Sophilicity

A couple of a weeks ago, was the Hyper Japan event at O2 arena. There's been quite a few different venues, originally when I first started going to Hyper Japan the event was held at Earl's Court, the Christmas event last year was held at Kensington Olympia and this year for the summer even it was held at the O2. How do I feel about the change in venues? My preference actually goes to Earl's Court, the travel is more convenient for me, but also I felt like there was much more content to it even though the size of the O2 is much bigger. For this event, I went on Friday and Sunday: Friday with my boyfriend and Sunday with my family and friends.

The one thing, I personally enjoyed about the O2 had to be the concert area where all the famous acts performed. This happened to be in a separate area in the O2 otherwise known as Building Six. Not only was there the HYPER Live Stage (ground floor) in Building Six, there was also the HYPER Gallery and HYPER Theatre located on the 1st floor, with the HYPER Maid Cafe on the 2nd floor. Not to mention, there was also a HYPER Matsuri Garden located in the Terrance. The Matsuri Garden was amazing, and I was distraught that I only managed to discover it on the last day. The Matsuri Garden has a bar, seating as well as beds all the way around the garden - You were able to relax and lie down especially if you were feeling tired from walking around for so long.

Anyways, back to my favourite attraction. The HYPER Live Stage! I think the one reason why it was my favourite was because I actually got to see one of my all time favourite, Japanese singers perform live, and with a Press Pass I basically got to see her for free - It was just amazing. Eir Aoi, she is incredible live, and her little talks after each performance with her "Engrish" and Japanese (which we pretended to understand...) were really sweet.

An overdue post may I say, but this experience quite different in comparison to the other locations I visited. For one, this was a part of my "Wider Skills Week" at my college, for maths and science. Let me just say... My only real intention was to go to Thorpe Park - Don't even ask, but hey who would decline the offer to go to Thorpe Park... Yes I understand everything with Alton Towers but still. Honestly, I don't even take any sciences and I was planning to drop Maths depending on my grades...

Anyways, enough about me! What I knew about Bletchley Park revolved around my knowledge of Alan Turing from the Imitation Game (I recommend you should watch it, it's pretty interesting and you learn a lot). I think the main thing I knew about Bletchley Park was about the enigma code. Honestly, I didn't know much but it was interesting how the system worked and how the British (and probably allies) overcame the Axis' form of communication to each other through the enigma code.

If you want to find out more about the history of Bletchley Park you can check out the website here:

http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/hist/

So how did the actual enigma machine work?

Well I can tell you that there are different aspects of the enigma machines for example: the rotors, there are different rotor settings. There are a choice of 5 rotors, in which you choose 3 - therefore there are 60 different combinations for the rotors. As for the rotor settings there are 26 options on each rotor, therefore a total of 17,576 combinations. As well as the rotors there is also a featured plugboard with 10 leads available (aka 10 pairs of letters connected) so in total 150,738,274,937,250 combinations. And finally, how many number of different ways would you be able to set it up each day? Around 159 million million million (aka a trillion).

Right... Enough numbers, even I was sitting there in the classroom looking blankly as all these calculations were thrown to my face. Trust me, it was those times where you just nodded and pretended you understood what was going but really you were crying internally...

I realised, currently this blog posts seems incredibly intellectual so I'm just going to tone it down because even I'm struggling to process all these numbers and historical facts. So other than discussing about the enigma code, we also managed to have a tour around Bletchley Park during our free time. For lunch we walked past a really lovely lake - honestly aesthetics on pointe right there.

 Afterwards we went to go and look at the "bombe" room. Honestly I would explain to you how it works but even I got confused reading it up, it's much easier to experience it in person to understand because I attempted to google it and summarise but I'm more confused than ever... Here are some images instead of the bombe aha.

Okay well to start off with, the venue was much smaller than I thought... If I compared it to conventions like MCM expo or Hyper Japan, I was pretty surprised. But then again, I didn't realise it was hosted by a student union. 

Located in Holloway road, some people may have recognised a bunch of cosplayers and more queuing outside the venue which is surprisingly nearby City and Islington college. The benefit of receiving press passes allowed us to get immediate entry to the venue after 10AM or so whilst others waited outside before entering. 

I think my main objective of the day was mainly to capture various cosplays which were on show as I was working alongside some friends acting as an assistant and picking up photography skills along the way. 

At the event, there were a few locations to head to, from the downstairs which featured low-key lighting with a small stage for guests, with doors leading to the small gaming room (inside there was Taiko drumming along with DDR and Super Smash Bros) as well as a door leading outside where you had that strong smell of BBQ food - trust me it made me feel so hungry but the prices made me question my appetite opps. The outside was pretty spacious where some of the cosplayers went to chill and trust me, I think my favourite part of the day was hanging there and creating dance videos with the group. Check out the video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=713kSMAB2Zs

There was also the upstairs which had a much bigger stage where we had a host with two screens on the left and right which featured anime related videos. The event was originally an 18+ but recently it became more of an all ages event - you could see little kids running around aha. Anyways, also upstairs there were more stalls with the space in the hall much bigger than the downstairs. Whilst I was upstairs I managed to bump into two of the members of M.O.E otherwise known as the Maids of England. Here are Maid Nadeshiko (left) and Maid Miyuu (right).

However other than cosplayers and a few guest performances and interviews I didn't find that there was much to do, as the activities that you could do were quite limited. Before I chose to leave early, I proceeded to have a game of Taiko drumming. This is a Japanese game which involves an interactive drum, you have two types of colours in the game, and orange and a blue. For the blue coloured circles, you had to tap the edge of the drum, for the orange coloured circles you tapped the centre of the drum. For the small circles you usually hit with one stick, whilst the big circles you had to hit both simultaneously. E.g. for a big blue circle, you would hit both of the sides (left and right) with your sticks. The game is one of my favourite Japanese games, there's quite a few songs to choose from but it was difficult when all you could hear was DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) in the background playing Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's PonPonPon...

In conclusion, for it's money worth, I don't think it's the greatest convention to spend your money on - but that's just from my personal opinion it may be different for others...

Make sure to check out M.O.E, TobiNinjaFox and Nwanzo.

(I was working with Tobi as his assistant on the day, whilst Nwanzo was a new friend I made who is known for his convention videos).

Here is an example of TobiNinjaFox's work:

M.O.E's Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/Maidol.M.O.E

TobiNinjaFox's Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/TobiGaaraDango

TobiNinjaFox's website:

http://tobininjafox.com/
Nwanzo's Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/Nwanzo
Nwanzo's YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/user/NZOMVideos

A new experience I would have to say. I've heard about this so-called cereal bar for a very long time, yet I didn't realise how close to home it was. The cereal bar is one which offers a variety - not only do they provide us with different cereals, there are also shakes provided along with crisp sandwiches and snacks. The staff working at the place are just lovely, that's for sure. They made us feel welcome and provided us with everything we wanted. With cereals from even America, we got to mix and match as they gave us the choice to put two different types of cereal together and eat it.

Let's just be honest... I'm incredibly unfit and I have no idea why I decided I chose to do this when I really think about it? But do I regret it? Not at all aha. It doesn't require you to be one of the fittest to be able to participate. I was one of the people who would run for a few minutes then stop and walk and go back to running, and the cycle continued. Hey! At least I wasn't alone doing so aha. 

So what was involved in the Colour Obstacle Rush? Well you supposedly go through 9 colour stations and 10 obstacles. There's a wide variety of colours from pink, orange, yellow, green and blue. The obstacles consist of a variety as well, such as walking through "huge balls" (Those perverts out there, I see you aha). There was also climbing ropes as well as slides. All of which is meant to equivalent to 5k (but when looking in the distance it felt longer opps-).

At the beginning our group came together and decided to be very "unique" you could say - we wore our Colour Obstacle Rush t-shirts, and then used our other t-shirts to make ninjas masks. Walking around wearing them brought a lot of attention to others, but at least it made it easier for the rest of us to find each other if any of us had wondered off.

Before the actual startup, we had to do some preparation and warm ups. For majority of the group - even though it technically wasn't apart of the warm up, they decided to roll around on the floor and themselves covered in colour. Trust me it was a sight to remember aha. Afterwards we proceeded to dance and warm up to music following an instructor on stage. For our warm up, we danced to Ne-Yo's Closer. We then jumped into the other finishers' festivities as they threw their colour packets of powder into the air once the bass dropped. And before we even started we were quite colourful.