya, the voice actor whose most famous roles were Amuro Rei in "Mobile Suit Gundam", Tuxedo Kamen in "Sailor Moon", Yamucha in "Dragon Ball Z" and more.. He was even in Amuro Rei ouftit!!

During the night? We had a buffet-party in Rose Court Hotel, to celebrate the end of the Summit. All sponsors were present: Mr. Oshitani of Brother, Mr. Yoshida of Joysound karaoke and Mr. Tsukishiro of Goodwill, together with all of our Aichi's team, tranlators and co-workers. During the party, sponsors and international cosplayer refers too (Luca Raffaelli for me and Sonia) have some speeches about their experience. In the second photo you can see Pauline (Chii), me and Lika (EuroJapanComics) together with our funny Canadian translator Ed!! And that's how our adventure finished.. from the day after all free time for make shopping and going around!

Wake up at 9 o'clock and breakfast at the hotel... for me and Sonia our jorney in Osu began this way First of all we returned to the Kannon temple to make some pics we cannot do the day before! Before arriving at the temple, many shops invited us to buy everything! Yukata, kogal stuffs, hair and nail accessories, electronical objects, food.. How to resist to all of that!? ;P During that day I began to consider to buy the IPod, the famous Apple's multimedia reader. The price was considerably lower than in Italy.. It was a really sunny day, in Japan it was very hot but I didn't suffer very much.

The temple was great without anybody around! So we took many photos of it and we also saw a 10 minutes clock theater of puppets about Urashima Taro legend, very very nice! For lunch we tasted Takoyaki!!! ;9 Oishii!!!

During the night the Joysound sponsor invited us at dinner and then to karaoke! We had a singing battle between cosplayers and Aichi's staff and we won the competition!! ^__^ Stephanie and me were the winner of the cosplayer group, obtaining the same score, but I losed the first prize loosing at Janken pon (the Japanese version of rock-paper-scissor game)! ;P

Our last day in Japan!! Me and Sonia took for the second time the subway until Nagoya center, searching for Cospa shop and other big department stores. It's very easy to travel by subway in Japan because every stop is cleary explained: you can not lose the way! ^^ It is also very clean everywhere, it's like a shopping center!

Nagoya is a really big town, in the center you can find very high buildingss and extraordinary departement stores. The one where we had shopping was a 8 floor dep, with a floor for every gender of article (for example the first floor was only for videogames)! After an hour we also find the mythical Cospa shop, but we cannot buy anything because the dresses were too much expensive! To compensate that, as I told you, I made my most important purchase, a white 15GB IPod! :P

During the night, Mr. Tsukishiro offered us a dinner in a beautiful and typical Sushi restaurant, we ate different varieties of sushi and sashimi and some of them was delicious! Their taste was better at natural, without using soy sauce, that means it was a very good sushi, the best I have ever eat! I was in a table with Anne, Paula, Florian and Ed. We enjoyed very much that night laughing of our raw octupus!!

The night was very long, after dinner we returned to Osu and passed the night in a cute 24 hours open bar. Also Edo come with us. We didn't want to go bed that day, it was our last day! So until 5 o'clock we stayed awake!

Time to go. We left the morning at 10am from the airport of Nagoya; Mari, Shirakawa, Yamakawa and Yamaguchi were with us until our depart (You can see all the group in the first photo). On the airplane I did some photos because I finally obtained a seat near the window!!

What can I say about this experience? It has been a great occasion for me and for the others, I think. We are cosplayers and going to Japan (the country where cosplay was born) is the higher goal we can obtain. Everyone was super kind with us: Aichi's team, sponsors and other friends who helped us all the time! I was able to practice a little Japanese but English and French too and this was very useful for me. I found out a country full of surprises. The most impressive thing was the efficiency of everything: the subway, the cleaness of every places, the way to cross streets (a sistem informs you how many seconds remain before the red light), the silence of our quarter, the colour of shops and people.. I loved all this very much and my only regret was not to have enough time to spend discovering new places, visiting other cities. But I for sure will return to this country sooner or later! I have promised it to myself!!

I hope you like this report, it's a little long, but I needed all this pages to tell you about my experience, hoping you can feel as a little part of it!! Kisses ^.^