On 3rd December I shot up to the COSPA offices in Tokyo on the Hikari Shinkansen to attend the 6th CGM Night – Otaku Version, organised by Danny Choo. Among all the self-acclaimed otaku were many fellow Japan bloggers, and the small venue meant conversations positively bloomed with success.

Above: Smile, grumpy! Danny Choo, the Tokyo Stormtrooper’s crowning jewel.

It was my first time attending a CGM Night, and even though it’s a substantial distance from my base city of Nagoya, I made the effort to get up there to meet people. I was somewhat worried at first that it would turn out to be a tiny event full of people with eyes only for anime, but my fears gladly went unfounded as I worked my way around. Greeting me on the door was the amiable Jonny Li:

I was a tad early, so I hung around chatting with Chris Gaunt, recently hired as a developer to work with Danny. I hear he’s really doing well for himself, even if his jacket elbows are wearing out from all the hard programming work! It was my second time conversing with Chris once again I was reminded what a swell guy he is. Really chilled-out and friendly and very modest about his own programming abilities. He helped me out fixing a small php problem on Gakuranman.com some time before starting to work for Danny. Hopefully I can repay the favour in the future ^^. Here’s Chris and I:

Godzilla was also present, albeit in a beheaded trophy form. But which beast finally trounced him??

Danny’s lovely wife Jay (or would that be ‘J’?) was also there to meet and greet. She has one of those disarming smiles and a personality that really puts you at ease when chatting to her. She was using the Panasonic Lumix GF-1 (a sister camera to my Olympus E-P1) and seemed very interested in my setup, particularly the bright Panasonic 20mm lens that I used to take all the photographs at this event. (Looks like you have a potential Christmas present idea Danny!) Jonny and Jay:

Tokyo Cooney was present too. I met him at the previous figure event I dropped in on shortly after arriving in Japan back in August. Full of wit and interesting stories of his comedy gigs and work on NHK!

As more and more people arrived, the room began to grow hotter (which wasn’t helped by the fact that the food for the evening was being provided by an Indian restaurant!) The first 50 people also received a special CGM Night 6 x COSPA t-shirt! After the initial opening remarks by Danny, the models and cosplayers emerged at the front of the room for some photo time.

But some people were more interested in Imperial armour… Tokyo Cooney’s attempt to steal some stormtrooper goods…

And the otaku-themed event wouldn’t be complete without figures! Here’s Danny’s very own mascot Mirai-chan. Very nicely crafted.

I managed to grab Danny for a moment for a quick picture. Gakuranman meets Tokyo Trooper. He may have his bone-white shiny armour but I have a dai-ni button!

More figures. I particularly liked this one. Reminds me of my childhood I spent collecting Star Wars figurines ^^;

Here’s a rather perky bunch of cosplayers posing for the flash of dozens of cameras. The guy in the middle looks to be wearing an outfit that looks ot be stitched together from flags of the world!

A huge chunk of time passed in the middle where I was caught up exchanging business cards with many, many people. I still didn’t manage to meet everyone, but I was very surprised when Shibuya246 tapped me on the shoulder for a chat. I didn’t recognise him at first, expecting the Rilakkuma bear to come bouncing towards me, but he turned out to be a real friendly guy and we enjoyed a meaningful conversation about blogging methods and posting interesting content. You can find his CGM night post here, with a picture of us grinning between one of the pretty cosplaying girls.

Above: Danny with idol Amano Ai advertising his new book ‘OTACOOL’ (Otaku x Cool) which depicts otaku from around the world showing off their poster-clad figure laden havens at home.

Righty then. To finish up, here’s a short video of the night itself, just to give you a taste of the atmosphere. Enjoy!

There were many, many more great people that attended the CGM Night. I could try to list them all here but I know I’d miss somebody out. Head over to Twitter right now and search for the hashtag #cgmnight. You’ll find all the recent posts about the event and the people who attended there!

Until next time folks!