Today I left home around 15:40 to meet up with Yosh and my friend Gam to buy some stuff at the Swedish shopping mall Ã…hlens in central Stockholm. :D I bought a note book for my trip to Malta (I’m going to Malta this weekend, yay!). Gam was looking for a blue frame but couldn’t find any.

Afterwards we walked to Old Town and stayed by an ice cream bar/café where they sold, well, ice cream and Belgian waffles! :D Gam ordered icecream while me and Yosh ordered a Belgian waffle with extra stuff on them (thank you yosh! *3*). I chose strawberry jam, cream and mango sorbet flavoured ice cream as extra. Yosh chose soft vanilla ice cream instead of mango sorbet. Gah! It tasted so goooooD! :D I love mango sorbet!

After finishing the sweet yummy stuff we hurried to the Science Fiction book store, which was a 1 minute walk away. We ran because the exhibition was supposed to begin soon. I went into the store, and stepped up on the stairs inside together with Johan CB, the editor responsible for the event, without knowing he was about to do the opening ceremony! I didn’t want to stand there in front of all those people. But oh well, I got tricked! XD Johan unveiled the big wall chart with my cover art to the anthology with all the finalists of the Swedish manga talent contest. I noticed a lot of bleeding colors (stupid Soya) and I was supposed to sign the chart but I made an ugly signature. Bleh! XD I was so nervous and giggled a lot like a stupid teenager. *sob*. Bad style, that’s not the impression I wanted to make. Luckily the crowd was not big, maybe around 15-20 persons. I’m glad it wasn’t bigger.

After that the crowd moved away to the manga department of the store where they would unveil the exhibition of the finalists contributions. They asked Yosh to do it, yay! :D And they asked E-mak also. I didn’t know E-mak had a twin brother! o_o They don’t look super alike.

After the unveiling, it was time for everybody to do some mingle mingle. I got to shake hands with a lot of people, do some after talk and such. Yosh got to sign a couple of books *3* (By the way, there will be a signing session at the Sience Ficiton bookstore for Yosh’s book later this August! Yaaaay!) I walked around wondering how to spend my 300SEK in price money. After a loooooooong while Gam found the manga Beck and then Soya got happy! :D There was not much that I liked. I bought two Monster manga aso, yum! There was a guy/man who congratulated me for my first place in the talent competition and he was happy seeing me reading Monster. XD The woman by the cashbox also commented my choice of

Yosh was talking a looong while with Ahmed, the man behind the Swedish anime/manga database Daisuki.se. He was very nice, engaged and enthusiastic about manga (DoraJen, you should have been there. :D Ahmed was asking about you!). There was another guy who took photos and recorded a short movie with us from Yokaj Studio. It was fun. :3

We stayed until 2010, something like that. SF bookstore closed their store 30 minutes later than scheduled just to let us be there. It’s so nice! XD We were the only ones left there. Thank you Gam and Per (another friend of mine) for staying so long with us! Thank you also Marie (friend of Yosh) who also was there! We appreciate it. ^_^

It was in general a nice day today! Nice weather, warm and comfy. And nice people. It was awsome to see your own painting in big print. *_*

A video game concert was held 14 Juni in little Sweden! Many of the most classical game music pieces were performed by Kunliga Filhamonikerna, a Swedish well-known orchestra, led by the conductor Arnie Roth! Music pieces from Final Fantasy, Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Helo etc were at the play list. Read more here. This was a big event we of course wouldn’t miss! We bought our tickets when they released them to garantee ourselves good seats. And we really enjoyed the symphony from where we sat because not too far away from us, two rows more precisely, sat one of the most beloved game music composer in the world - Nobuo Uematsu!

It was a fantastic feeling to hear some of ones favourte pices performed by an orchestra like this. It felt like some kind of an acknowledgement. That games also can be art! Yosh was especially sentimental when Liberi Fatali from Final Fantasy was performed. FFVIII was her first big RPG and FF experience. As all RPG fans out there knows, one’s first RPG has a special place in one’s heart. Kajfa on the other hand enjoyed the orchestra’s version of Laura from Silent Hill 2. SH2 is Kajfa’s favourite horror game and he loves the soundtrack. Soya was very expectant of the orchestra’s versions of the Kingdom Hearts songs. She loved the performance but was still a little bit disappointed since they chose to play Hikari while she thought there were other pices more suitable. The most beautifully perfomred theme was from Shenmue, a game which non of us have played. But the orchestra was in most harmony together when playing that song. The concert in whole was a very memorable experiece! It was a wonderful night where many Swedish devoted game lovers tegether could experience something which means a lot to them. The applause rained over the orchestra over and over again and seemed not wanting to let the night end.

Yosh and Soya proudly showing their tickets. The image to the right shows how Nobuo Uematsu discretly tried to sneak to his seat. But we caught him with our camera!

After the concert a signing sesion was held for some hand picked folks from the audience. Lucky people! We were sad since we weren’t the chosen ones. But the Godess of luck must have seen our faces! A woman walked up to Soya and gave Soya her ticket to the signing session! Soya on the other hand generously gave the ticket (entry for two people) to Kajfa and Yosh!!!

Left: Gustaf Grafberg who has composed the music to Cronicles of Riddic.
Right: Joel Eriksson and Fredrik Englund. Composers of Battlefield 1942.


Left: Bence Pajor who also has composed music to Battlefield 1942.
Right: Rony Barrak played some solo numbers at the concert. He was without a doubt the most charismatic performer. His super power is the abiblity to beat anything as a drum.


Left: The conductor Arnie Roth was brilliant. It was really fun to see him conduct and he was very charming to the audience. He couldn’t stop himself from pulling a joke when we took this picture. “Is this some kind of a mug shot? I bet I’ll be on the e-bay tomorrow! Haha!”
Right: Crhis Hülsbeck. His music to Commodore 64 are classics today!


Here we got a signature from the great Nobuo! There were so many things we wanted to tell him. And most of all we wanted to tell him how much his music means to us. But we were so moved by the single fact we were standing so close to him we could only say some polite “thank you, thank you”!

Like many of you we have also played games from the Final Fantasy series. Like many of you we were left filled with great emotional feelings after. One thing is for sure, a Final Fantasy game leaves traces in your heart.

Like many of you our dream is to one day be able to meet the creators behind this fantastic game series. We long to step into the Square Enix headquarter, just to be in the center of the heart, Where some of the most beautiful gaming memories were created.

We are not there yet. But our dreams seem to be more real than ever! One day in May, a friend of Kajfa, called Johan, called us and wondered if we could take care of a special guest for him a couple of days. Later he sent his friend Kazuhiko to us, a fashionable japanese Shibuya guy who works at Square Enix. Kazu, as we call him, tried hard to converse with us in very poor English. When English didn’t work we tried commumicating with him with our almost non-existing Japanese vocabulary. In som mystical way we managed to understand each other. During these short three days when Kazu stayed with us, we learnt a lot about each other!

We could barely keep our hands away when Kazu showed us his access card to the Square Enix headquarter. With a simple sweeping movement we could have taken his card, ran away to the other direction, flown to Japan and granted access to the paradise!


Somehow it felt unreal when Kazu told oss he had worked on the FFXII and FFIII for Square Enix when these games aren’t even released in Europe! All we have seen of these games are stunningly beautiful graphic sequences. So close, but yet so far!


Some of Kajfa’s friends at work, the game developing company Avalanche Studios, were very impressed having such a special guest from Japan so close to them. One of them called his girlfriend and made her bring their Japanese sample of FFXII to let Kazu sign it for them.

Kazu has also worked with the Japanese movie Cassern, which we of course had watched even before we knew of Kazu. He also told us he had dinner with the Kazuaki Kiriya and Utada Hikaru during the film making period! He showed us his flashy Japanese branded cell phone and browsed to an image showing Kazuaki and Utada in a very casual and natural way. Yosh was totally amazed since she likes Kazuaki’s music videos and Utada’s music. This is yet the closest encounter we have with Japanese stars.

Kazu were of course very proud of having worked with the latest Final Fantasu Games. But he appearently has made a game he is too shy to tell people about. After getting knowing him better he shyly told us he was in the team who made Dead Or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball! And he told us in a low voice, as if he doesn’t want people to hear, he had made the animation sequences of the girls…


Since Kazu was so brave and told us his dirty little secret we thanked him by buying DOA and made him sign it for us!

He also told us how his dirty boss used to stand behind a working Kazu telling him to add more erotic movements to the girls animations…

Well, it wasn’t Kazu who only enriched us with knowledge. We made him taste a lot of liquorice, or “black candy” as he calls them. He really didn’t like to be fed with it but with very polite and traditional japanese manner he forced himself to say “oishii…” (good tasting) even though his face looked like raisin every time he said that.


Before Kazu had to leave us we brought him to a Swedish magazine store since he wanted to buy some souvenirs to his boss att Square Enix. He inspected some of the Swedish light porno magazines and stated that the Japanese magazines were much more “harder”…


Both Kazu and Yokaj Studio are filled with hopes about the future! Next time it’s our turn to go to Japan and by that time we will also have some good stuff to flash on him! :)
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We noticed we have a game comic about DOA Extreme Beach Volleyball and Final Fantasy in the same page. We showed it to Kazu and we all thought the connection was fun. You can read the comic here.