Team Blue Figurine Photo-shoot Outing ~One with Nature~.

On Saturday, 21st June 2008, was our SGblogger's (Informal group name Team Blue) 3rd Outing, and it was also our first figurine photo-shoot, held at Toa Payoh Gardens. Anyway, I should be the last one who is doing this coverage, so I'll just skip the introduction and head straight to the photos!!

The notorious Team Blue. From left to right: Kumo, Squee, Fariz, Raven, Panther, Gordon, Me. Pic taken from Team Blue / Panther.First up on my figures, is a family of tortoise, made to pose on some rock... Not. Just some of the many tortoise I saw in the pond.Walking along the water edge, I spotted this cutie who just came out of the water!! She introduced herself to me as Mikuru.

She brought me around her favourite spots in the area.

She especially enjoys hiding in the plants as it shields her from the scorching sun.While walking around, we spotted another beauty enjoying the scenery and the wind brushing through her beautiful orange hair.And Mikuru decided to quietly sneak up behind her...O.O Nice view!! *Mikuru viewpoint*"Kyaa!!!" she screamed, nearly blowing out my ear drums in the process. After apologising multiple times for Mikuru's entics, I asked her to pose for some photos for me, and to my joy she gave the go-ahead.

She told me her name is Makoto, and that she's some kind of fox who took up a human form; not that it really matters to me as long as she's cute ^^.It was quite a hot day, so we decided to hide in some shade and wait for the sun to die down before continuing...But sadly, I had to leave for another appointment, so I bidded farewell to the girls as they left for home too. Makoto giving a playful goodbye before disappearing into the "tall" grass.

Goodbye to Mikuru too, as she jumps back into the pond where her ugly father was waiting.

The ugly father. LOL. ~End~

Okay I admit, that wasn't that nice of an ending (ugly frog). I'll also need to improve on my outdoor figurine shooting technique; as compared to the others, my choice of background was a little plain, since I went in the other direction away from the pond area lol. Nevertheless, I guess this was a good experience, and will definitely help in my photo-composture in future shoots to come. Can't wait for the October one!! Anyway here's some candid shots taken at the scene.

Group photo of cutie figurines.

And various individuals queuing to take photos of them.

Another group shot. Lulu needs to be shot dead. Needed one of him lying on the ground with Claire and Kanu staring down on him, and maybe Miku using her leek to bash his head while he's down.

Since I had to leave early for an interview down at NTU, I don't have any night photos to show. Anyway, the figures that I used were: GSC Nendoroid Petit Mikuru Frog Costume and Max Factory Sawatari Makoto. Tomorrow's post should continue with Day 4 of my Japan trip. Signing out for now.

Other Team Blue Members Coverage:
Panther's June Figure of the Month
Panther's Kuonji Shinra Album
Panther's "One with Nature" Album
Fariz's Coverage
Wcloudxkumo's Coverage Part 1
Wcloudxkumo's Coverage Part 2
Squee's "One with Nature" Album
Gordon's Coverage

Japan Day 3: Washinomiya Jinja.

Warning: Many many photos!! ^^

A 700 yen, 1hr 15mins journey towards the small town of Washinomiya, in the Saitama Prefecture, was definitely worth it despite the rain which fell on this day. I went to visit the "workplace" of our beloved Hiiragi twins from Lucky☆Star, Washinomiya Jinja.

Well, I was so excited over visiting the place, till the fact that I forgot to take a photo of the infamous entrance to the shrine -.-", so here's the anime version of it!!

Once past the torii gate, it's a small pathway towards the main shrine. Since it was a weekday and the fact that it was raining, there was hardly anybody around.
Some visitors taking a look at the ema plaques. I'll come to the ema later.
Here's the "washing" area, where you cleanse yourself first before going to pray before the Gods.And here's the main shrine. Threw a 100 yen coin in, and did a little prayer. If only I could do it Pixel Maritan style, "To show our appreciation for so much power, Marines keep heaven packed with fresh souls!" (Taken from Pixel Maritan Drill 3, Lesson 42, in regards to when Maritan was making a wish at a shrine lol ^^)

Once making a wish, I went to buy a ema... which costed 1,000 yen??? Wow they sure know how to leech money lol.Anyway, here's my ema which is to the left of the Miku one (you should know why I had it placed here ^^). I realised upon seeing my photos, that I actually miswrote "blog" as ブロク instead of ブログ, I forgot the extra " at the top of ク -.-"; I also noticed the last part of my last sentence was abit weird, I swear I didn't know what was going through my mind when I wrote that (なはいい?? What the hell is that?). I think it was supposed to be without the な in it.

Anyway, the rest of the ema below are ones which I found that were quite nice; in fact there were too many nice ones that I had to be selective, but here are the chosen ones.
Tsukasa and Kagami ^^. This plaque was huge!! It is about the size of 6 normal emas pieced together.
A couple of really good ones placed together. I suspect they were all from the same group or a single person. The shading techniques looked the same, and there was some numbering system on them all.
School Mizugi + swimming tube Kona-chan found! Moe! The bottom Tsukasa one is in Thai. (Edited: Thanks for the correction!)
Kona-chan x Kagamin ラブ ^^.
Another batch shot of emas. Spotted 2 Korean ones! Couldn't find any English plaques around though, maybe I should have did mine in English -.-"
There were some emas, instead of actual writing with a marker on it, the person had already pre-printed the image and words on sticker paper, and came to paste it on the board. Pretty nice too. The one of the left is pre-printed, while the one on the right seems to be hand-drawn. Very very close to the original. As for the website on the left ema, I visited the site, and it seems that the guy is a regular visitor to the shrine, making new boards every now and then and putting it up. To save you all the trouble of typing that webby, let me hotlink it here for you. Has very nice photos of various emas too.
Kona-chan stole Hayate's costume!
I would say this was my favourite ema of all. A really moeliciously cute Kagamin and Tsukasa together. Too bad it was located right at the bottom corner.Prayer for a good job(?). I'll need one too in like 3-5 years time once I'm done with studies.
Patty Moe and Peace!!The main cast all together.Another Kona-chan x Kagamin ema. ラブ ラブ!! Why wish for warm weather?? And here I am wishing for cold weather -.- We need to change places/countries instead ^^.
Being a "designated anime" shrine (LOL), it was also invaded by other animes. Here's the Dango Daikazoku.
I have no idea who's this character though, but was one of the better artworks around, deserves to be posted.
I basically ROFLed myself to death on this. Setsuna F. Seiei from Gundam 00 reference.
That's about it for the emas. I actually spotted this Haruhi Itasha being droven while walking towards the shrine, but waited till I was leaving to take some photos of it, since I found it at the carpark on my way out.
The dashboard is littered with Haruhi related stuff. Nendoroid Petit Haruhi set spotted!!And if you didn't noticed, there's a Haruhi Papermoon doll in the passenger seat. That would have costed him 380,000 yen... rich! But if he could afford a car and even itasha it, I guess he would have the money anyway. In front of the torii gate, entrance to the shrine, on the right side, there's a rest house there where you can have a light snack. And yes the rest house looks like the one in the OP too. This chalkboard was just outside of it, cute art ^^.
This seems to be a permanent fixture in front of the rest house. I want to take it home!! お持ち帰りたい!!
It seems that the people in Saitama is really jumping onto the L☆S bandwagon. This eatery was located along the stretch of road from the train station, towards the shrine. 700 yen for some Kagami Soba/Udon?? or 800 yen for a Tsukasa Katsudon? No thank you lol. I wonder about the quality and quantity of the meals though...

That's about it for Washinomiya Jinja. The rest of the day was covered with rain, and I didn't want to risk having my camera soaked while trying to capture photos of the city (we only went Ikebukuro later in the day). Risking my camera here was another thing, I'll be a waste if I came all the way and didn't take a photo, so yea I was taking photos in the rain without an umbrella, good thing it was only a light shower.

I'll be taking a break from posting tomorrow, since I'll be occupied for most of the day; with our Team Blue "One with Nature" Figure Photoshoot tomorrow afternoon, a NTU hall recommendation interview in the evening, and a meet up with some BMT Kestrel June 06' platoon-mates for a BBQ at night. Here's wishing you all a enjoyable weekend!! Signing out.

P.S: I'll like to put a thanks out to Zyl from hontou ni sou omou? for his pioneer L☆S Pilgrimage trip, which was used as reference for the trainlines towards the small town of Washinomiya. Thanks ^^. (I have no idea how to do a pingback to the post though -.-") Hope to be able to do the complete pilgrimage in the future, going with a non-otaku friend is boring when it comes to these kind of stuff.

Japan Day 2: Harajuku.

Well, actually we went to Harajuku, Shibuya, and a wee little bit of Shinjuku on this day, but I only took photos in the Harajuku area, so that's all you're going to see.

Or at least that's what I thought, but we actually did visit a Flea Market in the morning first before we headed to Harajuku. This flea market was held at the Tokyo International Forum, near Ginza. What they sold was mainly girl's stuff, clothes, accessories, handbags etc; wished I had chose to come on the Oedo Antique Market day instead the following Sunday, which I guessed would have been better for me.

The interior of the Tokyo International Forum, quite a nice
piece of architecture both the inside and the outside.Once done with the flea market, we headed straight to Harajuku, and entered the Meiji Shrine. I wonder if anybody has gotten tempted to just take one of this barrel and try to make a run for it, after all it contains sake ^^.

One of my friend whom I met during this trip was telling me why I was so lucky to had witness a wedding at the shrine, since he didn't see any on his trip there. I assume that he visited on a weekday though, since I had seen weddings on both the occasions I visited the shrine, and both times were on Sundays.

I received a request from Cal to add a "Prayer for Studies" to my own Ema (the wishing plaques), since he's in the midst of exams. But instead of just adding a small column, me and Ben (my traveling mate) decided to dedicate a single plaque, wishing all our friends (and ourselves too) on our studies, wealth and love-life. As for my own personal ema, that will be shown in the next post (you'll understand why soon ^^).

Leaving the shrine area, it seems that the Sunday Harajuku crowd has arrived and made their presence known to all.

Ranging from lolita...

To punk(?)...

School girls (cosplay?)...

And a middle-age man giving free hugs. Nope I didn't give him any though. (If only it was a cute girl...) But he still managed to give some hugs here and there to others.The street right outside the side entrance to Harajuku JR Station, Takeshita Street, was really packed with humans. I still remembered on my previous trip I came to this street it was like a ghost town, but that was at 8am in the morning though LOL. Don't ask why so early -.-"

That's about it for the photos for Day 2. As you can see there isn't much I took, since I had been here before and was too lazy to whip out my DSLR to take photo after photo. That's the problem with bringing friends to the "usual" attractions after you had gone once before, it just doesn't have the same charm it had when you first visited. Anyway, the next post would be something everyone who's reading my blog (for the right reasons) would enjoy for sure.

Here's just a teaser shot. Stay tuned for it! It's surely going to be photo intensive, with all the individual ema boards ^^. Signing out.