***scroll down to read my blog, currently documenting my trip to Japan****
my webmanga can be read here: http://FarewellFeeling.smackjeeves.com
my illustrations and other work can be viewed on my deviantArt page: http://Rain-and-Sunshine.deviantart.com
and my commission info is here:
http://rain-and-sunshine.deviantart.com/journal/32563025/
and I have photo proof.
(ignore the t-shirt guy standing on the far left.)
but yes, today F-san took me to a place called the Touei Eigamura.
It is full of traditional-style Japanese buildings. Historical dramas and such are often filmed there, it seems. (Actually, that’s the real reason okita was there…they were filming a TV show. Shinsengumi TV shows are quite popular, and okita is often a (the?) main character — probably because he is always portrayed as a cute young man).
Touei Eigamura also has a lot of exhibits and things related to Japanese television, particularly historical dramas (although there was also an exhibit on superhero/senshi TV shows):
Apparently, in Japanese superhero/senshi TV shows, red is always the leader. that scene in Fruits Basket with the markers makes so much more sense now. (also, the black part on each of their helmets is the kanji for a different element (fire, water, etc) and apparently that element corresponds to their superpower/special abilities…I thought that was a cool detail).
Later we went to a short play set in old Japan. After the play they invited audience members to come up on stage and kill the bad guy over and over again. He was very good at his death scene.
(And of course, after they killed him they were supposed to pose while appropriate music was played).
One of the volunteers from the audience was okita again.
He successfully killed the villain but then was jealous because his friend was given two bad guys to kill instead of just one.
Anohter of the volunteers was a cute little boy. When asked by the anouncer who he came with, he answered “My Mom!”
Then, when asked if his mother was pretty, he cheerfully answered “No!”.
Despite this, he also managed to successfully slay mr. bad guy; as did two young women and a really tall french guy.
ok, almost done. one more photo of the village. this image doesn’t show it but a lot of the buildings were two-faced…one side was one shop/etc and the other side was something else (since most of the buildings were for display purposes and not actually in use). I found it ironic that one building was a firefighters headquarters on one side and a candle shop on the other.
anyway, hope you enjoyed!
Lily
this journal account of my travels in Japan over the months of August and September is going to be given as a series of short stories. the stories may or may not be in chronological order, and may or may not be accompanied by a comic or photograph(s). I hope you enjoy!
Story 1: 2+12=38?
Always knock on wood after mentioning how some particular unfortunate thing has never happened to you.
We arrived at the Philadelphia Airport without incident, and even managed to go through security check and find our gate without incident. The plane was on time, and I hadn’t been pulled over for a pat-down and/or had my purse dumped out.
Then we noticed that the flight ahead of ours was two hours late. This seemed like a bad sign.
I asked the woman behind the desk about it, and she had the knowledgeable answer of “I really don’t know.” Another bad sign.
So, sure enough, I get a call on my cell informing us that our flight will be late.
This would be ok, except that it was QUITE late. Late enough to cause us to miss our connecting flight in Detroit. Which we did. This is after commenting at the airport that we had never had a flight be truly late so that we missed another flight. Should really have knocked on wood. anyway.
Upon going to the International Flights Help Desk and being yelled at for cutting in line to make sure we were, in fact, at the int’l help desk, we were informed that the next flight to Nagoya was tomorrow and here, this is a hotel location and some meal vouchers.
The upside of this situation was that we got to stay in a very nice hotel for free, with three free meals. The downside was that our trip from Philly to Nagoya, already pretty much as long as you could get, just doubled in length.
But we survived the hotel room (despite the creepy stain in the bathroom) and eventually made it onto the plane (although this time I did get pulled over at security to have my purse dumped out) and, via the plane, to Nagoya (or Chubu, as it is commonly called) International Airport. Last time I made this flight I was unable to look out the windows most of the trip, but this time the windows were opened as we went over Alaska. It was pretty spectacular. pictures do it better justice than words (click image to see big. and those white things in the clouds are mountains):
When we arrived at Nagoya and stepped off the plane, we were almost immediately hit with a wall of warm, wet air. It was not without reason that the first thing my friends had to say about being in Japan this summer was “It’s really hot there.” It’s really hot here.
But, I was very proud of myself for attempting to speak to the customs lady in Japanese and being more or less understood.
And surprisingly, I actually remembered a lot of things about Nagoya/Chubu Airport (like where to go to get to the trains). Actually, I remember a lot of things about getting around in Kyoto too. I do not understand the way my memory works.
So, now I am here! I still kind of can’t believe it. It’s amazing — everything here just screams “JAPAN.” Even if you are not in a particularly historical or “interesting” place, everything is just…different from America in a way you can’t quite put your finger on. (Although sometimes you can, like when the sign for the laundromat is in kana and reads “kuriningu” or the sign on the restaurant is in English and reads “No Smorking Time.”
And that is story one. it ended up being not-so-short, but I guess it still counts as a short story?
Lily
last day :’( *cryforevercryforevercryforever*
it was a very good last day, though. again, going to go through highlights:
1. Home Made Kazoku concert!: they really do sound good live. excellent. and they were really good at getting the audience hyped up and participating in the show. they got us clapping, waving arms, singing, jumping up and down…xD and at the end they took a photo of us all to show their fans in japan, so everyone stood up as high as possible on chairs and waved like maniacs. we love you, homemade! (also, apparently they used to live in the states as children? their english was really really good.)
my camera killed the photos of the concert cause everyone was moving around too much, but I’ll post one or two anyway:
the line for homemade was fun too. we played more bunnybunny moosemoose xD
that was the only really big event we did sunday. but I enjoyed just walking around the dealer’s room (bought a codegeass wallscroll x3), popping in and out of random showings of things and talking to people, so it was all good.went and got lunch toward the end and tried to use me to disprove asian stereotypes. it didn’t really work xD
then came the loooong drive home, at the end of which I got my mom to take some random cosplay photos.
I thought it was a cute idea. my cat did not.
sooooo, that was otakon 2010. I’m sure I forgot to mention a hundred things that I’ll add in later….
can’t wait for next year!
thank you again to my parents and friends for the amazing memories. ilu guys.
lily
saturday! otherwise known as the really long day! with pictures! (click images to see bigger versions)
by the way, if you see yourself in any of my photos leave a comment so I can credit you 
rightyo. going to go through highlights again like yesterday.
1. photoshoot! I was extremely happy this year because we did coordinated group cosplay both friday and saturday! and everyone looked epic x3
the first thing we did today was get up early and scoot off to the code geass gathering/photoshoot.
(I’m not anywhere near caught up on bleach, but I finally did finish watching code geass this year (the first season, anyway /fail). it’s a really fun show xD to summarize it in a nutshell: to get code geass, take death note, give everyone gundams, replace the deathnote with a magic eye of doom, replace L with a pilot, give everyone (EVERYONE) ridiculously tight-fitting clothing, put light’s sister in a wheelchair and lower his voice about six octaves. )
so. there are a lot of photos from the shoot, but I’ll try and condense things a little:
first they did themed group shots. all the black knights characters (with yoni as ohgi and emily as kallen) (by the way, emily’s costume? totally from scratch. mega props to her. and yoni had to modify his jacket hand-sewing…no machines in our hotel room! props to him!):
all the knights of rounds (with dylan as luciano. you can’t see it in this photo but his cape is super billowy, which makes me happy xD):
all the lloyds (with joe as one of them) (he got the pose down great xD):
all the lelouchs (with me as the one on the right). you can’t tell, but the white cuffs sticking out of the jacket aren’t attached to anything. I just cut the cuffs off my ulquiorra shirt, since that shirt needed to be short-sleeved and I couldn’t fit the whole white shirt under the black jacket (sewed it too small…):
at that point I was the only ashford academy lulu, but later we acquired more. here’s the one that makes me feel short the one who I think was the zero in the masquerade (plus a rolo and an adorable nunnally):
the girl who was nunnally was really nice. I took some other photos with her later in the dealer’s room:
so then after the regular group shots were done, we got a little silly…
all the dead characters (including me and dylan):
he’s my brother! >:O rolo vs. nunnally:
some everybody shots (including yoni, emily and joe):
and one with dylan and me:
even after the shoot we got stopped for pictures a lot, which makes walking anywhere really slow but is completely worth it. at least there was no glomping this year. glomping is not kind to wigs.
for me, cosplay today involved much balancing of a chessboard over the heads of everyone around me. thankfully it held together thanks to some last-minute superglue (thanks, yoni/emily!) and survived the day with only minimal damage (the white king fell off. (JUST AS PLANNED) but that’s appropriate, right? after all the game was set up as the game from the first episode of code geass, in which black wins xD).
also I got called sir about four or five times over the weekend, so I guess my crossplay was a success, haha!
2. fire alarm!: oh, the fire alarm. that was something different than usual. after going back to the room to drop off some posters we collected in the dealer’s room so that my arms didn’t fall off, we had juuust reentered the convention center when we saw this enormous flood of people heading toward us the door.
turns out the fire alarm had gone off and EVERYONE had to evacuate to…the street/sidewalk/other sidewalk/random grassy spots/trees/stairs/anywhere you can find to stand…it was insane. my photos do not do this event justice.
I’ve never seen such a huge, dense crowd of people before. it even trumped the street in harajuku with all the clothing stores o_o; we ended up going back to the hotel and playing bunnybunny moosemoose until the fire department let everyone back in to the con (which actually didn’t take that long).
but we all know the real reason it went so smoothly is that kamina and wesley were overseeing the whole thing, right? XD
3. showings/panels!: so we didn’t go to a ton of showings/panels this year but we did try out a few. we caught the end of the gurren lagann movie. was disappointed by the lack of kamina but thoroughly impressed with the amount of time they managed to stretch a single battle out for. COMBINE!
4. the masquerade!: which had a couple really fun skits…I can’t remember every one I liked, but a couple were: the miku gee! skit, the zero with his speech (I think the guy who did that was also at the cg shoot in the morning), a couple of the other group dances…
5. rave!: went in costume for a change and was impressed by my wig, which did not fall off or break in the process of dancing/running around. the rave had quite the epic line to get in, but we managed it and some random person gave us their glowsticks xD
I don’t have any pictures of the rave but it was, in keeping with the rest of the day, a lot of fun. (thank you to dylan, who last year convinced me to give the rave a try for the first time!)
yes. I’m sure I’m forgetting things from today that will have to be added later. but that’s enough talking for now.
on to sunday!
otakon time again! one of my all-time favorite times of the year! the weekend that makes the long days of sewing worth it! xD
otakon was the first anime convention I ever attended…I remember walking around and just feeling this incredible sense of companionship. just think, a huge convention center filled with people who all knew what anime was!
(and were all in costume!)
so, starting with Thursday:
otherwise known as driving-to-baltimore day. (big thank you to my dad who did all the driving!)
it rained, as I realized this year it ALWAYS does on thursday at otakon. (trufacts. and it was weird rain, too…you could see it coming on the highway, and then it would just end and the road would be dry. freaky. anyway.)
pre-reg line was unbelievably fast this year. I don’t know why they didn’t use barcodes years ago. I felt like I was cheating somehow. I do miss the pre-reg line, in a way (anime convention lines are fun. larp!), but I do not miss experiencing the summer heat while experiencing the pre-reg line.
Friday:
(note: click photos to see them bigger)
friday lots happened! so I’m going to list highlights and address them one by one (somewhat in chronological order):
1. reunions!: every otakon is a mini-reunion for me. I get to see lots of people I only see once or twice a year. (you guys rock, by the way. it wouldn’t be otakon without you. I just regret not catching up with jess or cat (or mally on sunday ;_;)
2. AMV showing!: we didn’t stay there long, but we did stay long enough to see an amazing video that was clips from code geass set to the “savages” song from pocahontas.
3. bleach photoshoot!:
today I cosplayed as karakura-town-highschool-uniform version of ulquiorra (from bleach. and yes, I know that that makes no sense, but I was pressed for time and wanted to be part of our bleach group today xD). 
almost nobody recognized me all day, but it was so much fun doing the face makeup that I didn’t care xD plus it gave me a chance to experiment with getting all my (considerably long) hair under the wig I’ll need for my cosplay tomorrow (two hair scrunchies, 10 bobby pins and a bang comb).
ulquiorras shot:
so yes, lots of photos were taken. first, of course, they brought up all the ichigos (including dylan in his awesomesauce bankai ichigo coat/kimono):
and then they did the squads one by one. yoni and emily were soulsociety!aizen and momo, so this included them:
….and then they killed her. *cryforever*
4. kallen wig!: after the bleach shoot, we went on an epic search for a kallen (code geass) wig for emily, since tomorrow we are doing a code geass group and she had a kallen cosplay prepared but no appropriate wig. we were a little concerned that there might not be a wig vendor this year, but it turned out there were several; and we found the perfect wig! (“perfect” refers to length, here). so later we went back to the room and styled it. I’ve styled wigs before, but never one quite so involved as this. it was an incredible amount of fun, especially since it came out looking just the way we wanted.
before: 
after/in progress:
5.taking photos!: there was no “big cosplay” this year that a majority of people were doing, which is unusual (previous years it had been naruto, bleach, etc). but there were a lot of really good cosplays. I’d like to post every photo I took, but I’ll restrain myself and just post a few (if you see yourself, give me a shout!):
russia and poland:
epic zero:
shizuo and izaya sharing lunch? xD
incredible lust/gluttony pair:
and the sebastian who I saw at aNEXT and who inspried me to make the chessboard that I’ll post pics of tomorrow x3:
aaaand now it’s time for bed because we are trying to make a code geass photoshoot at 10 AM tomorrow and we still have sewing and such to do.
seeya
lily
EDIT: forgot to mention two things!
1. the cyborg 009 showing!: it was from the 60s and so was in japanese with no subs; so the guy running the showing decided to narrate the whole thing. (his own interpretation, of course…) very amusing.
2. proposal!: can’t believe I forgot to mention this…in the middle of the bleach photoshoot, the organizer had everyone pause and stated that his friend had something to say. well, friend comes up with girlfriend, and right there (in cosplay) proposes! and she (very enthusiastically) said yes. it was really sweet. apparently they met at a previous otakon
omedetou! ^.^
I made it to the finals in the New York Anime Festival’s
Mascot Contest!
They picked my Police-Witch with Cat entry:
Voting is open online until the 23rd.
link to the voting page:
http://www.newyorkcomiccon.com/en/NYAF/Events/Mascot-Finalists-Battle-Royale/
We will also have an Artist Alley table at the New York Anime Festival.
The convention runs October 8-10.
Hope to see you there!
Lily
News
Commission status: open (for more info click here: http://rain-and-sunshine.deviantart.com/journal/29884122/)
For info about our classes in general: click here —>http://yurikocomics.com/classeslily.php
For info on classes we are currently teaching, visit:
http://goggleworks.org/classes.php
Lepetitartist.com
NEWS:
We Are On TV (and the Internet!)
Our EBRU TV “Blank Canvas” episode is now available for free online!
click here to view the episode: http://www.ebru.tv/en/ebrutv/ArtsLiteratur/BlankCanvas/c.5321.html
Featured in the episode is my digital webmanga work, my father Alan Cernak’s “washi”-paper origami dolls, our collaborative work and more!
GoggleWorks Winter/Spring Classes Scheduled!
in addition to the classes we are already teaching (see the “classes” section of this site or scroll down to the updates below this one), in February and March my father Alan Cernak and I will be teaching Origami, Manga and Origami Doll workshops and classes at the GoggleWorks Center for the Arts.
click here to view GoggleWorks’ full Winter/Spring class schedule.
link: http://goggleworks.org/classes.php
Ways to register:
* By phone -
610-374-4600
* By mail -
print the registration form and mail to:
GoggleWorks
201 Washington Street
Reading, PA 19601
list of our classes/workshops:
1-Day Workshops:
- Manga Workshop: Feb. 27th, 9:00 am-12:00 pm. all ages.
- Origami Workshop: Mar. 27th, 1:00 pm-4:00 pm. all ages.
- Washi Paper Doll Workshop: Feb. 13th, 1:00 pm-4:00 pm. all ages.
8-Week Classes:
- Origami Classes: Mondays, February 8th – March 29th (4:30pm – 6:30pm). ages 10 and up.
- Origami Doll Making Classes: Mondays, February 8th – March 29th (12pm – 2pm). ages 14 and up.
Beginning in February we will also be teaching ASAP (After School Arts Program) classes in Origami and Manga at the GoggleWorks.
hope to see you at our classes!
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Follow Me on Facebook and Twitter
I am now on Facebook and Twitter. follow me to get updates on classes, workshops, my comic and everything else!
facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Lily-Yuri/100000408886114
twitter: twitter.com/Yuripad
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We’re Going to be on TV!
on Tuesday the 15th of December, a crew from EBRU TV’s “Blank Canvas” program came to our GoggleWorks Studio and filmed us! We will appear on the program in January or February. It is shown on RCN Cable and is also available for free online.
here’s the “Blank Canvas” website: click here
I’ll post an update when I know exactly when it will be up!
They profiled my manga artwork (specifically my webmanga “Farewell Feeling”) and my father Alan Cernak’s Washi paper dolls.
It was a lot of fun to be filmed — the crew was extremely skilled (and super nice!).
Will post again with more details soon in the meantime, Merry Christmas/Happy New Year!
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I Am Opening Commissions!
I am opening commissions! I now take sketch, ink and color commissions (copic and cg coloring both available). please visit yuri-pad.deviantart.com for my full price list and other details.
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I am also currently selling prints of all my work. send me an email at yuripad9@gmail.com if you are interested!
and please see below for info on the classes my father and I are currently teaching.
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New Origami and Manga Drawing Classes Scheduled!
New Manga and Origami Classes Scheduled!
–Beginning September 10, I will be teaching Manga Drawing workshops every Thursday (except for the 24th — see below for why!) at Le Petit Artist in Reading, PA. Sign up for just one workshop or the whole series
–And beginning September 11, Alan Cernak (my father) and I will be co-teaching Origami workshops every Friday (except for the 25th) at Le Petit Artist. Again, you can sign up for just one workshop or for them all!
–To sign up for a workshop contact Le Petit Artist through the email address on their site. Hope to see you there!
—- ALSO —-
On September 24-26 we will have an Artist Alley table at the New York Anime Festival, taking place at the Jacob Javitts Center in New York City! Come say hi, it’s really a great convention.
To learn more about the NYAF or register for a pass, visit : http://www.newyorkanimefestival.com/
