• event-recap

Recap of Dokomi 2026

Published on June 2nd, 2026, 1230 words, 5 minutes to read

Damn, it's been a long time since I wrote a blog post...a whole year.

And I'm back with exactly the same topic as last year, a Dokomi recap!

Things outside Dokomi

...or in short, the "where did I go to dinner" section of the blog post.

Bing Go / Sakura Bar

Having my train ride be super late and only arriving in the evening at around 7 PM, I actually missed out on the dinner plans. I joined my friends with some ice cream/taiyaki at Bing Go, afterwards we went to Sakura Bar (both in Immermannstraße), ending the day with lots of talking and drinks.

poly: Drinks? Don't you mean literally just Cola Zero?

AH-UN

Events like this require barbequeing at least once. This time it wasn't Korean BBQ, but Yakiniku...

poly: ...which is effectively just Japanese Barbeque.

...yeah.

Was my first time, and AH-UN was pretty good, enjoyed our time there a lot, ordered some extra to our initial plates and also had some good cheesecake after!

Izakaya Bar Takezo

Saturday's food plans were an izakaya bar, first time I went to one and...with me not really drinking, I pretty much just treated it like a regular restaurant! Had some good appetizers, karaage and gyoza!

Only downside was service not "letting" us leave with being overly stressed by the amount of guests and forgetting us, ending up in an hour of extra wait time...that we spent talking and chilling, so no time wasted in the end!

HeimWerk

The final Dokomi weekend dinner with Jax and Ori, explicitly planned this way because last year going to dinner while the con is up and running was quite stressful for both. Now in a larger group we spent the night (as it was already 9 PM, way past Dokomi) at HeimWerk, many of us not even realizing at first that it was a (pretty much) Schnitzel-only resturant, with vegetarian/vegan options at least. Was pretty good, and a nice ending to the weekend!

DoKomi

First time I was at DoKomi for the full event, all 3 days! Decided to do this after I enjoyed last year so much I almost considered getting a Sunday ticket last minute (which wasn't possible thankfully, logistically). But that set my plans for this years edition.

Day 1 started with a sprint towards the Artist Alley, grabbing stuff for friends that weren't able to attend. While I didn't manage to get all things initially, I did grab all requested things by the end of the event!

After getting my purchases in I headed right to the Seijin Area, not because I needed some 18+ purchases, but because I needed to give a special someone one of my keychains, _skhema...special why? Because they designed the artwork I made the keychain off of! Had a nice chat about all things art and then received some stickers as a present.

Another first happening on Day 1 was something way overdue. I met one of my longest internet friends for the first time after 16 years of knowing each other, JustEdris, previously known as TheDJNewstyle (alternatively TheDojotenNjustühle, etc. ...). I'm so glad we recently reconnected and this managed to happen.

Final task of Day 1 was attending Jax' Meet and Greet, where I also had the chance to hand them my keychain. Had a quick talk and then I was right off to dinner.

Saturday I also ended up meeting a small chunk of the VHeart crew at a meetup we organized outside of Hall 16! Received keychains and stickers that were made by some of the members.

One more long-term online friendship turning less online was with Fel, which I have known for the better part of 13-ish years as well. Took almost two days of sharing locations before we managed to find a spot to finally meet at, but we did it! Reminisced about the past, our taste in music and it generally just was a great time.

The final day mostly consisted of rummaging the convention with Yume and Cookie, hunting remaining pieces of art and resting our old and hurting bodies.

Speaking of which, I checked my tracking apps and I walked a grand total of 70,000 steps all weekend...whew.

My Haul

KyOri-Me / Mehshark Market

I passed by this booth quite a lot and while it initially was for the purpose of having found "shark-adjacent" merch for a friend, I ended up getting something for myself here. Yume mentioned I need a note or sketchbook so that she (or other artists) can scribble stuff for me, and so I decided to get one. As I already was here, and one was offered, I also got a sticker book considering I have a bunch of them at home!

• MyDokomi profile
• Website

KEMONO FABRIC TOKYO

This isn't even an artist or anything, I just decided to grab an artbook off the exhibitor hall...the layout/design already caught me and then I saw it's a book full of street/tech wear clothing designs.

Kawa-Soft

A lot of people probably do know this already, but Katawa Shoujo was my first visual novel 13 years ago, and I recently re-read it in 2025. When strolling through the Seijin Area I saw that Kawa-Soft had a booth selling physical copies of the game, of which I decided to grab one.

Small trinkets and postcards

I have gotten quite a few small things from friends, here's the shoutout section!

• Stickers from eefi
• A signed postcard and keychain of Coyu
• HussaVani's postcard
• Xayrie's postcard
• A Frieren postcard drawn by Milky
• VHeart stickers, keychains and more by Wobbly and svipure
• Jax' keychain and postcard

All-in-all this years Dokomi was a blast and I can't wait to see everyone next year again, maybe I bring some more merch like a postcard or something!