Wednesday, November 15, 2006

US Trip: Day Three
I set my alarm to go off REALLY early the next morning, as I didn't want to risk missing out on anything, and I wanted to look good.

I'd recently got this new styling stuff from the hairdressers' I visited before leaving, which was apparently meant to protect my hair when it was being straightened and help style it more. Personally, I couldn't see any difference as it was still too long to do anything much with and after a few moments of walking around I'd be sweating enough for its effects to completely diminish anyway.

But, nevertheless, I styled and washed and brushed my teeth (although not in that order) and went for another breakfast.

Even at about 7:30 in the morning there were a fair number of anime characters floating about. It was quite interesting to see which were the most popular series, and the huge contrast between the qualities of everyone's costumes. Most people looked to have come in groups, so very quickly I felt at a loose end with nobody to properly interact with.

Once food was inside me, though, I found new resolve to get up and hunt down merchandise. I wandered over to the Convention Centre to see a huge queue already mounting for the merchandise hall, which still wasn't due to open for another three to four hours. Gasp number one.

I checked over my schedule and joined the end of the queue; initially I thought it may be for the opening ceremonies, due to start at a much more reasonable waiting time.

The person who joined the queue after me was a girl called Grace, who I had a nice conversation with. After some debate, we decided to go and check the opening ceremonies together. Once we'd worked out how to get there (and I'd taken some pictures of a few cosplayers), we joined that queue, which was probably equally as huge as the Merchandise hall one. Gasp number 2.

Grace had to go downstairs and meet some friends; I would have gone too if I hadn't wanted to miss the opening ceremonies. After all, I didn't know when I was going to be there again and it sounded pretty impressive. The room certainly was. There must have been about three thousand seats all lined up with massive projector screens at regular intervals down the room for people at the middle and back to see the action. I took a little video of it with my camera which I'll put on YouTube sometime, if I get the chance.

Unfortunately, the word 'Ceremonies' illicited a far more spectacular image in my head than I was actually presented with. It was pretty informative, and nice to see people like Vic Mignona and Crispin Freeman introduce the show. But in all, it wasn't anything I didn't already know (or wasn't particularly interested in finding out about, despite the fact it was a bloody massive conference room), and I'd kinda wished I had followed Grace to see her friends. Still, by the time it had finished the merchandise hall was going to be open, and that was the main reason for being there (aside from meeting up with everyone, which I was due to do tomorrow).

Cue next sixteen gasps, all at once. So many stands... TWO massive halls... if I'd had the money I'd just have bought everything I could see just like that. The big distributors' stands looked the best- ADV's had two levels, from which they'd occasionally make anime voice actors throw free DVDs and T-Shirts and things to a howling crowd. I have a video of those, too. Quite scary, in a tribal, almost ritualistic kind of way.

Funimation's stand I liked the most, because it had a huge cylindrical poster of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle there that I wanted to take home. They didn't have any little ones, though, much to my chargrin.

I think wandering around in awe took up most of my day. That, and buying manga. I think in my first round of shopping I bought six books from one shop, as well as a slew of other things for Jeremy. The stall even gave me one of those impractically large Tokyopop bags to carry everything in, which was nice.

There were a lot of people with signs wandering around. They'd range from jokes, hug requests from anyone or specific genders/characters (I saw one guy carrying around a sign asking for hugs which said emphatically 'NO GUYS', which I thought was a little unfair.), to general notices about anome characters or J-Rock stars. I couldn't quite understand where they all stemmed from or how the tradition came about, but if someone's asking for a hug it'd be rude not to give them one, wouldn't it? They're free, after all.

I was getting frustrated with the bag I had to carry around, though. And my jacket. And the fact that I hadn't made my own costume. The little prima donna was coming out in me- I wanted people to be taking pictures of me. Well, that's not specifically true- I wanted to dress up to give people a reason for them to take pictures of me, but never mind. If I have the time, I'll definitely try to make something impressive.

I've since thrown away my schedule booklet, so I can't tell you whether I went to watch anything that day. I have a feeling I watched the Ah! My Goddess movie, something I've had an interest in for a longlong time but never had the opportunity to see.

I did feel remarkably lonely that evening, though. Coming back upstairs with a mountain of merchandise, although satisfying in itself, doesn't really mean much unless you have someone to share it with. And my room was very very big in relation to myself, making it induce even stronger feelings of isolation. Hearing big groups of people walking around the corridors laughing amongst themselves didn't exactly help much. It suddenly hit me what going to another country by yourself meant.

I managed to get down a good amount of story treatment whilst listening to my iPod, though, and read one or two manga volumes.

Dinner was nice. There wasn't a great deal that I thought looked very appetising as main meals, except for the chicken noodle soup. It was about six dollars cheaper than anything else and didn't have a questionable element to it (in particular there were a lot of things served with guacamole, which I feel uncomfortable with). And indeed, it was very nice.

So, with tomorrow's scheduled meeting with Panda, Mamma Vash, Shinmaru and Shy in mind, I went to bed hoping that I was going to be able to find everyone okay and looking forward to their company.

---

It's been busy again. I'm afraid of having to learn my lines and I'm unsure as to whether I have writer's block or just an overall lack of confidence in general. Nobody's being supportive of our play, and it seems that anyone who is interested doesn't actually want to give us any money. We won't be able to afford it if things continue like this. Still, there are other projects on the way, which may or may not bear greater fruition.

As for myself, I'm doing okay. I wrote down a list of things that were worrying me the other night and they're quite numerous, but I haven't got round to addressing any of them yet. I'd list them here, but I'm not even sure if anyone's still interested in me, so I didn't want to get ahead of myself ^_^;

I have a birthday present for Kei. It's been sat in my room since early September but I haven't had time to think about a decent letter yet.

Anyway, I hope you're all doing well. Hopefully, I'll be in touch soon ^_^

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