Hakone Gardens Spring’09 NorCal Cosplay Gathering

03 17 2009

After organizing the very fun Christmas in the Park cosplay gathering in December, Kitty and Yukari decided to organize a second event in the spring. The plan was to meet someplace scenic, where people could have fun in between photo shoots. After much discussion, it was decided that the gathering would take place on March 14th at the Japanese Friendship Gardens in San Jose.

There was only one catch — the City of San Jose owned the park, and required permits for professional shoots and large gatherings. Kitty tried to get the permit, but the city bureaucrats were a pain to work with. They didn’t seem to understand what this was, and starting asking for things like a separate permit for each person with a camera. Like most bureaucrats, they had no incentive to be flexible, friendly, or understanding. With some reluctance, about two weeks before the gathering, we starting discussing alternatives on the forum. Afterwards, the alternatives were put to a vote, and my suggestion, Hakone Gardens in Saratoga, was the most popular.

Hakone also required a permit, and since Hakone was my suggestion, I called them to get things set up. They too were a little unsure as to how to classify a cosplay group, but being a relatively small private foundation, they had the flexibility to work with us. After a bit of discussion, the terms of the permit were agreed-upon and everything was finalized. Unfortunately, because we were booking our slot at Hakone so late, they only had a two hour photography time slot available for us. We decided to meet up at Hakone about 30 minutes beforehand, so we would have the full two hours in the gardens.

Despite my worrying the last few days leading up to the event, the gathering went very well, and everyone had a great time. The biggest complaint I heard was that it was too short, which should be easy to correct next time as long as we book a month or two ahead of time. Afterwards, many people went over to Mitsuwa for lunch and shopping.