Cosplay

Yesterday and today were the World Cosplay Summit in Nagoya.

What exactly is cosplay? Basically, it is dressing and acting as anime characters. I don’t think that the top cosplayers actually made it to Nagoya. I found the people who found the scene interesting to be more interesting than the scene itself. How’s that for a complex sentence? It was just too darn hot for me. I wasn’t sure when the big show was going to start, so I just took some pictures of the picture takers and then headed to Osu Kannon for another festival.

Samba

Down the street was another summer festival, or まつり. This was in Osu Kannon. There is a large Brazilian presence in Nagoya, and a samba parade is actually a part of the festival. Actually, Brazil has the largest population of people of Japanese ancestry outside of Japan (glance at the wikipedia article, it is pretty interesting). Yes, even greater than the Japanese population in the US. I had read that there was a samba parade but I wasn’t that curious to see it. However, I arrived just as it was getting ready to pass. And I had a camera, so I took a few pictures.

Here are the requisite scantily clad women.

Here is a boy with one stick and his hand.

And apparently I am of some interest to the revelers.