Back in June I had the good fortune to come across a unusual festival – in Toyako Town not far from Niseko a Cosplay Manga Anime festival was held.
Cosplay (コスプレ, kosupure), short for “costume roleplay”, is a type of performance art in which participants don costumes and accessories to represent a specific character or idea. Characters are often drawn from popular fiction in Japan. Favorite sources include manga, anime, tokusatsu, comic books, graphic novels, video games, hentai and fantasy movies.
I was pretty surprised to see this group of people frolicking around on the outskirts of Toyako in a field of dandelions making a short movie. I chatted with a few of the group and it turns out that they all met up on Mixi (Japanese equivalent of Facebook) and organized to make a movie…pretty much a music video clip dance number complete with unison moves.
After watching these guys for a while I headed into the town where there were a collection of crazy cars and participants hanging out taking photos of each other and enjoying all this Cosplay
Not sure how this guy fitted into the scheme of things but damn his motor bike was spectacular and he had one hell of a uniform
I’ll be back next year !!!