Every year around August, Auburn Botanic Gardens has a matsuri event for the sakura blossoming. It’s a popular event and it attracts a lot of visitors for the week-and-a-bit that it runs for. It’s undeniably quite pretty, but it’s madness to attend due to the size of the crowds, especially on weekends.

Yet here I am, at Auburn Botanic Gardens, on a Saturday.

Matsuri is really popular for cosplayers despite the heat, and Sanzuri has brought her Konngara (another Touhou character). Konngara is an interesting one because they’re from Highly Responsive to Prayers – the first Touhou game! That’s pretty dope. They’re the final boss in Hell in the game, but because it’s an early title there’s not much other detail given about Konngara; sources being the original pixel art, and any supplementary info that ZUN might’ve published since then.

Shooting this was embarrassingly haphazard. It was the end of the day just before the gardens closed, and there were still too many people around to get unimpeded photos (you can see them in the background below). Shaky hands and low light don’t help either, but you take what you can get. [shrug]