A Chillin' Sakuracon 2013

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.

Sakuracon Repo 2012

Come Easter weekend, come Sakuracon.

This year's convention landed early in the month, mauling my birthday weekend but, hey, the regular dose of geekery was needed. The weekend started slightly earlier for me as I took the Thursday off to give myself some time to get some last minute things done. I ended up spending the Wednesday night finishing up small costume tweaks and my absolutely divine durian-filled cake. Caught a bit of shut-eye before waking up early to pick up Xenoblade Chronicles, a bday package (from my smexy mango sister) at the post office, and some delicious Chinatown nam sammiches with my brother. Mid-afternoon ToFu, Sty, and I made our way down to Seattle to arrive sometime in the evening and followed to unload our stuff at Garret's. Unfortunately the gang wasn't very pro-karaoke and were feeling very pro-pizza, so pizza happened. Ion joined us for food and brought over a Pokemon board game which we tackled for the rest of the night. Also, discovered that beer floats are generally pretty gross (at least the dark beer and vanilla ice cream combination).

Day 1: LineCon.

The convention decided to scrap the Will Call idea without notice this year so me and Sty ended up having to line up to register. Sadly their registration did not improve since I last experienced it a previous year where the wait time was a solid 3 hours. Regrettably, this year was no exception, as we ended up waiting about the same long 3-4 hours (I completely lost track).

With the registration horror finally behind us, we moved to our first panel of the day to a manga work-related talk panel with Zekkyo and Retsu Tateo. Some pretty interesting fetishes were revealed thanks to some smart questioning. We waltzed into the room next door after for the Gen Urobuchi, Atsuhiro Iwakami, and Katsushi Ota Q&A panel. There was a bit of an intro vid for some of their recent works (interestingly enough, all shown were scored by Kajiura Yuki). While barely paying attention to the less then stellar questions, I spotted LightningSabre a few rows in front of me (actually more like I saw his signature Shana jacket.) and flagged him down afterwards. His fancy press badge got me thinking about BLOGGING (= Press = Free). Something to consider! We stayed for the following panel for Wakeshima Kanon and she came out looking a bit rundown with the wig? bleached-dyed hair? that didn't seem to quite suit her. After the Q&A, we headed to the exhibitor hall's final hour to do some quick browsing. Fortunately nothing really caught my eye this time around, except for an artbook or two.

We reassembled our group, met up with ToFu's friend, Magister, and then headed out to finally get our first meal of the day at the Taphouse. I ate his caesar salad. Sorry, dude. :|

The Stereopony concert was already well on its way when we got back to the convention. None of us were huge fans and I wasn't particularly a fan of their music either so it wasn't a loss for any of us. We then spent the next while in the boardgaming room before the Iron Artist panel at 11. The panel turnout seemed bigger than the years past, but it might've been because of the the room size and layout. Unfortunately there wasn't an 18+ version of the panel this year either, but it was still pretty entertaining.

Day 2: Omiyage.
We allowed ourselves to sleep in a bit before making our way to the convention for some artist Q&As. Both panels featured a slideshow of some of the artists' work, projected on a wall that wasn't completely flat. Nothing out of the norm for questions but we did try and prod Zekkyo on her BLing and Retsu on her hot, bald men fetish.

After panels, I headed to check out the AoEx photoshoot which wasn't situated in the best location imho and then visited the ending of the PanSto photoshoot where Lester was at. Made our way to the autograph lines and started with the Aniplex trio, Urobuchi/Ota/Iwakami. Bumped into LS again before the lines started forming were allowed to be formed.

When it got to my turn as I handed my to-sign piece around the table, Ota reached under the table, handed me a Fate/Zero desk mat featuring suit!Sabre, and said "omiyage" (souvenir). So, the surprised me looking like @__@ thanked him, got my autographs, and moved along, still dazed. With a new desk mat in my hand, we wobbled to Steve Blum's extended Q&A panel and caught the last bit of it before returning to the autograph room for HIS autograph.

Fortunately he had some neato postcards featuring some of his work so me and Sty both picked ourselves one each for him to sign. It was a real shame we weren't able to sit in on his panel though. With the remaining time, we took a last visit to the exhibitor's hall before meeting up with the people for that day's round of food at, yet again, the Taphouse. Although this time around, we had a table of at least ten of us but food and drinks came quickly.

With filled bellehs, Sty, Lester, Ion and I returned to the convention to check out Wakeshima Kanon's concert (or at least the latter half). I felt the concert was a bit underwhelming, although it may have been because of the lack of songs I personally enjoyed of hers, so I'm probably just being bias. We trekked along to the autographs line afterwards and nabbed myself an autograph. We spend the next bit in the boardgaming room (a fancy anniversary version of Settlers of Catan which was defective!) before the swimsuit contest. I regret not snapping a photo of team Seigaku playing DDR outside the panel room. SO REGRET ...because the swimsuit contest was a huge disappointment. Not even worth mentioning the details.

Day 3: Finishing Up.
Autographs were held for both the Japanese artists in the morning. Sadly they only gave sketches for ticket lotto winners (none of us were lucky enough) so we still got ourselves autographs. Bumped into LS again somewhere here. :D

The rest of the afternoon was a blur, but I do recall checking out the Charity Auction and seeing people bid ridiculous prices on stuff. I do regret letting someone get away with a signed and framed Capcom poster at a mere $120. Oh and watched some of the Gundam EXVS tournament. Aside from that, we bummed around a bit before deciding on dinner and packing up our things for the drive back.

We finalized on Crab Pot again this time around, got our hands and faces dirty, and had a good seafoody feast.

No real loot this year... but I did come back with stuff:

Sakura Con 2011 Report

Admiring from a distance... Delicious Perfect Grade.
Easter weekend fell on the final weekend of April this year and Sakura Con followed suit. Things kind of worked out: worked furiously at my portfolio up until the week of Sakura Con to then work furiously on the changes for my costume. Thanks to stress, I had the worst migraine the night before but I managed to recover enough.

Thursday - Day 0
Would've took the day off from work if the workload wasn't so disgustingly big in the last month. Fortunately I was able to jet early and headed home to do some last minute packing before gathering the gang - ToFu and Sty. We ended up leaving Vancouver way later than planned due to all sorts of delays but luckily we still beat the border rush. We made a stop at the Premium Outlet which lasted longer than we originally wanted but it was a nice break from all the sitting.

When we finally got into Seattle, we decided on Kylie's Chicago (deep dish) Pizza for dinner, a mere half n hour before the place closed. After filling up we headed to Garret's place around 10:30ish to finally settle down. We stalked the Will Call page for as long as we could before we decided to call it a night.

Friday - Day 1
Will call finally opened early in the morning so we finally registered. We made our way to the convention to make it to VOFAN and Jo Chen's first panel where they demoed how they collaborated and completed the Sakura Con exclusive Japan relief poster. The level of complexity of the two art styles (Jo Chen and her 3D-style; VOFAN and his character design process) and watching their progress fast forwarded was pretty amazing.

After our first panel we checked out the Artists Alley and then took a visit to the Exhibitor's Hall where I tried really hard to find something I really wanted. I did spot Fate Testarossa Movie version for a whopping 280$ (overpriced 2x) which came out earlier this year. Sadly not happening. With a passing interest in the panel's title, we stopped in to see Jo Chen's BL Circle panel where my respect for her grew even bigger. :D

We finally had our first meal of the day at the Tap House before returning back to check out the "How to Talk to Girls" panel. To our dismay it really was just a counselor girl studying psychology? telling us that anime is not real life. Thanks for the wake up call. We escaped a few minutes into the panel to revisit the Artists Alley before heading to this year's Iron Artist where ToFu reigned supreme again against Garret. After kicking some drawing ass we went to the Swimsuit Contest. Horo and her can crushing with her thighs of steel was kinda cool. Just saying. We have no idea who won though since we left before the results.

Saturday - Day 2

Here's some Moriyama.
Autograph day: VOFAN & Jo Chen, Mitsuishi Kotono (fsking long line + angry fans), Moriyama Daisuke and finally Atsushi Suzumi. Since Atsushi's autograph line was short, we were able to request artwork as well. Lined up on her table were some of her other works and Tokyo Ravens caught my eye so I decided to request that from her. A pouty Natsume was completely up my alley!


Dancing girls in the distance.
Finally after hours of autographing, we hung out outside for some fresh air and watched some photoshoots happen. Checked out the Berryz Koubou concert a bit before heading to Cheesecake Factory for some food and to meet up with the SF gang. I had some firecrackers:


After food we loitered outside before I was spotted by some Touhoes. Decided to check out their little pre-party meetup at Gameworks and, yeah, lots of people showed up. I helped myself to their veggie platter to keep myself busy. P: There was some sort of role playing happening in one corner, Touhoes on a laptop in another, a bunch of non-cosplayer friends chatting to each other or karaoke (aka a capella). Eh. Anyway, I wanted to see that one DJ from Japan at the dance so I headed back to the convention. Unfortunately there was no schedule for the DJs performing so I didn't get a chance to hear that guy's music and I sure wasn't willing to wait around until 4am to find out.

Sunday - Day 3
We failed to leave on time in the morning and ended up missing some of the potentially interesting fashion shows. Following the schedule, we went to VOFAN and Jo Chen's final panel for some fun, free for all Q&A time. We ended up throwing a number of entertaining questions at them. We suspected that VOFAN was probably holding back on some of the answers to the questions since his wife was in the audience.

VOFAN and Jo Chen
Stopped by the Touhou panel after the Q&A to find that they were already doing the photoshoot. We made our final visit to the exhibitor's hall for any last minute deals and purchases to finish off the convention.

There was also an amusing encounter with the niconico.com stream. I'll just leave it at that.

Post convention: we made our way to Uwajimaya and Kinokuniya for some more shopping before heading to Crab Pot for dinner.




What a delicious mess.
My damage which mainly consisted of games I bought and shipped to my friend's place for my pickup convenience:


Gawd too many games.
Then came Monday and normal work life resumed.

Sakuracon 2010: A Mellow Report

A somewhat spur of the moment decision lead to an Easter weekend at Sakuracon in Seattle.

Day 1
ToFu and me made our way down 6am, waited at the border for 1 1/2 hrs, got to the convention at 10am. The registration was absolute shit. For someone who reminded the friend to sign up for will call but didn't do it themselves is a total retard. Yes, THAT WOULD BE ME. So for the next 3 yearshours we lined up for registration while the will call line took a mere ten minutes max.

When we finally got out, we first went to meet DJ Sharpnel. After the autograph, there was the Noizi Ito panel that consisted of relatively standard questions, plus the expected confession of "I love you, will you marry me?" kind of deal. So she is married apparently. The panel nicely finished off with my friend asking about whether she was aware of the Haruhi genderbenders. Sadly she doesn't allow herself to draw them since they may be interpreted as official art. Damn, so close.

We did some wandering afterwards: dealer's, peeked into the speed dating, console rooms, Microsoft room. I somehow won the daily draw at the Microsoft room on our visit, but I regret not picking up Halo instead of a spare controller, especially considering I've been presented with a gold subscription (more on that at another time).

The registration lineup really tired us out though. We/I wanted to go to DJ Sharpnel's hour at the rave party (lol otaku rave) but it wasn't for a few hours so we tried to pass the time at random panels - AMV room and Press your Luck (some game show). As much as we tried to hang on, we finally gave up and decided to grab food at the Taphouse even though we originally considered starving until the next morning. We made it back to the convention for DJ Sharpnel. I suppose he sounds alright live but he used the same beat without much variety unlike his CD releases. Got to experience some strange otaku activities in there: girl in her underwear, strange clusterfuck jump-humping, random high people saying hi, and then the usual train dance.

After his performance, we finally decided to call it a day and not wait for the swimsuit contest (yes, swimsuit contest) so we made our way to ToFu's friend, Garret's, place. The downside of the area he lived in was the lack of public parking. We had to park on top of this insanely steep hill most of the weekend and that created an unwanted exercise routine. At his place, fortunately the two cats there did not phase me with the help of allergy meds so the sleep was peaceful, minus the angry truck that drove by early next morning.

Day 2
Garret joined us the next day. We went to a locally famous bagel shop for brunch and then it was his turn to wait for registration. His was a massive 4 hours compared to our 3. While he waited, we revisited the dealer's room and found a hidden gem table of goodies. My first purchase: $6. I sure started off well. After the quick dealer's room browse, we made our way to the Noizi Ito signing and then met up with Garret and Neku after they were done with reg.

Since I was questioned by a number of people whether I'd be going to the Touhou panel, we figured we should go take a look anyway since the turnout wouldn't be that massive anyway... or so we thought. We were wrong. The room was too small to fit everyone and there were some that had to stand outside and wait. The panel itself was nothing special: a rundown of the history of its popularity and some bogus statistics and facts that had little to no credibility.

The panel was followed by a photoshoot and some after meet which we did not attend. I forgot to take photos. They'll be around the internets prolly. Although I must say leaving early to make it to the concert that kinda sucked makes me wonder what they ended up doing. I'll need to work on my crossdresser senses though. There has been too many traps.


Back to the concert - Dazzle Vision and HIGH and MIGHTY COLOR. Dazzle Vision is angry death metal but with a cute-looking vocalist. HandMC has become this strange death metal as well, but Yusuke is losing his touch or something... due to the loss of Maki perhaps? Long story short, the concert was a disappointment. I decided against getting HandMC's autograph, so we went out for food after and Mina joined us as well. It was prime food-eating time, so our choices were limited and so we ended up at the Taphouse again. [insert joystick jokes]

After some good food, we went back to the convention for the Iron Artist After Hours and of course the two artists, ToFu and Garret participated. The After Hours version was definitely a lot of interesting since the drawing contest allows such words as 'thrusting' and 'banana hammocks' and how it was mandatory to draw boobs or it's a given that you won't get voted.

Day 3
As usual, the last day's main purpose was the dealer's room. We first got breakfast from an organic market nearby and made our way to the convention for the lolita fashion show! It was quite neat.. minus the traps. The girls who crossdressed the guys outfits were so much more better looking than the actual guys in the guy clothes. :/

After the fashion show, we went to the dealer's room real quick before making our way to the Vocaloid panel. We were late to show so we didn't get entry until half way through. The vocaloid panel was also hosted by some of the Touhou crew (surprise surprise). They made us watch through one of the one-hour plus long medleys. The panel followed by a photoshoot (more traps) and then we moved ourselves back to the dealer's room. In the last few moments, I managed to get a few deals there. Safest haul yet. A side note, there are no plans on beating that record.


After the fun in the dealer's room, that was that. We sat around the closing ceremonies because there was really nothing left and we were eventually kicked out. The rest of the evening was spent hanging out at Garret's place, playing BlazBlue while waiting for Summer Wars to finish downloading. We watched that and then just chilled until we realized it was already midnight and we needed to jet. On our way back up, we stopped by Walmart and got some US-exclusive goodies. The border was dead so the way up was pretty smooth, minus the nasty rain/wind/dark weather.

I don't usually take photos at a convention, but this Cloud was just that awesome.


Strange, both the trip started and ended up with wonderful spillages. Prior to the trip, nail polish went effing everywhere (not cool). Post trip, the ice tea I got from Walmart cracked in my car trunk. Life is telling me that REALITY SUCKS, ENJOY THE FREEDOM WHILE YOU CAN CUZ WHEN YOU RETURN, REALITY IS READY FOR YOU.

Sakura Con 2008 Report

I was going through my old pictures and I was like... what the, I didn't post about Sakura Con! Sadly, I'm not one with good memory so recalling it will be a biotch.

Point form time!

- We (Shi2, Dave and me) left Vancouver early Thursday morning of March 27 via Greyhound and got there sometime early afternoon.

- We did a lot of shopping in the area rather than actually hanging around the con (uh, it was kinda boring <_<;)

- I went to Kikuta Hiroki's panel, guy who composed Secret of Mana. He mentioned Concerto Gate as his latest. I wanted to get into beta real bad just for his music.. speaking of which, what happened to that game?

- For the second half of his panel, he remixed a bunch of Secret of Mana tracks on a fast bpm. He requested people to feel free to dance, but it was way too awkward for the audience so most people did stand up... and... stand there. AWKWARD AS HELL but I felt so bad for him, yet I couldn't do anything to help.

- Went to his signing as well... sadly I brought nothing for him to sign (I wouldn't know where my SoM game is anyways) and he requested every attendee for their favourite track. I told him the forest one (humed the song to him) but when I got home to listen again.. MY FAVOURITE IS NOT THAT ONE but it sure was the most memorable one. He signed my badge instead.

- Met up with Nekura briefly there. Had him bring us to some places... though I only remember going to the very first Starbucks location ever built.

- Did shopping... was deciding whether to get Ignis in her wedding gown or Kaleido Ruby (Rin) or this unexpectedly hot Rei with the lance of Longinus. I'm actually not a fan of Rei (I prefer Asuka) but I really liked the figure so I went with that one. Kaleido Ruby disappeared on the last day when I was deciding on one of the three.

- I remember we spent a lot of time at the dealer's room but that's not really news.

- When I was lining up for Kawamoto Toshihiro's signature, I played a few rounds of Tetris DS whoop-ass against Nekura. I haven't lost my touch ;D

- Kawamoto Toshihiro (Wolf's Rain, Cowboy Bebop illustrator) was a nice guy.

- I don't think I went to any concerts. Not even ALI PROJECT.

- Speaking of ALI PROJECT, we've decided to boycott Sakura Con after this particular incident: After being to so many conventions, if one wants a popular guests' autograph, one must be prompt because I realize that guests have a tight schedule. I lined up for ALI PROJECT's scheduled autograph block.. however their line was actually kind of missing. I went to ask a staff member what was going on and they informed me that they pushed it to two hours later. I thought oh okay, so we decided to head off to do something else in the meanwhile. When we got back, I find out that the lineup for ALI PROJECT JUST finished, and I JUST MISSED IT. I ended up getting extremely pissed and find some staff to spazz at. They didn't have much to say about it except apologize rather insincerely. It was extremely unfair and just completely retarded. Just thinking about it now makes my blood boil.

I realize I probably shouldn't stop going because of this but, they weren't so great to begin with so screw them. I'll go to PAX instead - done.

Bye-Bye Work & SakuraCon 2006

So much has happened >:3!

After resigning from work.. the last two weeks were.. LONG and tedious. First I had to deal with my retarded manger who was strangely hyper and trying to hard to look happy when I was around. But upon looking at the schedule she had put up for after my leave, it looked like hell. Oh well, not my problem anymore. On my last day of work, she treated me to pizza (more like she wanted pizza and ordered a size too big). Noooo not her food again! LUCKILY, I felt fine this time. (Did I mention she poisoned me the day I gave her my resignation letter?) Then there was this tattle-tale security guard I had to work with the last few days of my work. When our manager was around, he would often come by and discuss serious (-sounding) "work"-related issues with her which made it seem like he was a very diligent worker and knew what he was doing and all that shit. Well, when our manager's gone for the day, he'd be sitting on his ass out in the open right in front of us or watching our tv in the weight room. Keh, we told on him obviously because there's no use for a security guard who doesn't do his job. In return, he tattle-tailed on us saying that WE were lazy. Our retarded manager obviously took his side too... bastid. Now, when I was leaving for the night, he escorted me to my car. My car's old so I warm it up some and sit around in the car for a bit. He got into his car and aimed his headlights at me to rush me to LEAVE. Agh, fucking asshole.

Anyways, after 7 straight days of work... my work days at the bloody spa were over and off to Seattle I went right after.

-Sakura Con 2006 Report-

Yes, I did some lovely last minute packing. My luggage bag was strangely empty too... it was hard to get used to, but then again it was only 4 days right... Then I had to wake up and arrive at Shi^2's place at 730am. When I got there, she was still only half awake so it took us a while to get ready. When we DID get ready, and was on our way, we all forgot our passports/ID's. Ha-ha-hahahaha... We're funny. So we drove back to my place to grab my passport and then back to Shi^2's place for her ID, also picking up her mom too for work. It was past 8 by then and though we aimed to get to the station for 830, I think we were only late by a few minutes. We met up with David at the station and then we had McDix for breakfast when we found out the bus hasn't even arrived yet. We quickly scarfed and went on the bus. I only lasted through 1 1/2 radio programs I had on my mp3 player before I started dozing off. The bus ride wasn't too long... we left at 9 and arrived around 12:30. When we got there, we figured we could use the exercise, so we walked to our hotel. We spent the next few hours wandering around the nearby malls before it was time to pick up our pre-regged badges. Shi^2 was once again attracted by the theatres they had there... especially the Cinplex Odeon that actually said Cinplex Odeon. I picked up Suikoden V with the pre-order bonus from EB along the way. The badge pick-up was pretty quick. I was handed one of the ugly 'goodie' bags (which didn't have any goodies actually...) that advertised for MADAGASCAR (wtf!) so I asked for another bag (so I got the GitS bag) but then I saw a Gun X Sword bag so I asked for another one again. Eheheh.. :X We had Subway for dinner that night... disgusting. They just.. don't know how to make it or something... Then we started freaking out when we began hearing cosplayers coming from the distance, spewing out random Japanese words. Imagine that magnified ten fold with Dolby Digital surround sound... We shivered at the thought. Oh, the next few days will be interesting... yes.

We slept early... actually, we've been only sleeping early throughout the whole trip.. which was kinda weird. The first night we crawled into bed at 11?! The night after, with some effort, 1am. The first panel we wanted to go to didn't start until 2PM and the Exhibitor's Hall didn't open until 12PM so yes, technically, we didn't need all those hours of sleep. But for some odd reason we forced ourselves to sleep... [Nothing else to do? :b] We ate and then did our Exhibitor's Hall shopping first. "Hm, it looks like there's a convention going on, lets paint the floor today!" said the painters as they decided to paint the Exhibitor's Hall waiting room floors and then place two small signs that said Wet Paint very far away so the eye could not see. Hurhur, true story. :b

I picked up too much shit on the first day. The Itou Noiji Artbook was only on display at AX last year, so I was glad I found that. There weren't that many Gun X Sword stuff on sale there, which was kind of disappointing. I was hoping to get the second drama CD but they pretty much didn't have ANY drama CD goodies there at all. No Drama CD listeners eh... :/ Kinokuniya didn't have much manga there at their booth, which was surprising... Instead, I found myself shopping for manga from Sasuga which I didn't exactly prefer but had no choice. There WAS only one Japanese comic book seller in the whole hall... BUT the good thing was they had a good variety of titles.. I now finally own my own collection of Chrno Crusade and Erementar Gerad, very happeh~ I couldn't wait for my online shipment to come so I picked up the Air Gear Pinky:St as well. The Mai-HiME figurine set was pure concidence I swear. I thought there'd be absolutely NO chance for me to find such a rare set ANYWHERE except online which was BLOODY EXPENSIVE. Then there's my new lover -- RABI! I was talking with David and all of a sudden I noticed this random guy with a giant Rabite in his arms and I'm like OMG STOP WAIT WHERE'D YOU GET THAT! What were my chances of getting a Rabi there as well? I dunno, I didn't expect it actually. But I'm glad I did >:333

2 o'clock came around, so we rushed to get seats at the Gun X Sword Q&A Panel. Huumm... the room was small... the audience was pretty small too. Not many people know of the series but still... I actually didn't have any questions for the Q&A Panel, I just wanted to attend [and see all the famous people! -- Taniguchi Goro, Takahiro Kimura, Hideyuki Kurata and Hoshino Takanori]. There were a bunch of annoying people that kept going off topic... asking about Scryed, R.O.D., Gundam... -_-; *FIST* Since the audience was a bit lacking.. the questions were kind of slow too... After the Q&A, I asked to get my picture taken with Van's Seiyuu, Hoshino Takanori! Wheee~ Very cool stuff! Afterwards, we lined up for the Autograph session. I had Shi^2 and David help me sign the one too many things I brought for the autograph session, not knowing what to give them. Almost soon after, we headed to the AMV Contest [which ended up to be a big waste of time]. It didn't seem like they tried to narrow down all of the entries and just allowed everyone to enter. The contest went on for hoursss and at the end they had a bunch of stop-motion videos all made by the same guy played... Uhh, a contest against himself? After that nightmare was over, we relieved ourselves from our heavy loot at the hotel and headed out for some food. Everything was either closed or packed so I think we ended up going to some very far away McDonalds. We didn't get to try their Cheesecake Factory. :[

Saturday morning, we couldn't or.. more like we didn't feel like waking up for the Penny Arcade panel... we originally hoped to go to try our chance on some free stuff. I had soup in a [sour!] bread bowl for lunch. After food, we visited the Exhibitor's Hall again. This time, I touched nothing! I eyed a few things for the last day for when negotiating and price droppages are in effect. We fled home again and bummed for a bit before we decided to set out for some mall shopping. We had nothing planned until the Super Smash Bros Melee tournament that got postponed for later in the day. We ate at the food court again that night and returned to the convention centre. We checked out the 'arcade' area [which had nothing but 3-4 crappy machines.. grr, I was hoping to play Guilty Gear Isuka again or GuitarMania......] and I found an online friend but he was busy with his DDR Tournament. We headed off to drop off David at his SSBM tournament and hung around upstairs where the dance was apparently starting. I went back to the arcade area to see if he was free and we talked a bit before he had to go. Hmm, just as I imagined 'cept shorter than expected! XP! He thought I was shorter than he expected too, nihehehe... I returned to Shi^2 and met up with David after his game. It was already 12 then so we headed back.

The next morning... Oh, Sunday already. Food court again. Gee, food is expensive there. We did more mall shopping... Shi^2 raided Victoria's Secret the whole time. With 2 hours remaining in the Exhibitor's Hall [closed at 4], we rushed back for our last minute buys. Both Shi^2 and I picked up the Evangelion Pinky:St set and the Evangelion Sachiel-XX Angel. Yay, I'm 1/5th into the set of what's out so far. And with the remaining of my cash, I spent it on getting my own set of Kami-chama Karin. Remaining USD: 3 1 dollar bills. We met up with an SGer, Blake, as he brought us to somewhere with better food. He then saw us off at the Greyhound station at 6. The place was flooding with people... thank goodness the Vancouverites got first priority. The bus trip was long though... it made a lot of stops before arriving at Vancouver. I was so glad to be home! Apparently, I am allergic to Seattle the nasty otaku.. As soon as I set foot in Seattle, I started to get the sniffles. In the hotel, I'd be sneezing and getting extremely itchy, irritated eyes. I pretty much suffered all weekend... =__= Not to mention the water was so chlorinated, it reeked of Chlorine and was rough on the skin. Anyways, my family had roast beef that night. Unfortunate I was full from eating on the bus ride before getting home.

Overall this con wasn't too bad [not as bad as AE at least.. :X], the exhibitor's hall was MORE than just Naruto, Inu Yasha and Gundam Seed... their guests could've used some more work [C'mon, where's someone like Ohtani Ikue and angela!]... the panels were really.. really REALLY lame... Convention DATING Panel? WTF? That's just sad. From the way things are going... LA'll be next year. This 'trip' is my vacation for this year. AE's looking pretty good so far. Let's hope their vendors smarten up.

mmm mold

Apparently Fukuroku Sushi has all-you-can-eat now. With a Deluxe Menu option. Their deluxe > Richmond Sushi's deluxe. Even the waiter is cute! Bonus!

Ahh that reminds me, I picked up Shinshi Doumei Kurosu tankoubon last week and aieee I'm so happy~ The 4kon panels at the back (especially the one about Maguri and ... wow you wouldn't know he had an accent unless you read the raw!) are hilarious. GJ Tanemura Arina-sensei~ xDD

There's also a bunch of series I wanna buy.. but that's not before I get income again. I will hold back from the temptation. Yess.

Ah the return of driving lessons... this time, I found another lady to help me out. Hmm, the lesson was... really bad. I forgot about school zones twice and my bad habits were everywhere. Not to mention her car was kinda difficult to get use to... even after using it for 1 1/2hr. I have no confidence as of yet but it feels as though I felt the same for my first test too and I was still fine. But anyways, gotta be more cautious... if no one has yet to fail the class 5, I don't want to be the first. がんばるぞーっ！／／／　v(￣Д￣)v

Ohtani Ikue-san and angela at SakuraCon... that pisses me off. On the weekend of my birthday... there's no way in hell I'll be wasting my party time at a convention (as much as I like Ohtani-san and anime). Ah well, one minor loss compared to what and whom we'll see at Anime EXPO! Sakamoto Maaya~ + others. The CCS Board & .hack BBS people too as well... hm, it'll be interesting. :]] I feel bad for making Sty stay behind from SC for my party though... but she said AX is more worth it anyhow (which is true...)... So now I'm motivated to save up and spend a bit more to go. Yay~ lets hope my school schedule won't clash.

もー

何でそうになちゃったのかな…；；
いつの間に、桜コンのゲストは大谷育江さんとangelaさんになちゃって行きたいなぁ～と思っててマジで行く～とするとあたしの誕生日パーティの日も…同じの日で起こるミタイ…ので、行かなくなった…そして、あたしの大事な友達もまたそう、また今年あたしのパーティにいかなくなった…

angelaさんのステキな声聞きてぇーっ
ピカピカも聞きテェーーーーーーーっ！(´Д⊂
ガシュの「うむっ！」やこより、チョッパ、いすず、ふじ姫までガクッ

あたし日本語下手くせぇ／／／　＿|￣|○----

変更：友達はその変わりに一緒にAXに行かなければならんとちょっと約束したｖｖじゃ、AXのお楽しみ～☆ま～あ～や～さ～ん～