Following this year's hasty pacing, our usual spring event in Seattle had arrived as soon as we knew it. With my overzealous cosplay plans, I largely dedicated my March evenings and free time to costume making, and even then I only managed to finish one of the two (hours before leaving) I had planned for this year. Now that I'm a bit costume creation-drained, I'm not quite sure if I'm up for the second of the two I originally wanted to get done, especially when I actually need to focus on my fight sticking instead...!
Thursday - The Day Down
The night before, leading up to the moment of departure was a bit of a headache with Sty's elder sister. Before I turn this into an all-out rant, we expected and unexpected an extra passenger to join us on the ride down, but I don't think she realized she was being only one-sided considerate. On one end she didn't want to bother her pet caretaker friend too much, but on the other, she doesn't realize she was freeloading a ride off me on the last minute and tried to make my plans work around hers. I wasn't particularly pleased but I did voice my opinion just enough to allow us to move along.
Regardless, although an hour late, we managed to pick up all the other bodies, Lester in Richmond and Sty in White Rock promptly after. Our delay added more to hour plus long border wait. We stopped at Boundary Bay in Bellingham where we had some good drinks and lunch.
After filling ourselves, we continued our way down and stopped at the premium outlet and walmart. As the day passed, we slowly began to realize we didn't have enough to do the other things we had planned, so we decided to defer most of it for our trip back up instead.
We finally arrived in central Seattle, dropped off Lester's stuff and headed to badge pickup to meet up with our other half, ToFu's group which consisted of himself, Rift, Mags, n Doom. Badge pickup was almost magical this year as the line was not a suffering 3 hour long wait (GJ, Sakuracon!). We dropped off our luggages at Rift's place and chilled at Nigel's bar, Outlander. Durian beer was good stuff.
Friday - Deathly Slopes (Day 1)
With almost no plans for this convention, we had ourselves some morning food at [name of resto]. Upon our arrival at the convention, our two halves went our separate ways. I lined up for Fujimura Ayumi's autograph and then heading to the dealer's hall to scout for the usual goodies. After managing to fill in the time, we managed to last until Rift's arrival from work before we headed to his recommended sushi resto, Nijo for happy hour. His "few blocks" turned out to be quite the journey down slopes and slopes of streets. The restaurant was unexpectedly a izakaya, which explained the need to go during their happy hour, and although we were satisfied, we were not full.
We returned to the con and bummed around a bit more, (e.g. gaming room for touhou sky arena) and then headed home early for "real food." Although we expected "real food," the guys only managed to bring back chip snacks for boardgame time.
It's that guy who, I guess, is kinda important.
Saturday - Gentlemen and Mental Gents (Day 2)
For breakfast, the gentlemen offered to make omelettes and thus we had a pretty homely meal. Come con time we stopped at the Psycho-Pass panel to begin and listened in on a list of predetermined Q&A questions. Although that prevented stupid questions, the predetermined topics were mostly typical, although some information was insightful into the series. After the panel, I tried at Kawahara Reki's autograph session. Knowing Kawahara Reki's popularity at the convention, it wasn't a surprise his autograph session attempt was futile as it was full mere moments after it opened. We wasted some time before heading to the Psycho-Pass industry guests' autograph session, Wada Jouji, Shiotani Naoyoshi, and Motohiro Katsuyuki.
We took our time heading to the Touhou panel's 2nd half to try and avoid the usual, unimpressive Touhou 101. Sadly the second half wasn't that much more entertaining but we sat through it and joined in on the photoshoot afterwards. Squinty-Eye Man!Sanae (lying on the ground saying "dodge my attack!") and Metal-Leek Man!Suika ("I'll hit you with my metal leek!"), thanks guys, you guys sure left an impression (y).
To the guy who shouted the photoshoot ordering, do a better job by starting with the group photo first the next time.
The starving us went to the Taphouse for late drinks and food before returning back for some drunken after hours Iron Artist, to only be beat out by a Dr. Who reference.
Sunday - A Shorty (Day 3)
For our rare third breakfast in a row, we stopped at Whole Foods for some hot foods, which was surprisingly good for grocery market food. When we got to the convention I checked out the lonely Blue Exorcist meetup before finding it too lonely for my tastes. We continued to loiter in the dealer's hall to wait for Sty's sisters, who only joined to do non-convention things, to return from their local shopping. It was a while before they came back, so Sty and I each enjoyed ourselves Starbucks' exclusive convention event drink, which they called the Sakuraccino.
The Sakuraccino - really delicious actually.
Once all the minions gathered, we moved ourselves back to Rift's place to indulge in deep dish pizza, chilling, and gaming before it was Doom's time to depart back to his state. To finish off the night, we watched the Rurouni Kenshin live action movie, which was a very nice touch to end the trip.
Monday - Happy Labourer's Day
For our return trip, we took our sweet time waking and packing before heading back up. We picked Lester up when we were ready and made our stops on the way back to our country. Although there really weren't that many additional stops (Uwajimaya, Trader Joe's), we still ended up arriving back late at night.
Ending Thoughts
In retrospect, the trip was pretty boring. Other than hanging out with good company, the convention itself was very uneventful. We were all pretty disappointed they didn't bring any illustrators/artists we could hassle with silly and embarrassing questions. The musical guests were small fry, Kawahara Reki is only kind of interesting (not interesting enough for me to fight for his autograph sadly), and a voice actor.
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