This weekend was pretty exciting and something I've been looking forward to for a while. On Friday I went to a popup museum in Osaka called the Gothic&Lolita Museum with the Kansai International Lolita Community. The focus of the museum was on old-school gothic/lolita fashion from the 80s-early 2000s. It wasn't so much a museum as a showcase of several old pieces from the time period, as well as old lolita magazines such as early editions of the Gothic & Lolita Bible, KERA Magazine, and more.
One thing that was really cool was they had an old Kazuko Ogawa dress from 1998 that had been worn by the "founder" of gothic lolita and guitarist of Malice Mizer, Mana. You can see him in it on the right.
Since the focus of the museum was old-school lolita, I wore an old-school inspired gothic coordinate with the oldest piece in my wardrobe, a 2002 black Metamorphose onepiece with pintucks on the bodice, cross lace, and venetian sleeves.
After the meetup I went to a concert for a band I really like called Buck-Tick. They've been around since 1983, so their image has changed a bit over the years, they don't dress as wild as they used to but their music is still very, very good.
They never tour outside of Japan so I really wanted to see them while I'm here. They came to Osaka on tour for their new album so I went to the concert, which was at Zepp Diver Osaka. There were probably around 2,000 or so people in attendance, and unfortunately I ended up towards the back and stuck behind a group of three tall guys so I couldn't really see anything most of the time except for the very top of the drummer's hair, even though I was wearing my three-inch platforms! That was really disappointing to me. They also only played songs from their new album and one from the previous album, and didn't do any of their classics, like "Die" or "Aku no Hana" or even "Dress." The music was excellent though; Imai Hisashi (the guitarist) is amazingly talented and Sakurai-san's vocals were impeccable.
After the concert I met up with another gothic lolita friend and we went to Shin-Imamiya to eat oden. I got home around midnight and slept until one pm the next day, when I got a call from my friend. I had forgotten that we were going to Kyoto together!
I got dressed in a simple coord and met my friend at Okamoto station. From there it was around 1.5 hours to Kennin-ji in Kyoto. Kennin-ji is one of the oldest Zen Buddhist temples in Kyoto. It was really gorgeous in the late afternoon golden light, and the autumn foliage was stunning.
Unfortunately, we got there too late to enter some of the buildings so we'll have to go back sometime. One building that was usually closed off to the public was holding a special art exhibition, so we went to go check it out. The art was pretty cool, but what was really stunning was the Zen Japanese garden.
After the exhibit closed, we wandered around a bit and got ramen, Kyoto-style.
We walked some more, and then headed home. I got home around midnight on Saturday, and went to sleep around 1:30 am. I woke up today (Sunday) around 2:30pm!!! Now I have a lot of homework to do...
Bonus pictures of my coord from Saturday:
