Challenge number – 66
We never knew that a place called Harajuku even existed and we definitely never knew what the hell Cosplay was - which isn't the greatest of starting grounds for a Challenge. After some thought (which hurt) we eventually realised that Gwen Steffani had some Harajukian lassies in one of her music videos "mmmmmmmm, Kinky" was our joint reactions.
A quick Wikipedia search told us that "Nov Takahashi, from a Japanese studio called Studio Hard, coined the term cosplay as a contraction of the English-language words costume play while attending the 1984 Los Angeles Science Fiction Worldcon". Apparently, the geek was so impressed with all the shenanigans going on around him that "he reported about it frequently in Japanese science fiction magazines" so that other geeks could see more of the outside world. "The word fits in with a common Japanese method of abbreviation: combining the first two moras of each word. Costume becomes contracted to kosu (ã³ã¹) and play becomes pure (ãã¬)". You're welcome!
Subsequent webernet searches resulted in us becoming somewhat disapointed. It turns out that "Costume play" doesn't involve rubber masks, inflatable suits and handcuffs - instead it's more to do with weird, wild, wonderful and colourful Japanese cartoons, film character and video game icon thingies. Bugger. What a waste of luggage space it was to bring all our gimp gear with us all over Asia for 8 months. Custom checks will never be so much fun again!
The challenge in question involved us getting dressed up in a non-sadomasochist-style and hanging out with the local Cosplay kids in their favourite hang out spot in Tokyo. Simple enough? No, actually. As our luck would have it, the weekend we had dedicated to this Challenge was the only weekend in the 2008 Japan calander that any and every Cosplay kid would be out of Tokyo, in a place called Nagoya, hundreds of miles away, attending an international cosplay summit.
Bullet train it is then. At a cost of over a hundred quid each!
Firstly though, we had to buy our costumes. We visited loads of cosplay shops and were amazed by what was on offer - there were indeedy some gimp-like-sex-outfits. These made us smile but the happy lips were soon turned upside down when we realised that these outfits (which were out of this world) came with an equally out of this world price tag. Eventually, after two days of window shopping, we finally stumbled across a cheap place - in the Akihabara district.
Lee found his costume almost immediately - a green Power Ranger one, and at a very affordable £20. Lindsay, for some reason best only known and kept to himself, wanted an outfit with wings.
After trying on an angel (which just looked gay) and a fairy godmother outfit (which made him look like a twat) he finally spotted a gorgeous black lycra suit - with stunning pointy ears and marvellous red wings. He was a sort of Batman/Kualaman type character. He was so excited and ecstaticly happy with his purchase that he wore the outfit home from the shop. It's times like these when Lee really hopes that Mum tells him Lindsay's adopted and that no genes from his younger brother will form in Lee's perfectly stranded DNA. The costume was a little more expensive at £35 but that’s the going rate for wings and pointy ears apparently.
So, on the morning of the summit, we dressed in our lycra superhero gear and boarded the bullet train to Nagoya. We could have worn normal clothes - at no point does the Challenge state that we should make longer-than-necessary asses out of ourselves - but, there's something very sexually arousing about the rubbing of lycra against the body (especially if you're going Commando) The locals were giving us all sorts of funny looks - we thought it was because of our clobber, but maybe they couldn’t believe that we paid the astronomical ticket price for a train journey when Lindsay could have flown and Lee could have teleported.
After a very enjoyable Shinkansen choo-choo ride, we arrived in Nagoya and headed straight for the summit area. It truly was amazing - thousands of Cosplayers were there and the assortment of outfits on display was a colourful orgie.
Everyone was having friendly family fun - talking and giggling with everyone else, prancing about and doing little
gesticulations as if they really were the characters they were imitating - smiles were everywhere and get this... everybody loved our Batman and Power Ranger outfits!
Thankfully, nobody at the party had the same outfit as us on. God! that would have been sooooooooooo embarrassing.
After standing for pictures and doing what Cosplay kids do (we don't know either) for an hour or so, the parade finally swung in to action, with all the cosplayers marching through the streets which were lined with tens of thousands of spectators.
We, being in great disguises, managed to smuggle our way into the competition part of the parade and become part of it. There we met transformers, monsters, Ken from Street Fighter and so many more people from showbiz. We should have asked for their autographs - would have been worth a mint! Literally, a mint! Like a trebor or polo.
We mingled, we chatted, we cried, we sung, we laughed. We had a brilliant day out! It's as if we were exactly where we should be in our lives... dressed up in tight and colourful lycra, jumping up and down and flapping our arms in full open view of the public - without being arrested.
Like 5 year olds exhausted after a day out at the fun fair, by the end of the day we were shattered. So, in order to get back to our beds quickly, we skipped the return train and instead flew and teleported back to Tokyo.
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