Sakura Con - Day 1 and Day 2 begins
Ohaiyo! (Good morning!)
I found a different set of complementary computers this morning, in the back if the lobby bar. (!?!) Speaking of which, the lobby here is huge, it wraps around two side of the buildng and runs the length of the block on both sides. But, between being only steps from the convention center and having three floors of convention/meeting space of their own, I suppose they must see from pretty good crowds from time-to-time. I should take a moment to give kudos to the hotel, other than the crappy coffee in the coffee shop, they've been unfailingly well organized, helpful, and polite.
Day 01
We ended up eating breakfast in the hotel yesterday, very pleasent and comfortable but also very expensive... we found a little cafe down the block which hopefully will be cheaper. Four days at con can get a little expensive, so we need to keep an eye on the expenditures.
Brenda had an early panel on Cosplay, so I went to the opening ceremonies which was pretty fun. Until late afternoon, we were both on seperate tracks and so we only saw each other in passing.
The photoshoot with a group of Sailor Moon cosplayers went well despite having a much lower attendance than the activity on the forums would have suggested. (I'll be shooting them today and tommorrow too, so we'll see how it goes.) Over the day, I collected a lot of shots of Sailor Scouts, for an anime/manga series that's just over twenty years old now it still holds a lot of fascination for many.
My first panel ended up being canceled, so I spent more time wandering around and photographing the cosplayers - and there was some incredible cosplay going on... Some people are very dedicated, I saw one girl cosplaying Chi (from Chobits), and over the course of the day I saw her in pretty much all of her outfits from the series - in order. There's been a nice mix of new and old overall, along with many people in kimono. Renting the fast lens turned out to be a brilliant idea, as the lighting in the convention center has been uniformly horrible. I've been shooting a mix of just snapshots and trying for some portraiture, but mixed results on the latter. The cosplayers aren't really in that mode, and I still need to work out how to bring them out.
In the midst of all this, I also hit the dealers room - which was a total sensory overload between the crowds and all the cool stuff. I could have spent a fortune just on clever t-shirts...
Then it was time for a panel on creating AMVs, which was a little different than I expected but still interesting and useful. I have a couple of ideas for AMV, but they're one of many projects on the back burners. After that, Brenda and I hooked up and wandered around and headed over to the food court at Westlake Center, which has an amazing assortment of ethnic fast food, for dinner. She had an udon bowl, but nothing caught my eye and sadly I just defaulted to a chicken sandwich from McDonald's.
We came back for a panel on "Anime Girls and Bishounen (pretty boys)", but it turned out that the moderator wanted the crowd to discuss what they felt was attractive about their favorties... this felt a little skeevy so we bailed and wandered some more just watching and chatting with various cosplayers.
We hit a late night panel on abridged series and parodies, which turned out to be pretty amusing as well as informative. One of the moderators premiered his new video abridging/parodying Sword Are Online (which I've wanted to check out), which was funny as hell. (Even to Brenda, who didn't catch all the MMO in-jokes.) The panel was still going on at 11.30, but when they started a new video (the series didn't appear too interesting) we ended up bailing.
We'd hoped to get to the late night adult (hard PG/soft R no nudity) costume context, but we were both just wiped out... Ended up coming back to the room, chatting a bit about Saturday's schedule, and hitting the hay.
Day 2
In some ways, more of the same, in others different stuff... we're hitting the artist's room and the dealer room together first thing, then Brenda has a series of panels on Japanese culture while I have another photoshoot and more anime panels. Her alaram will go off soon, so it's time to go get coffee for her and take it up.