Lovejoy Cafe Experience - yfooCollector Field Report

I live in the Philippines and I don't really have any opportunities to meet AV actresses here. Sure Ebisu Muscats performed in a cosplay convention once and Maria Ozawa sometimes shows up in TV and movies but I never heard of an actual fan event or meet and greet with AV actress. When June Lovejoy announced they'll be doing a meet and greet in Century City Mall, a few blocks away from where I work, I was afraid I was going to miss it. It was on the same weekend as a planned overseas vacation for my old lady's birthday. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), those plans fell through and once my schedule was clear I knew I had to go to my first meet and greet with June Lovejoy.

June was joined by Japanese cosplayer Negi, who I have been following for awhile, and Saltie a Filipino cosplayer who I frankly don't know much about. A few days before the Lovejoy Cafe opened, it was announced that some wrestlers from the Manila Wrestling Federation would join the event as well. I didn't really know how the meet and greet will go but based on my experience with local anime and comic book conventions I expected it to be like a handshake event. You line up, buy some merch, talk the guest, take some photos, have them some stuff then be on your merry way.

Century City Mall sits smack dab in the center of Makati, the biggest business district of Manila. I've been there a couple of times and it's a quaint little mall that caters to mostly to after work partying and office workers living in condos. Lovejoy Cafe was to be held on the rooftop al fresco dining area of the mall which had me worried. Leading up to the event, it had been raining in Manila the whole week due to a nearing typhoon but like a monkey's paw wish the sun was up the whole day on the 29th. It was incredibly hot that day and I was already sweating buckets when I reached the venue. Thankfully the cafe part of the event was selling ice cream which I eagerly ate.

A staff came to me and gave me instructions while lining up and chowing down on my ice cream. After being given the go signal, I walked inside the makeshift photo studio that they set up and was led to the corner where they sell merch. I bought a couple of photo cards of the girls and a T-shirt of June and her cats, then came the part where I got to talk with the girls. They were all incredibly pretty and maybe it's due to the the shoes they were wearing but they were all almost as tall as me and I'm around 5'10". I talked to June and I was extremely glad June recognised my yfoocollector name when I brought it up (I'm a pretty active "guy in chat" on her streams). They was also surprised to find out that I write articles for ZENRA and we talked about that for a bit. Afterwards I gave June my backup gift of dried mangoes and told her the tragic story of the barrel man lost in shipping.

Leading up to the event I knew I wanted to give June a unique Filipino gift and I thought a barrel man would be perfect. A barrel man is a woodcarving figurine of a person inside a wooden barrel that could be removed. Once removed the carving reveals itself to having a large penis, if it was a male, or large breasts if it was a female. I ordered one online to give as a gift but sadly it got lost in shipping and the store I bought it from told me they would send me a replacement a few days after the event. That's why I just gave them the dried mangoes as a souvenir. Hopefully I could meet June again and personally gave her the barrel man, which I'll probably use to annoy my co-workers in the meantime.

After chatting with June, I exchanged pleasantries with Negi and she told me about how she was learning English. I told her that I was actually learning Japanese and we had a pretty awkward conversation of me trying to speak in broken Japanese and her replying in fairly competent English. She then gave me some Japanese candies and I tried to do my best ありがとうございました. I chatted with Saltie next and I joked about how I only follow her on twitter because because I don't have a ganknow(content subscription service, usually used by Filipino cosplayers) account. They were all so nice and accommodating and I was just happy to have been there. We took a couple of photos, got my merch signed and at that point however I knew I had to go as I have to prepare for the birthday party of the woman that brought me to this world. A few hours later, I found out that something went down between June and Chelsea, one of the MWF wrestlers, which I wished I could seen myself. I also thought about going again on the next day but I just spent the day nursing my hangover from the previous day's party. I had a lot of fun meeting the three girls, specially June, and hopefully I could attend more events like this in the future.