Birthday Gifts and Festivities

I had my birthday sometime last week and I usually don't get too many presents, which is fine since I usually keep my birthday secret from everyone... except on Facebook. I don't know why I kept it there. I was planning to remove it the day before, but completely forgot. So now that the secret's out, might as well show you my presents...

The first one I got was the new Kotobukiya Ayanami Rei, Maid Version; courtesy of my brother. Although we got it two days before my actual birthday ^^; When I say "we", I meant that we were shopping at the Metrotown mall and he asked me what I wanted. I knew there was a new Rei figure in stock at SakuraMedia (my local anime store) recently, so I told him that one. There were two versions of this figure too... It took me like 10 minutes to figure out which one I wanted for sure... Damn my indecisiveness!

Funny story on that day too. We were playing the new Initial D arcade game before we went to go to the store when suddenly one of the game machines caused an electrical fire in the outlets! I knew I smelled something bad when I was playing but I didn't really want to get out of there because we just started the race in the game... Two dollars gone in flames... XD

The other set of presents is the Fate/Hollow Ataraxia trading figures/shokugan from a very close friend from high school. He found out I wanted one of the figures in the set (Saber, duh!), but since it was random figures he got the whole set for me!

The last present is from WiseFreeman and from the other members of DannyChoo.com (the original post is linked above)... I'm very touched even though I try to not make a big deal out of it :') Below is a wallpaper made by Akidora. I luvs it! Can't go wrong with Rei and Saber Lily. And gosh... Saber Lily looks so cute in this picture!


The next day, the same friend who gave me the figures also suggested we go to the Rennaisance Festival in Fort Langley that took place on July 17 th to the 19th. I've never been to one, but I've seen it a lot in other cartoons and TV shows.

People in period costumes! It was a very hot day that day... and these people were in these costumes the whole time! I admire their dedication for the sake of entertaining us ^^ Above and below is the program for the Festival. I really love this back cover.


There were some games that we could play, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of people playing. Eventually we were able to try out the archery and a jousting type game. The jousting was basically me and my friend pummeling each other with swimming pool noodles ^^; Best two out of three and he beat the heck out of me, lol. As a souvenir he gave me the "shilling" coin (above) that we were using for the games. I think we could've gotten 25 cents back if we trade it back in XD

MMMMMMMMMM!!! Smoked hickory turkey legs... Oh boy were they good! It was still very hot when we got it so took a while to actually start eating it. It was so good that they raised the price by 50 cents at the end of the day XD Oh and we spent so much money on drinks too. It was so hot that I could've easily downed a can of pop in just a few chugs.

A banner that was placed where we were sitting down to eat. I thought it was a placemat ^^;

The Festival took place in a Fort Langley farm and behind that farm was a couple of llamas! I had to take some pictures of them, but this one was the only one that turn out. I completely forgot to bring a camera and had to rely on my cell phone camera...

An Irish Wolfhound... OMG it's huge! It would've been the same height as me if it were to stand on its hind legs.

A gypsy cospla... Hmm, can I actually say cosplay when it relates to non-anime costumes? ^^; Anyway, this gypsy talked to us for quite a bit. She was promoting a lot of things to us too. She suggested us to try this flavoured honey in a straw. It was quite good and I love sweet stuff anyway... but yea, just like a gypsy to swindle us out of our money, lol! Just kidding (in case there are actual gypsies reading this ^^;).

When we were at the real jousting event (with horses and armor and all) the king and queen dropped by the arena and were visited by pirates. Basically the king was letting the pirates do whatever they want as long as they follow his orders. Don't ask me anything more. I'm not quite sure what the whole storyline was ^^; Pretty good acting, I thought.

And now the jousting event, where I really regretted that I didn't bring a camera. The cell phone camera is doing pretty good though, but some of the shots were just so-so. This one you can see the guy wearing the full armour!

Oooh and here's the guy charging towards his foe! Funny enough, I was so into this that my friend suggested we watch A Knight's Tale when we got to his place. It was a good movie, but the song selection was really strange... Queen's We Will Rock You started the movie as the crowd sang along. That wasn't the only one either. It was a very interesting fusion of period movie and modern songs.

A close up of one of the knights. His squire on the right wearing the hat suggested that the knight hide the water bottle he was holding so people taking pictures wouldn't have a ruined image of the period ^^; The gypsy whose back is turned is quite cute actually. XD

After the festival we had dinner at a pasta restaurant called Amorosa. Really good pasta, unfortunately I didn't take any pictures... We also went back to my friend's place and he taught me how to play Magic: The Gathering after the movie. Unfortunately I was very sleepy so we didn't really have a full game. Interesting game though. I've always shied away from it before.


The festivities kept going! On the Saturday my brother and his girlfriend took me to Tanpopo where we had all-you-can-eat Japanese food! I wanted this so bad recently because of one of Danny Choo's latest article... And now it's time for you to want some Japanese food too :P

We went to Tanpopo's in downtown Vancouver. Difficult parking, but we managed to find one finally. The food was good, but unfortunately the service was bad... Probably won't go back to this one.

But oh lordy... the sashimi was delish! They had toro sashimi, the one that I hear so much from GTO/Great Teacher Onizuka. We ordered at least two plates of that XD The tuna sashimi made me sing one of Tako Luka's Maguro songs ^^

Rainbow roll and inari sushi. My brother LOVES inari sushi.

Second helping of inari sushi along with masago and... flying fish roe (forgot the Japanese name for it). We had a LOT of sushi that night. We stayed for more than two hours because we were still waiting for one order that we ordered one hour before it came. So we kept ordering more sushi instead :P

YAKITORI! I always seem to remember the voice Kero-chan from Cardcaptor Sakura saying that for some reason. This took a while to come too and I still like the chicken skewer (sate ayam) from Indonesia better.

With a full stomach I finally came home and ended my birthday weekend with a smile on my face. Thank you to all who made my birthday this year a very good one ^_^