About this time two weeks ago I attended Tokonatsu which is essentially a convention where the accommodation is tents, in a field. £10 to hire a tent and free accommodation to take your own tent. This of course gets taken advantage of by those overcompensating nards who bring 18-man tents just for themselves.
I'll try to structure this as best as I can and not just ramble on like an angry lesbian in Burtons.
Accomodation:
TENTS. Fuckin' tents. You make it as comfy/rough as you want. Parking is limited but free.
Facilities:
One water pipe to service all 250 or so people on site. One. You know Dr. Rich thought they were kidding when he was told to take a cup into the shower to collect the sad dribble down the shower wall to throw over himself. Oh how we laughed.
Pack a shower cup.
Food:
You get free breakfast lunch and dinner, but trust me when I say it's quite spartan. For a 5'4 girl of 8-9stone, this is fine. But there was the stock up at tescos and the liquid diet I'll get to later. For someone like me there were the emergency McDonalds runs, and Toko actually provide a tesco run service and Dominoes Pizza so it's not like they don't give two flying shits about you. However they will not spoon feed you so it's up to your own sad ass to get up and make use of the available services.
Conventioning (Meat n' Tatties of the gig)
Toko being in a really nice campsite (no shit it's really fucking nice!) has a few outdoor events that any other convention can't do, such as Frisbee/battleroyale/extremestalk/waterfights etc etc and they're all unique to Toko. However the rest being the DDR tent, the Anime tent, and the drink yourself silly in your own or someone else's tent. No real parties as such, there's one but it's a campsite what do you expect?
Yes, you know it, you've been waiting for it and some of you mufflewumps actually skipped ahead to this; Alcohol. Toko does not have a bar, the entire event is a bar. We took a fair amount of booze and decided to take it easy what with consistently being in the dehydrating outside. Powerade saved our lives, coincidentally did you know if you mix red powerade with vodka you get StealthJuice? Tastes like sweet fuck all yet gets you smashed harder than physics in my mind.
Overall Toko is exactly what it claims to be and delivers on everything it says it will. There's no hidden extras, no gimmicks and no complications. If you love roughing it, being outside and getting into it like Ray Mears doing Carmel Dansen, then Toko is highly recommended. Though I can guarantee you less than 10% of anyone who does cushy conventions, you know they kind, they have running water and beds and solid roofs; will not enjoy Toko.
What the 'Otoko says:
FUCK ME THE WEEBS. Weebin' here, weebin' there, weebin' errywhere. That aside, we met some really nice folks, and that again is down to Toko being incredibly down to Earth. You can meet someone and have a nice talk with them, hunker down and dismiss 9/10ths of the superficiality/crapola you'd get from most people at any other con.
Pack suncream, hygienic wipes, alcohol, deo and always get up early for breakfast. Any questions since I probably missed out a metric fuckton of shenanigans feel free to leave a comment and I'll reply.
~Warai Otoko
