Sunday, July 9, 2006

Anime Expo Day 1 (of 4)

I'll be doing this one day at a time because it's simply so long. This being my first convention, I was probably overly excited about everything. But that's okay right? There will be lots of pictures! (And since my layout is so small they carry over into the sidebar just a little.. sorry~ Maybe a few videos from the second and last day. Soooooo....

here goes~ Sarah slept over at my house the night before the convention started, and that night we were trying to finish up my Battle Royale skirt. I made so many mistakes that my mom was just like "Here go play a game and I'll just finish this for you" (haha how sad). And so we did. We played quite a few rounds of Super Bust-a-move 2! In the end, we went to sleep at around 2:00 - we had planned to sleep really early but I wanted to help my mom sew (took until 11:30 or so), Sarah wanted to draw, I wanted to print out a BR map, and we just talked a lot too (of course).

The morning of the convention came and we prepared quickly. Sarah was in her Loveless costume (kind of) and I was in my Battle Royale costume. After a hurried breakfast, Mike came with Diego to pick us up. The ride to the convention center wasn't actually too long, but that might have been because Sarah and I were listening to Plastic Tree's new album so the time went by faster? :] We got to the center without getting lost (!!) and headed towards registration. We found Richard (Sarah got to meet him for the first time) and he said that he had saved us a spot in registration with James. Richard was in BR cosplay as well, so Sarah took this picture of us :D

:3 My friend told me I should have been Sakura and he could be Kazuhiko After we got our badges we met up with Lynda, and went to the second floor to wait for the Dealer's Room to open, and for Mike to get out of the registration line (he had to go in the seperate one). I got to talk to James for the first time, and I was going to take a picture of Richard, James, and Sarah all together, but Ricahrd was beeing camera shy. James looks a little suspicious >_> We got rather bored so we decided to go down to the first floor again and look for our friends. I was able to see Anders again! I've only met up with him twice so I was happy. He was in a school-boy costume that was supposed to be An-Cafe... but the rest of the group didn't really get the items for the cosplay in time. I also got to meet up with Janet, Anders' freind, for the first time. She was really nice and dressed in decora! It was so cute :] I was also able to meet Reiko, one of my blogging buddies. Her costume was very nice~ When I met her, we were gong to take a picture, and she said something like.. "I didn't know you were this short..." XD Anders and Sarah - two schoolboys? XD Janet Reiko and me Something odd happened to me when we walked through the hallways! A first time experience!! (that's odd? XD) Anyway, I felt a light tap on the shoulder and turned back to see someone I had never met before~ And then, he asked if he could take my picture! I was really nervous so I think that showed in the picture, but it was kind of fun and interesting. Since I had never cosplayed before (or even been to a con before), I wasn't expecting any of that. But it was kind of exciting~! After, I didn't feel so awkward, but I still felt nice when people liked my costume enough to want to take a picture :]While we were walking through the hallways, we were stopped by none other than Peelander-Z! They were advertising for their concert that day and let us take pictures with them. (Unfortunately we didn't make it to the concert~) They were so nice too~ They signed my advertisement card and were really amazed. They kept asking "Where did you get this?" and I told them that someone was handing the cards out to people when we were going out of registration. This is the picture we took with them: :DDDDD Our group kind of seperated from each other and Richard and I went into the Dealer's room. We got a bunch of free posters and the like from different booths, and headed straight to the JPop house booth. I bought a ticket to take a picture with 12012 for $5. Then, we went to the Tofu Records booth and I bought a HYDE concert T-Shirt. It was $25 but I guess for a concert T-shirt it wasn't too bad. It was really pretty and glittery too! I'll take a picture of it later. I also got a free HYDE poster with the shirt.We turned to the other side of the booth and found out that was where HYDE was going to be appearing. So we took a seat and waited... and waited.. and waited. Until we finally found out that he wasn't going to be coming until 4:30 - which was 3 and half hour wait. But it was already getting crowded so we were going to wait... until I realized something! 12012 photos were going to be at 4:00! I met a girl named Monika who promised if they offered autographs or photos she would get some for me, and Richard told me that he would save my place for me :] I felt really really bad for just leaving him there when he didn't even know HYDE but at the same time I was happy~So I wandered around a little while and picked up a free Azumi T-shirt for filling out a survey, looked at some of the shopping and the like, and went out to find Sarah. She was at the Loveless meetup and I went and met Sho, Kaori and Ayu. Everyone looked really cute in their outfits :] It's off center but the quality turned out nice I think~ So we waited around to take a break since everyone had been standing in the burning sun. We talked and hung out and took pictures and whatever. Some of the cute cosplays we saw: We actually saw them earlier but I didn't know where to put them. haha. Family cosplay is really cute! These girls were adorable. We also saw them earlier.. haha. I think we saw two different Hard Gay cosplayers this year! Then Sarah and I headed back to the 12012 booth in a few hours. Sarah bought her ticket and we lined up. I felt so out of place because I was in cosplay and everyone else was dressed VK-ish! Like these two people (they were so cute!) (and omg they were so thin too...) While we were standing in line I dropped a lot of my stuff but we met a nice girl who helped us out. She was dressed in Angelic Pretty, and was quite friendly. After all of our stuff was picked up, we saw this guy with a camcorder panning right across us. Sarah and I just kept talking and laughing so as not to look too weird on camera, but after we all were like "WTH??" Even the girl we met said that she was trying to hide behind us. (but really she was so pretty she didn't have to hide!) So anyway we got towards the front of the line and everything went so fast! They just were like "get up there take a picture and LEAVE" haha - so I didn't really get to talk with them at all. All that was said was "Thank you," and then I got to shake hands :3 I dont' like the way my picture turned out though... I look so dorky.... ._.; I rushed back to the HYDE booth and it was PACKED. But I was able to find my way to Richard and sit down :] HYDE was quite a funny guy. He came on and everyone was screaming for him (and the host taught the audience how to say "HAIDO DAISUKI" >_>). Even with his sunglasses on, he looked pretty shocked by the fan reaction here in America. But anyway, it was funny to hear HYDE answer the questions. He would always be like "Anou.... anou......" and on long questions he would have to ask the translator again what the question was.But what I remember MOST about the interview is... "What influences your fashion?" HYDE looked a little confused, muttered "Anou... eto...." and then... "Nan darou??" So the translator said something like, "Okay let's change the question a little bit. How did you choose what you wore today?" And HYDE looked down at his clothes, and said something to the extent of "Well, I wanted to wear something casual, so I picked comfortable pants, and then found a top to go with it." The crowd laughed - I think they were expecting something really deep. haha. The other question that made us all laugh was about his trip to California. They asked if he had done any sightseeing and he paused, and said... "Kinou.... shoppingu.... desu....." very very slowly. And everyone tried to figure out where he went shopping and they talked and talked trying to find out... until finally, they said, "Well anyway, HYDE went shopping yesterday." HYDE also talked about his album, like what it's theme was (Ai to Shi, or Love and Death), that he worked hard on all the songs so he didn't exactly have a favorite part of it, and that as he gets older he thinks more deeply, which is part of the reason why the religious overtones were apparent in his new album. He also said when asked that everything influences his work and adds to his songs, and that in the past, he would draw the entire song before writing the lyrics, but lately hasn't had to do that. Pictures were not allowed, but HYDE did sign a poster that we could take pictures of afterwards.. Given the choice of silver or gold Sharpies, HYDE chose gold After the HYDE thing, it was about 5 or so, so we walked around for a little while and then went to the lobby of the Hilton. Sarah and Richard were really tired. Sarah fell asleep once, woke up and went to go talk to Ayu, and then Richard fell asleep. But then, we decided to walk to the Dennys for dinner! And Richard left some of his stuff at the Hilton so he had to go back and get it. By the time we got to the Denny's though, Richard kind of already caught up to us XDDD We ended up not eating too much between all 8 (or 9) of us. Richard and I shared chicken with rice and onion rings, Sarah got an order of fries for all of us to share, and I forgot what everyone else got. At the end I was going to pay Richard back but he didn't let me see the receipt so I couldn't. It was like full-out war... and I lost XD After dinner it was almost time to go, so we walked to the Tiffy's and Mike's dad picked us up. We kind of got lost, but it was okay because we were able to see the fireworks from Disneyland :] Sarah got picked up at my house. And then I put away all my stuff and went to sleep. {{END DAY 1}}
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