West 12th Night & Coronation Jan 4-6, 2008

[bovil]

(bear with me, this is going to ramble... you can cut down to the bold 'ramble over' marker lower down if you don't care about that bit)

Westermark/West 12th Night & Coronation Jan 4-6, 2008

So we'll start out with what I don't know:
I haven't been to an SCA event in nearly 10 years. I haven't ever been to a West Kingdom event (yes, I've heard it's the most Eurocentric kingdom in the Known World). I haven't ever been to a hotel event. I haven't gone nihonjin to an event.

What I do know?
I was involved in my local SCA groups throughout much of the 90's. I come from the Northshield (back when it was still part of the Middle, and was just a "region"). I've been to several 12th Night events, including the Nordskogen 12th Night that was the first Northshield Coronet Tourney and Investiture. I've been to many camping events, and many church/school/strange-old-building events. I attended Pennsic 23 and 24. I've dressed generic middle-ages, generic middle-eastern for ugly-hot events and Italian Ren, German Ren and Elizabethan when I wanted to look nice. I've cooked feasts. I've merchanted, and never will again.

(ramble kind-of over)
So here's the thing. In April we're running Costume-Con 26 in San Jose (yes, I realize it's the same weekend as Spring Collegium Occidentalis, but our historical costume competition is Sunday for folks who wouldn't be caught dead missing CO) at the same hotel. This is a very local kingdom event where we can talk up our conference.

(ramble over)
Can anyone give me an idea what the schedule and activities at a West 12th Night/Coronation are like? Anything that someone who isn't a native Wester would find odd?

Is it worth getting a social-floor room to do an open afternoon Nihonjin "embassy" party, or to do a costumers' post-revel after Court?

[Saionji Shonagon]

bovil said:

(ramble over)
Can anyone give me an idea what the schedule and activities at a West 12th Night/Coronation are like? Anything that someone who isn't a native Wester would find odd?

Court, court, more court, a play by the Golden Stag players, A&S displays and competitions, some sort of performing arts competition in which wandering performers are supposed to collect ribbons bestowed by people who enjoy their performances, the Duchesses' Ball on Saturday evening and who knows what all else.

Twelfth Night as celebrated in the West is just plain exhausting, weird and unmedieval. Last year I pretty much stood around looking fabulously alien and got asked to dance at the ball all of twice.
I do not plan to overnight it this year as my travel budget is going to be devoted to seeing my family back east in December.

The number of people who portray Japanese in this kingdom is tiny. The number of people who portray Japanese in this kingdom and are likely to attend Twelfth night besides you and Kevin is me. (There's a household up in the Sacramento area, but I honestly don't know if any of them plan to attend.)

There is going to be a metric buttload of stuff going on already. The people who party on Saturday night are going to party in their friends' rooms - or do the Duchesses' Ball.

Just some things for you to consider. Though I should tell you I tried to get a carol sing going one year and nobody showed.

[Imagawa Tadamori]

makiwara said:

There's a household up in the Sacramento area, but I honestly don't know if any of them plan to attend.

Start drilling the idea into them now... you were the one that said (in another post around here somewhere) that you sat up front in courts so you could not be ignored or overlooked... maybe we need to instill that in our own people every so often. Go up there with the smackity fan...

makiwara said:

There is going to be a metric buttload of stuff

Is that the technical term?

- Rich

[bovil]

makiwara said:

Court, court, more court, a play by the Golden Stag players, A&S displays and competitions, some sort of performing arts competition in which wandering performers are supposed to collect ribbons bestowed by people who enjoy their performances, the Duchesses' Ball on Saturday evening and who knows what all else.

Twelfth Night as celebrated in the West is just plain exhausting, weird and unmedieval.

Well that's just blah. I just got a similar report from a friend who went last year. She also mentioned that there's a lot of rumblings that this year "will be different."

makiwara said:

There is going to be a metric buttload of stuff going on already. The people who party on Saturday night are going to party in their friends' rooms - or do the Duchesses' Ball.

I was kind of hoping that it being at the Doubletree, and the large number of local scadians who are familiar with the site from BayCon, things might be a bit different. I noticed that there is a request on the website about booking vigils and parties on the "social/party floor."

makiwara said:

Just some things for you to consider. Though I should tell you I tried to get a carol sing going one year and nobody showed.

Well, going Nihonjin kind of puts us out of the Christmassy stuff, but that's still just sad. My prior Barony did (and still does) a "Boars Head" event, and both Tree-girt-sea and Nordskogen did excellent 12th Night festivities.

[Saionji Shonagon]

bovil said:

Well that's just blah. I just got a similar report from a friend who went last year. She also mentioned that there's a lot of rumblings that this year "will be different."

The "this year will be different" campaign is to have more activities on Friday and Sunday to encourage more people to stick around for the whole weekend. (Like I said, I blew my budget on airfare already, so I'm daytripping this puppy.)

The problem with trying to organize stuff at specific times is that the courts take for freaking ever with outgoing royalty, coronation, peerage ceremonies, other awards and business. At some point most folks are ready to gnaw off a limb and it's time to go find food, which means getting back from dinner wherever one manages to get it at random times, then trying to figure out which room somebody is in and getting sidetracked because you ran into somebody you haven't seen in twenty years and, well, you get the idea.

I'm not trying to shoot you down, BTW, just give you my impression of past Twelfth Nights and what you may have to compete with.

[Saionji Shonagon]

rich said:

Start drilling the idea into them now... you were the one that said (in another post around here somewhere) that you sat up front in courts so you could not be ignored or overlooked... maybe we need to instill that in our own people every so often. Go up there with the smackity fan...

You seem to believe I have more influence than I actually do.
Honestly, with gas prices what they are, and hotel rooms what they are, it may or may not be worth it for our more far flung Western Nihonjin to make that journey.

[bovil]

makiwara said:

The "this year will be different" campaign is to have more activities on Friday and Sunday to encourage more people to stick around for the whole weekend. (Like I said, I blew my budget on airfare already, so I'm daytripping this puppy.)

That at least gives people an extra night to catch up with folks they haven't seen for 20 years...

makiwara said:

The problem with trying to organize stuff at specific times is that the courts take for freaking ever with outgoing royalty, coronation, peerage ceremonies, other awards and business. At some point most folks are ready to gnaw off a limb and it's time to go find food, which means getting back from dinner wherever one manages to get it at random times, then trying to figure out which room somebody is in and getting sidetracked because you ran into somebody you haven't seen in twenty years and, well, you get the idea.

Alas, it would be tacky to just put out our electric "torches" like we do at conventions...

...but nobody has a problem finding our room.

[Imagawa Tadamori]

makiwara said:

rich said:

Start drilling the idea into them now... you were the one that said (in another post around here somewhere) that you sat up front in courts so you could not be ignored or overlooked... maybe we need to instill that in our own people every so often. Go up there with the smackity fan...

You seem to believe I have more influence than I actually do.

I was kind of under the impression that you were fairly well entrenched among the Western Nihonjin, and therefore had influence. Hence why I thought you were driving the sake parties and Japanese social stuff so hard - to make Nihonjin more mainstream in the SCA and not so much "fringers" (I think that's the term I want).

I'm going to claim "new guy mistake" on that one.

makiwara said:

Honestly, with gas prices what they are, and hotel rooms what they are, it may or may not be worth it for our more far flung Western Nihonjin to make that journey.

Point taken...

- Rich

[Saionji Shonagon]

rich said:

I was kind of under the impression that you were fairly well entrenched among the Western Nihonjin, and therefore had influence. Hence why I thought you were driving the sake parties and Japanese social stuff so hard - to make Nihonjin more mainstream in the SCA and not so much "fringers"

Ultimately, I can only be responsible for how I play this game. If someone else is inspired to do something because of what I do, great, if not, not.

[roninpenguin]

makiwara said:

Ultimately, I can only be responsible for how I play this game. If someone else is inspired to do something because of what I do, great, if not, not.

Sometimes doing things to your best ability can be the biggest influence on others.

PS I now dub this the thread of quotes!

[Water_Tengu]

roninpenguin said:

makiwara said:

Ultimately, I can only be responsible for how I play this game. If someone else is inspired to do something because of what I do, great, if not, not.

Sometimes doing things to your best ability can be the biggest influence on others.

PS I now dub this the thread of quotes!

hahaha, i agree, on both points

[Saionji Shonagon]

Pics of myself and bovil are posted here: tousando.proboards18.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=garb&thread=1198472990&page=1
I wish I'd gotten one of Kevin in his kataginu kamishimo because it was very well done.

I attended Last Court and got to see a very good friend receive his Pelican. I ended up missing Coronation because court was delayed by the play (like I didn't know THAT was going to happen). However, a promise is a promise and I did promise to help with the Fabulous Kataginu Guys' sake party to promote Costume Con 26 (this April in San Jose, CA www.cc26.info/ )

They did a great job rearranging Big Hotel Furniture and decorating the room to give it better atmosphere. A lot of very good sake was served and I drank a lot more of it than I expected - though the break to go downstairs and have sushi for dinner helped a lot. They made a great impression on everyone and a good time was definitely had by all.

[bovil]

It's been almost a decade since I attended an SCA event. It's been longer than that for K. Since West Kingdom 12th Night & Grand Coronation was here in San Jose, in our Costume-Con 26 hotel, we decided we should go.

Mind you, a decade usually means clothes that don't fit anymore, and that's where we both were, so we decided to leverage the Japanese we made for the PEERS Mikado Ball. We also were going to do new daimon hitatare kamishimo for something a little spiffier to change into later. Going nihonjin, it only made sense to throw a Japanese party/reception to promote the convention.

The best laid plans, though, get spoiled by a busy holiday season, a crashed hard drive, a major power outage and sinus wonkiness. Both the costume plans and the party plans took a serious hit and ended up being scaled back. The hitatare didn't get done (or started for that matter). The party shopping didn't get started until Friday night (along with K's hair appointment).

On the positive side, we had the able support of Saionji-dono in providing decor elements and advice. We also got our Momoyama-period square kataginu and eboshi done in time.

We got to the hotel around 9:30 on Friday night, checked in, got our site tokens and had dinner. Afterwards we met some of the fiber-arts gals in the bar who offered to help us get the word about our party on Saturday afternoon. It not being late enough, I sliced off a bit of ikat in the sewing room and made up quicky noren for our door decoration, staving off the bad case of scale-back.

Finally, we went to bed.

The power outage, of course, messed up a bunch of stuff, and meant that we had to run out Saturday morning to get some last decor bits (a folding screen) and, since we were out, do a bit of shopping. We found plastic 2 oz. cups for emergency sake cups at Diddums (where we were looking for paper lanterns), good green tea at Peets (where we were looking for tea and a kettle), new doorstops at Office Depot (where we hadn't planned on stopping), more paper lanterns at Cost Plus (where we hadn't planned on stopping but should have though of) and an electric teakettle at Target (which was the back-up plan if the kettle at Peets was too expensive, and it was). That put us back at the hotel around 1:00 with a 3:00 opening time.

It was a good thing we weren't doing the League of Evil Geniuses party. This could be set up with time to fit in a shower in 2 hours.

We spun the beds against the wall to create a large divan and clear space in the room. We spun the desk against the wall to clear space in the room. Most of the large and very western furniture in the room was draped with a rather nice blue-green ikat to disguise it (you would be surprised how big a difference this makes). The desk was draped with a cherry blossom print. Lamp shades were replaced with paper lanters. Smaller cherry-blossom paper lanterns lit with electric tea lights were scattered around desks in the room. Sake was iced. Snacks were sorted. Showers were taken, and we could finally get dressed. Yep, we were at an event for almost 18 hours (including sleep) before we could get dressed.

(Yes, there's a fair bit of expediency and theatricality in the decor. I know that round paper lanterns aren't period-appropriate Japanese. They did, however, create an excellent illusion, and I've got a line on better square wood-frame paper lanterns for future Japanese parties.)

We opened a bottle of Yoshikawa (I think) Imported Dry Sake and a bottle of Yaegaki Nigiri sake; both were very popular. I decided to save the other two (better) bottles and the bottle of ume-shu for later. The mochi (orange mochi and melon mochi) and the cheesy mochi puffs (the best cheezy-poofs you will ever try) were the breakout winners in the snacks, and the Takoyaki puffs were even very well received.

(Ditto on the food and drink; I haven't got a lot of solid evidence on whether any of the snacks were period-appropriate and I know some weren't, but people liked them.)

The party was very quiet from 3-4; it turns out that was when Gemini & Mari's Coronation Court and First Court happened. Things picked up after 4:00, though.

We were scheduled to close at 6:00, and we did. Several of us went down to the sushi bar for dinner (natch), and then did a bit of shopping before re-opening the party at 9:00pm. Yep, we still had sake and snacks, so we re-opened.

There was still some of the other sake, but we opened the bottle of Shirakawago Sansanigori (my favorite nigori) and the giant bottle of Oni-Karakuchi ("The Demon's Dry Sake" or, as we called it, "Demon Sake"). Both were superb. We also opened the Choya Ume-Shu for folks who like sweet stuff.

We had a decent, if small, crowd. We were two doors down, though, from "The Night of 1,000 Jell-o Shots" party. It was crazy, and overflowed into the hall regularly. There was enough interest that we stayed open until about 1:30 am (and outlasted the Jell-o shots). When we decided to close, we took the remains of the sake (the tail-end of the Yoshikawa and Oni-karakuchi) to check out the other parties.

There was a rather wild party still going on at the other end of the second floor, attended by their newly-crowned Majesties; we checked it out for a few minutes, and then headed up to the 5th floor to the Wine & Cheese party. By the time we got there they were down to dessert wines, soft cheeses and chocolate pate. They weren't done yet, though. It was most excellent, and as they were running out of wine we left the sake bottles for them to finish.

Saionji-dono wisely accepted our offer to crash in our spare bed rather than attempt the long drive home, and helped us pack out Sunday morning.

All in all, a good weekend. We made some useful connections at the event, threw a great party, and had a good time.

[Saionji Shonagon]

bovil said:

Saionji-dono wisely accepted our offer to crash in our spare bed......

Well, THERE goes my reputation.

Again.