Summer Travels: Anime Expo 2012 – Part 1

The AX building looking the same.

It's hard to believe that my biggest trip of the year has already come and gone. The planning leading up to the  trip was less than smooth, but things managed to come together in the nick of time, both work and itinerary. Now that it's over though, that just means that more than half the year has gone by. Sigh.

Day 0 – Hello, Heat!
I made my way to the airport three hours in advance, as the obedient international flyer that I am, and strangely enough bumped into my travel companion, Sty, who was scheduled to leave 3 hours before me. It wasn't until I kicked her in the butt hard enough (figuratively) to urge her to gtfo, did she hurry it up and get to her plane on time.

Since I spent the night before staying up and paranoiding as to what I might have forgotten to pack, I had hoped to catch some shut eye while waiting for my flight but it seemed like somebody forgot to turn on the heat in the building. :| To add to that, the plane ride was also kinda chilly, and uncomfortably cramped as I sat beside a huge dude.

Upon my arrival, I was greeted by Sty and Ken, and the familiar smell of smoggy L.A. We grabbed some tasty hot dogs from Pink's and did some air-conditioned mall loitering in Beverly Hills. Ken wanted to pick up something from Fry's so, for convenience sake, we chose the nearest location which turned out to be the worst location. The hour-long traffic combined with the smallest product selection, almost made our trip there almost meaningless. He still did manage to get what he wanted, but even with my want-to-spend-money mode on, I personally wasn't able to get anything.

The sun was starting to set when we finally made our way to the convention centre for pre-reg badge pickup. We dodged random high fives and went in and out in 45mins, which was delicious record time in comparison to another friend who lined up for many hours under the dreadful high noon sun.

However things looked a bit different than usual this year. Right next door we had:

Herrooo, AX-Games!

Thanks to the X-Games this year, AX lost a good chunk of the usual amazing venue (Staples Center and Nokia Theatre) and most of the general convention area which was blocked off from entry. Little did I know then that it was going to be more troublesome that I originally anticipated. It looked interesting from afar and that's all there was to it at the time.

With our most important task of the day completed, we made our way to Ken's place, hunted down his local favourite Mexican food truck for some delicious cheap eats, and eventually fell asleep to 21 Jump Street playing in the background that night.

To be continued in Part 2, when the real party begins...!