♡ MCM London Expo Weekend ♡

みなさん、こんにちは!

After, what feels like, an extremely long (as well as being extremely stressful) weekend... London MCM Expo is over again until the end of October. Despite the massive crowds on Saturday, the stalls inside the main halls were planned out better than previous times. 

Friday was the better day out of the two - even though I purchased a weekend ticket, I only went on the Friday and Saturday with Sapphire as it turned out cheaper that way. Friday was better because we could turn up over an hour after opening, walk straight through to get our wristbands without waiting and then walk around the halls whilst browse stalls and such without being pushed/elbowed out of the way and actually stop and look at the things around us where as on Saturday it felt like Mission Impossible trying to worm our way through the crowds to get to where we wanted... oh and the heat. The heat was physically impossible to bear... I honestly thought at a couple of moments I was about to faint but I managed... with the help of a lot of drinks! Also on the Friday, Sapphire and I went into Westfield's first (as my doughnut of a best friend forgot her make-up) and we ate some lunch at Umai - chicken karaage hirata bun with Dragonball Z lemonade! And for dinner, we decided on sushi from Wasabi - score!

As many of you may know, I don't cosplay. I have never cosplayed in my life but I am thinking about doing a couple in the future... shhh. And like an idiot, I didn't have any outfit pictures taken but I did manage to have some taken of my make-up over the course of the weekend;

left to right; Friday, Saturday and Sunday make-up/wigs

I actually didn't take many pictures of things at the expo... I only took pictures of figures really as there were so many lovely ones on display that I got distracted by what I actually wanted to take pictures of... d'oh. But hey, some pictures are better than no pictures to be honest!

Other than being with Sapphire the whole weekend, I got to see loads of friends again whom I haven't met up with since either the last expo or even longer than that! I found out that my college friend, Ben, was attending on the Saturday and as I hadn't seen him for over five years at that point, he was an obvious choice to meet up with! It was amazing to hang out with people who can make me laugh until I cry and can accept my sheer craziness... I don't quite know what I'll do without them in all honesty.

Expo Haul;

Kuroshitsuji Movie Book from Japan Centre, Notebooks from Art Box, SHO-BI Romantic Minnie False Eyelashes and Dollywink Liquid Eyeliner from unknown stall

Sakura Hatsune Miku Nendroid from Good Smile Company, Disney Ariel and Maleficent Pop! Funko from unknown stall

Rum Raisin Kitkat box, heap of different flavoured Puccho's, Milky sweets and Hello Kitty sweets from Sushi Noms and a Princess Celestia plushies thanks to my best friend!

On the Sunday, Sapphire and I met up with Sharan for the afternoon and mooched around Central London / Camden for a while. It was wonderful to just chill out and relax a little bit whilst enjoying the smoking hot weather. I swear, all weekend, all we did was walk everywhere and we could really feel it in our legs at the end of the day. I also believe that I've bummed up my dodgy ankle once again... sobs internally.

We went and ate at The Blue Kitchen located in Camden High Street - halfway between Camden Town tube station and Mornington Crescent tube station. It was such an amazing place with it's blues/jazz feeling to the decor and the comfy leather booths and the size of the portions... fml we were all so full at the end of it that I think all three of us rolled towards the tube station! Oh and we also had cake and bubble tea... normally when I go out with Sharan, we'll literally eat until the cows come home but I think because of the weather on Sunday, we all felt a little out of sorts?

And finally, just to finish off this blog post... what would complete it but with a few pictures of myself and Sapphire. I want to say we're sorry for the last one but in reality... we're not! Did anyone else go to expo at all? Is anyone planning on going in October? I haven't quite decided yet if I want to go or not as the next event in Hyper Japan in July - is anyone planning going there? Ahhh there is just too many things to think of sometimes...

Thanks for reading!
xoxo

♡ London MCM Expo Weekend ♡

みなさん、こんにちは!

This is such an extremely late post and I would use every excuse under the sun but the main reason that I haven't exactly been feeling the urge to blog? It's weird because I have a few things to blog about - this post being one of them whilst having about five reviews lined up - yet I don't have that urgent need to write yet when I have absolutely nothing the write about... I want to write left, right and centre! Anyway; enough excuse making, lets get on with this particular post.

This was the first time Sapphire would have been to the London version of comic con so she was pretty excited to be going and I was pretty excited to be going to see friends faces and to share this experience with her. We decided to go on the Friday and the Saturday this year (as on the Sunday, Sapphire had to travel back home for work on Monday so it would have been impossible to have done it) as Fridays are the quieter days as well as getting first pick of things. Also on Fridays, the doors don't actually open until 2.30pm so we had all morning to prep, preen and prepare ourselves. Actually the line wasn't that long when we arrived at Excel, shorter than I was actually expecting as this was the first time I'd actually been on a Friday as I'd always opted for a Saturday and Sunday because...... well university and work got in the way I suppose but as I had a whole week booked off this time around and the fact Sapphire had to leave on the Sunday... it would have been pretty stupid not to have gone on the Friday. Anyway like I was saying, the queue wasn't that big and it only took us an hour from when we joined to actually getting our wristbands, plus also making friends with the people in front of us made the time slip by quicker.

↑↑ Day one make-up / face / wig etc... ↑↑

It may sound strange but it felt like that the hall had tripled in size since May and because all stalls had been moved around and not anywhere where they were placed last time kind of lost me a little bit... but it was nice to find where each stall was without being crushed and bumped into every single second... that part came on the Saturday and oh my god I physically felt claustrophobic as soon as we entered the doorway! I think Sapphire clung onto my shirt the whole time we were trying to push through the crowds! Compared to the Friday, we went down the other other end of the hall where we didn't venture to and it was a pretty stupid idea in all honesty to do that... but hey you learn from mistakes!

↑↑ Amazing figurines and MOOMIN plushies oh my gosh ヽ(；▽；)ノ ↑↑

Looking back over my photographs I didn't actually take a lot of the actual hall and stalls... in actual fact there are barely any photographs from the whole two days! And there really isn't much to talk about as well... found friends on the Friday and a certain friend found us which I was amazed by but h'omg to see her again was just fabulous and we seriously need to have a catch up in the new year or something... but anyway the same pattern happened during those two days, whilst watching our money disappear very slowly! On the first day I only purchased two things; a giant pink arpakasso whom I have fittingly named Koichi (because my medium purple one is called Genki and if you're a j-rock fan you'll understand immediately) and the Chinese version of EXO's repackage album. Sapphire seemed to be chuffed with what she purchased also on the two days.

↑↑ Myself and Kin and myself and Charli ↑↑

I also really do aplogise for some of the extremely blurry pictures... when you get bumped into whilst taking an actual picture that doesn't help at all... also people are really rude sometimes! It's like on the Saturday, the whole time I spent trying to get through crowds I swear saying "excuse me, thank you" was being polite?! Why give death stares when I'm being fucking polite?! I do wish the organisers of the expo sorted things out for the Saturday because Friday was better organised where as Saturday was just a complete disaster... also my feet hurt from being trodden on the whole time (T A T)

↑↑ Myself and Sapphire and myself and Charli being derps on day two! ↑↑

↑↑ Baby Emilia and I ヽ(；▽；)ノ ↑↑

I'm also very sorry for this post being such a higgle piggle of words... when both days were pretty much the same (oh I almost forgot about eating brownies on the Saturday...) what is the point about writing about each day? Mash it altogether I say oho (〜￣▽￣)〜

All in all it did seem like that Sapphire enjoyed herself at expo and I enjoyed myself spending time with her as well as seeing friends whom I miss dearly! Also making new friends was a lovely and enjoyable experience as well （*´▽｀* ♥ I have no clue if I'll do expo again in all honesty... if Emilia does the May one again then I'll just pop into London for the day just to smoosh her face but other than that... I think my run of expos has officially emptied out. Oh here are a few pictures of what I purchased from the days;

Pretty typical of me... plushies, notebooks, a cd, food, drinks and a washcloth is certainly my taste in things! Also I've just noticed that there is a lot of.......... pink. Oh mmmyyy...

Thanks for reading!
xoxo

♡ London MCM Expo Weekend ♡

みなさん、こんにちは! 

Girl jigeumui nareul mideojwo (Nae anen michin sarami isseo) ♪♫

It's been over a month now since expo had finished... despite having almost a whole week off work and then some... you would have thought that I'd had the motivation ((there's that darn word again)) and time to write this blog post... brain says no though (_ _ll)

It's been a couple of years since I last went to the expo - I actually thought that 2010 was the last time I went but it was actually in 2011 the last time I visited... d'oh. But this time instead of making plans and then coming up with excuses not to go to the event; I actually stuck to my guns and went along yay (ノ￣ω￣)ノ I made the plans with Emilia and we opted to stay in a hotel close to the Excel centre - Forest Gate to be precise - and it wasn't so much of a hotel... but more a residential home turned B&B? Either way the place was really nice and a great distance from Excel as well as central London despite having to keep chopping and changing to different lines to get to said central of London.

Emilia and I headed off into central for the Friday evening for food and purikura... typical right? But sadly the purikura photobooth place might be closing down and there was limited sheets for the actual purikura machine so we did that first to beat the whole expo rush and actually get a memento of our time together! 

↑↑ Best purikura to date... ↑↑

After purikura we then headed over to Eat Tokyo, a restaurant I have wanted to go eat at for aaagggeeesss but couldn't find it when Toni came down to visit so this time I stuck to my guns and kept going (as well as with the help from Emilia's gps on her iphone!) until we found the place booyeah (￣︶￣)

Eat Tokyo is seriously the smallest place I think I have ever eaten in... and I've been in some pretty small places in London as well as in Seoul... but the atmosphere was bubbly and the smells of the food were simply divine! There was a small queue as well so we didn't get seated for about 30 minutes and by that point we were both starving and ready to eat anything and everything! Emilia and I opted for a couple of  side dishes to share as well as a main dish each. We went for the tamago omelette and chicken teriyaki california rolls then I chose a mixed katsu bento box whilst Emilia had a sushi bento box and I tell you what for the prices that were given... the portions were massive! Almost as good as Misato's but the pricing is just slightly higher... but I'm definitely going to return to this establishment before I head to Seoul for my teaching gig (︶ω︶)

On the Saturday morning; Emilia and I had originally planned to wake up early and get to the excel centre early but we realised that we didn't have to exactly rush to get to the venue so we dilly dallied a little and got to the centre around 11am... it was soooooo crowded already and the queue to buy tickets were already out the doors at the front... I do believe both Emilia and I were extremely relieved that we decided to buy our tickets online so all we had to do was sweep in, grab our wristbands, wait a few moments for some strange reason and then swoop out again and into the main hall! 

↑↑ Isn't Emilia pretty?! GFDI woman... ↑↑

The only problem I have with standing still for more than ten minutes is that I tend to find that I get all fidgety and bored ugh... After spending a while inside the hall and talking to a few people that we both knew separately, we went and sat outside for a while as it gets extremely hot inside and as we were both enjoying the sunshine... there seemed to be a small gathering of Deadpools... it was pretty fantastic though because I soddin' love Deadpool man! He's not my favourite character but he always cracks me up into mass bouts of laughter （　´∀｀）

We stayed at the excel for all of the afternoon where we met some new people and chatted away with them for a while and then we decided to head back to our hotel to rest and wash away all of the grim as Saturday was pretty sweltering... and I felt vile so having a shower sounded like the best plan ever at that point! We stayed in watching Titanic and had a small pizza party!

Day three of the weekend started later as well... not as late though as we had to check out by 11am (aka leave the keys on the side and skulk out like thieves in the night jfc) and we headed into Stratford Westfields to get a coffee hit from Starbucks:

I ordered a soy triple caramel frappe with no cream... holy crap the amount of sugar in this drink had my head spinning all day! I also decided to say that my name was Leo (my favourite member from the k-pop group VIXX... look at said video in this blog post for reference) and the barrista man obviously had thought  that I said 'Neo'... yes I decided to say I was from The Matrix (_ _ll)

I've never been to the expo on Sunday's before and honestly... Sunday is officially and definitely the best day to go in because the crowds are much smaller and prices on certain things had been deduced because I think many stall holders just want to get rid of stock? Either way I managed to grab a few bargains! I think Emilia got a few bargains as well... I can't remember to be honest! Also there were some serious amazing cosplays on the Sunday! Because of the smaller crowds, I managed to stop and actually take some photographs of different ones. Here are my favourites from the entire weekend:

I cried happy tears when I saw a Gundam cosplay... it was the only one but hey at least there was one! Also the child storm trooper had a storm trooper teddy bear! Crying even more again because it was holding hands with a Boba Fett cosplayer fhskahfkjads

These storm trooper cosplayers were amazing... the patience they had was phenomenal because of the amount of people that wanted pictures with them were extreme... like extreme extreme! Also look at the one with the child Jack Frost cosplayer... right in the feels again.

After hanging around outside with Zore and Emi and listening to some sound music... Emilia and I headed off as we had trains to catch and yeah... sobs it was horrible parting from Emilia because I adore that girl to pieces and the expo weekend was seriously so memorable and the best one I've ever had so I thank her from the bottom of my heart for putting up with me and my weirdness. Oh... have one more picture showing off all the goodies I nabbed from the entire weekend:

↑↑ I regret nothing with these goodies ↑↑

Peace Out
xoxo