(Ms.) Tomo Kimura’s Translation/Tokyo Notes

At Shinjuku Kinokuniya, as the anime will begin airing next week:

Vol. 3 is scheduled to come out Aug. 27.

In the latest issue of Cookie which came out today, there’s an announcement that Yazawa-sensei has fallen ill, thus the chapter that was supposed to be published in this issue has been postponed.

The announcement also says that several months will be necessary for Yazawa-sensei’s treatment and recuperation. An announcement will be made later about when the series will resume.

Kyoto Vegetables

37 vegetables that have passed the standards set by Kyoto Prefecture are certified as “Traditional Kyoto Vegetables”.

An example of a Kyoto vegetable is Kintoki carrots, which are reddish orange and thin carrots. Kamo eggplants are plum, round eggplants, and are good for stewing or roasting them and coating them with miso.

Tokyo has “Edo vegetables”. During the Edo era, daimyos brought local vegetables to Edo, and these improved to match the Edo environment better.

Is already out.

Here’s the pedestrian bridge where Hachi and Takumi meet for the second time:

And here’s a view of Omotesando from the bridge, looking towards Meiji Jingu shrine:

Here’re some more photos of Platinum Street in Shioganedai. The street is called such because the kanji for Shirogane are also the same kanji for platinum.

Ladies’ clothings:

More clothes:

This store had lots of rhinestone-decorated items:

And wedding dresses:

The Lawson convenience store chain began their Eva movie campaign today. At my neighborhood Lawson, you got a plastic file if you bought two sweets.

So I got the one where Ayanami shops at Lawson:

They were also selling cup noodles of Misato’s “ramen with curry in it” and Ayanami’s “garlic ramen without roast pork”.

When I came home from the Knave of Hearts event, I found a postcard in my mailbox saying I’d won a ticket to kalafina’s “closed premium live”, limited to 500 attendees. To enter, I had to send in coupons from both the “Seventh Heaven” album and the “lacrimosa” single.

The live was held this Tuesday. Doors opened at 18:00, but you had to go to the live venue at 16:00 to exchange your postcard for the actual ticket. I wondered why they had to do this on a weekday live, since this meant that working stiffs had to take at least half a day off for this. I arrived maybe 10-15 minutes before 16:00, and there was already quite a line.

The concert was just under 2 hours. They started by singing Seventh Heaven, then oblivious. They sang all the Kara no Kyoukai theme songs except for fairytale.　　From the album, they performed 夏の林檎, また風が強くなった, 音楽, and love come down. The set ended with lacrimosa.

For the encore they performed storia, their new single which will be released in July. This is a “cover” of a song Kajiura Yuki wrote for an NHK history show. The final song was sprinter.

There was an announcement that their next solo live will be held on Aug. 26.

Knave of Hearts, a Pandora Hearts TV anime event was held last Saturday here in Tokyo. I’ve never won any of these “stick a magazine coupon on a postcard and enter” type of events, but this time I got lucky (*^^*) My entry number was 36, so I was up right in the middle of hall, second row.

Before the event started, there were the usual announcements (Thank you for coming, no smoking in the hall, etc.) done by Gilbert and Break.

The MC was Toriumi Kosuke (Raven). He insisted he wasn’t cosplaying, but he was dressed just like Raven, and even had his hair done in the “seaweed head” style. The other guests were Minagawa Junko (Oz), Kawasumi Ayako (Alice), Hanazawa Kana (Shalon), and Ishida Akira (Break). The cheers and screams when Ishida-san appeared on stage was several times larger than the other casts.

Digests of up to Chapter 6 was shown, with the cast making various comments (like, “look at the way Alice is riding Oz when they kiss!”). A little bit of future episodes was shown too.

3 new casts were announced. They’re (1) Cheshire Cat - Yamaguchi Kappei (2) Vincent - Fukuyama Jun (3) Reim - Suwabe Junichi.

The feature I enjoyed most was the live script reading of a special version of “Pandora Haachu” that Mochizuki-sensei had written and drawn. In the story, because a festival is having a cross-dressing contest, Gil, then Break ends up being dressed up as ladies, and Break even gets cat ears put on by Shalon.

There was also a feature where each cast had to come up with a new chain. Three of them were parodies of existing characters (Pooh, Ponyo, Doraemon). Toriumi-san’s explanation was that copyright infringement was allowed that day since the event wasn’t being taped. The audience clapped to decide which chain you’d want to enter a covenant with.

The loser was Minagawa-san, and she was supposed to drink this horrible-tasting juice. But she turned to Gil and said “Hey, I’ve got Gil!” and then Toriumi-san kneeled and said the “I still want to be your valet” line. The other four started to eat cakes, when Toriumi-san said to Ishida-san “You’re not going to eat it in one bite like Break?” He tried, and spilt about half the cake (^^;;)

savage genius and FictionJunction both appeared to perform the theme songs. Composer Kajiura Yuki played keyboards for Parallel Hearts, and mentioned that the song is written completely from Oz’s point of view, and that she’s hoping for a happy ending for all the characters.

Last was some present giveaways, and after the curtain closed, the ending announcements were again given by Gilbert and Break.

Cameras were prohibited at the event.

This flyer at the entrance was the only clue that the event was being held here:

And flowers from the GFantasy department of course:

Is out as well.

This month’s mobile site column has Yazawa-sensei asking readers to be very very patient regarding Part 2 of the NANA anime. She mentions that both the anime staff and herself are trying very hard, and she’s sorry about making everybody wait for so long.