Anime Expo Adventures
I'm reeeeeallly wanting to write about this awesome vacation. I just fail at writing. It's a week late, but better than never, right? I'll start 2 days before the actual con stuff... BTW, this is going to be a HUGE entry..I don't feel like splitting it up cause I will just procrastinate and never write the rest. So... yeah!
June 29th
I went to work like usual that morning. Faillll! I regret not taking that morning off so I could do other stuff, but oh well, MONEY. Got off at 1pm and ran to Walgreen's to pick up some last minute gifts for the Morning Musume girls. I'm such a cheapass...but I knew I wasn't gonna finish my original gift plans. I didn't have a big selection, but oh well, I just grabbed whatever postcards I saw and ran to look at the stuffed animals. Found a cute little purple turtle for Eri and went to check out. Only 3 bucks! Awesome~ I went home and attempted to pack. I am horrible at packing, seriously. I got my toiletries all packed, but clothes..I fail. I think I packed those just before we left the next day.
Anyway, next thing I knew.....it was 2pm and Mike knocked at my door... !!! :D I meekly opened it and the shy side of me went full force. Hahah. I am so glad to finally have met him! We talked for a bit before going to Sonic to get some food in his belly and then we were on our way to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Great movie, I must say. It was about 7pm-ish when we got outta there and headed back to my house. I was afraid of this part, because I didn't want my mom grilling him all hardcore. We got home...and cars were there, but nobody was inside! Phew, lol. :P They came home a bit later and things went pretty smooth. I'm glad she didn't get all overprotective mother and shit. We watched some more tv before heading to bed.
June 30th
We woke up at 8am. I finished my packing around 10am. XD I think all we really did was sit at my computer all morning. Natalie picked us up at 10:40 and took us to the airport. We headed to one of the checkin things outside, but the guy told us United didn't have one, so we had to go inside. It was all computerized now, which was cool. Someone came over to weigh our checked bags and give us our boarding passes. We dropped our baggage off and headed to see where our terminal was at. We then walked back to the food court and decided to try a place called Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers. We shared a 6 finger meal. Holy crap it was amaaaaaaaazing. The sauce was epic and the chicken was delicious! I wrote a comment card and left it with them. I think by this time, both of us had gotten over our shyness. The way to my heart, food. lololol, just kidding.
After we finished, we walked around some more and I stopped at Starbucks because I was craving a Green Tea frappo. I got it and made Mike try it. He said it was super sweet. That's Starbucks for ya! :D
Our flight departed around 1:49pm and we were headed to Los Angeles! :DD
We got there around 3pm LA time and went outside after getting our baggage. Holy crap the weather is the best there. I was all "Zomg it's cold!" since we've had 100's here for a couple months. We took the Union Station Flyaway, which is a shuttle bus that goes directly to Union Station from the airport for only $6. It was PACKED and we had to sit across from each other. There was a lot of traffic, which I was expecting..but I didn't realize just how BAD LA traffic is. We got to Union Station about 30 minutes later, bought our tickets and went inside. We were pretty much just following people and ended up at the end of a line. Some guy came over and was all "What you guys riding? Red Line? You can go buy tickets over that way!" We thanked him and went to the machine down the hall. Got tickets for the Red Line (which is basically a subway) for $1.25. Took the Red Line to the 7th/Fig station after some confusion as to which side to get on. We made our way up several escalators and out into downtown LA....
Mike took out his GPS so we could figure out how to walk to the hotel from there, but it wouldn't work. So...I looked at the street signs and tried to figure out where we were. After a few minutes, I noticed a block down, there was an IHOP. Ahah! I remembered there was an IHOP across the street from our hotel. So, we headed in that direction and finally made it to our hotel.
The outside was all...fancy and glass. It was fancy inside too. We checked in and got into the elevator. It had super weird red lighting and was stuffy. Our room was nice. Our view was not. The bathroom door was a sliding glass one and when closed all the way there was a gap. If someone was sitting at the desk and looked over, they could see pretty much everything at the toilet. :P I figured just putting a towel in that gap would work, and it did! We got hooked up to the internet and looked at the DASH schedule. We wanted to go to Little Tokyo that night, but the bus stopped running at 6pm, so we decided to just stay in that night. We went to Subway and brought it back to the hotel. After that we just watched some tv and went to bed. I had a hard time sleeping the first night. I fell asleep quickly, which annoyed Mike. :P But..I woke up about every 2 hours. I think it was the initial shock of being in a new bed (and lol, sharing a bed)
Day 0 (July 1st)
Happy Birthday to Mike! <3
Got up at 8am and got ready to go to Little Tokyo. We didn't realize most stuff opened at 11am, so we walked around for a bit, then went to this little cafe, Senka Cafe. Mike got a blueberry tea and I got a green tea smoothie. The girls working there were supppppper cute and very polite. We witnessed a guy order an Espresso and then try to get the girls to fill the rest of the cup up with hot water. They kept insisting that was an Americano and he paid for an Espresso. I lol'd because I deal with shit like that every day at work and it sucks ass. I gave the girls a nice tip and we we headed out. We walked around Little Tokyo some more and some of the stuff in the shopping mall a few blocks down opened at 10am, so we peeked around a bit. We bought some of that awesome bread that has stuff inside it and headed back to the other shopping center.
The place we planned to go to, Curry House opened at 11am and when we got there around 11:30, it was already packed. We both ordered Chicken Katsu Curry and it was the best curry I have ever had. If I could eat that stuff everyday, I would. Mmmmmm~
We headed over to the Kinokuniya book store and got some idol magazines. We then headed back to the other shopping mall to go to a collectors store and Mike got a Nagato Yuki figure that was super cool. We were just about out of time, so we decided to head back to the hotel.
We dropped our stuff off and made our way down to LACC to pick up our badges and tickets at around...2pm, I think? When we got to our hotel, I realized I didn't print out my confirmation email! I quickly checked and was relieved to know you could just type in your name and it'd be ok.
We followed some people up to the front doors of the smaller main entrance and were told to go allllllllll the way around to the place where the line was, only to find out, they could have just let us through those doors in the first place. Ugh. We got to the line and...yikes. It wasn't TOO bad yet.
We were about 4-5 loops into the line. By the time 3pm rolled around the line had doubled, almost tripled. 4pm came...and we were STILL waiting. Staff came by once or twice with a mister, but that was all I ever saw. No mention of what was going on, nothing. The only word on what was happening came from the mother of a girl in front of us in line. They only started letting us in at 4:30, I believe. I could be wrong. But we had to wait in ANOTHER line inside. And of course, the line we picked went to a standstill! >_< The lines beside us kept on moving, but we stood there for another 30 minutes, with no word from staff or volunteers about what was going on. Eventually we got through and rushed over to the ticketing booth, which already had a fairly large line. It was snaked around the side of the building to some doors, under the shade. By the time we got to the end, they started moving the line out into the sun. At this point I was pissed beyond belief and honestly, I didnt care how good/bad of a seat I got for the concert. If I wasn't already burnt to a crisp from the badge line, I would be now! The ticket line took at least another 2 hours for us to get through. Thankfully we got fairly good seats, Section C Row 8.
After being sunburnt to a crisp and tired as HELL of waiting in lines, we walked back to the hotel, stopping at Famima on the way. It was right around the corner from our hotel, so very convenient. It's basically a Japanese style convenience store. They have ready-to-eat food, chinese buns, japanese weeaboo food, etc.
That was our first full day in LA,and only the beginning of the terrible con experience...
Day 1 (July 2nd)
Opening Ceremonies were alright. They started about 30 minutes late (supposed to start at 9am), which we soon found out was the norm at this con. We had seats behind a camera lady, so we didn't have a great view, but oh well!
We went to line up for the Exhibit Hall around 10:30-11 am. It wasn't too bad, other than the fact that it was a never ending line. At least it was in the shade. We figured we weren't going to have a chance in hell at getting those autograph tickets. By the time we got in and found the H!P/JpopHouse/Japan Files booth there was what looked to me like...a huge CIRCLE of people around it. We tried to figure out where the end of some sort of line was, but of course AX staff knew nothing and a lot of people were just lining up with no clue what they were in line for. We found what we thought was the end of the line and then some Naruto-tard started yelling at us that the end of the line was elsewhere. We tried to comply, but ended up back where we were. A Japan Files staffer tried to figure out what was going on, but ran off quickly, only to have the line messed up by an AX staffer. While we waited in the Japan Files line, I noticed a LOT of Japanese fans were just walking up to the JpopHouse booth and buying stuff, while no one in line objected. Yet if anyone else had done the same thing (and when the lines were being sorted out, this did happen on accident) people in that line got I-fucking-RATE. Sure doesn't seem fair to me. Also, Hello!Project is SRS BIZNIZ, GAIZ. I understand some people were upset that there was line cutting going on, but jesus. A few people were getting TOO UPSET.
We got to stare at the Hello!Project booth for a long time. They had 2 costumes on display. A bunch of signed posters, a tv playing concerts, a bunch of old H!P merchandise, etc..
Eventually we made it to the Japan Files booth and could still see several autograph tickets, so we got VERY lucky. I honestly wanted to avoid the Japan Files booth and go for merch at the other one, but beggars can't be choosers. The staff at the Japan Files booth was...very rude and tried to rush us all a bit too much. I understand it's tough to work through a rush (hell, I work at Starbucks, I know ALL TOO WELL), but that's no excuse, honestly. I bought the Shoganai Yume Oibito single and some orange and blue glowsticks, while Mike bought Platinum 9 Disco, Shoganai Yume Oibito and a lot of blue glowsticks. I wanted to stop by the other booth to get some other stuff, but the line was bumfucked at this point and we didn't want to bother.
We went to the Morning Musume panel at 2pm. It was nice and the girls are just like I imagined them. Some people asked dumb questions, but I was expecting that.
I..honestly dunno what else to write about the panel. XD
After the panel was over, they were going to be giving out autograph tickets, which we decided to pass on since we had our guaranteed ones. This would later turn out to be a mistake, since those autograph sessions included handshakes and a lot of talking. Oh well! We decided to head back to the Exhibit Hall to check out the Jpop House booth. I got a Morning Musume in LA tshirt, both photosets, and a poster. After that we looked around the Exhibit Hall some more and headed back to the hotel.
We came back at 7:30pm for the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann subbed movie. I don't think they realized what a horrible idea it is to show subbed movies in that room. For one, the seats were facing forward and the screen was in a corner. Second, the subs were at the bottom, so everyone had to sit on the edge of their seat or lean foward. Basically, there were heads in the way of the subs. I could only really see the top part of the screen, but from what I saw it looked like an alright movie. Oh well!
Day 2 (July 3rd)
Concert day! It was a pretty exciting feeling from the start, but the day was not free of troubles. While we walked through the lobby, we noticed the girls were rehearsing. I also noticed SEVERAL people with their cameras out filming what they could see over the blacked out doors. There were staff standing EVERYWHERE out there and not one was saying a thing to anyone. So we took out cameras out. I took a short video, not much. Mike even went up close and tried to get some. No one said a word to us UNTIL we started putting our cameras up. An AX staffer came up to Mike, me and some guy on the stairs and was all "GIVE ME YOUR BADGES. NOW" The guy on the stairs freaked and was all "You aren't gonna give it back!" and disappeared when the staffer wasn't looking. I just about shit bricks when he took our badges..but then all he did was take us up into the offices, filled out some paper and put a cute little star stamp on the bottom corner of the badges. He handed them back and told us to delete whatever we took. We were free! Honestly, part of me was upset because I knew better than to try..but the other part of me was pissed that several others got away with it while the staff just stood around like idiots. Heh.
Anyway, the concert was GREAT. We lined up around 11am just to make sure we got the best seats in our section. They weren't too late in letting us in and we DID get good seats. Very left seats in Row 8. Being short, I was fucking excited!
The concert finally started and one song into it all, my arms were tired as fuck from the arm movements/waving glowsticks around. I gotta give it up to the wota, I dunno HOW they manage to do it for the full concert on top of the wotagei stuff they do before it! The guys in front of us were Chinese fans and in the middle section to the side of us were all the Japanese wota. It was amazing. Seeing the girls live, RIGHT THERE...wow...I dunno how to describe it.
I must say the camera work was shit, though I hardly looked at the screens since I was so close. Other than that...it was just so....surreal, I guess. Oh and the AX staff were pretty damn anal. I noticed a lot of the wota in the section next to us were doing their cheers or whatever and ended up slightly in the aisle, and the staff would run over and be all NO NO GET BACK IN OMG. They also came around twice to check for tickets. What a fucking buzzkill, man.
I lost my voice afterwards from yelling for Eri so much! It was so worth it. She is such an amazing performer...
Yossi and Tsunku came out for the OPV Contest Results. Tsunku looks much better in real life than in pictures. The OPV thing took 30 minutes of the hour and half concert, faaaail.
After the girls left the stage, we all started chanting "ANKORU ANKORU" hoping for an encore. We did it for at least 10 minutes until AX Staff was all GTFO OUT GUYS. :(
Here's the setlist:
- Member introduction VTR -
01. MIKAN
02. 3,2,1 BREAKIN' OUT!
- MC1 (greeting MC) -
03. SHOUGANAI YUME OIBITO
04. HOW DO YOU LIKE JAPAN? ～Nippon ha donna kanji dekka?～
05. RESONANT BLUE
- MC 2 -
06. - Medley -
I WISH
HAPPY SUMMER WEDDING
KOI NO DANCE SITE
SOUDA! We're ALIVE
THE☆PEACE!
RENAI REVOLUTION 21
- MC 3 -
07. LOVE MACHINE
08. SONO BAMEN DE BIBITTYA IKENAIJAN!
- MC4 -
09. AME NO FURANAI HOSHI DE HA AISENAI DAROU?
- MC5 (PV contest victory ceremony) -
EN01. 3,2,1 BREAKIN' OUT!
After the concert, we collapsed out in the lobby, pretty starstruck. There was a group of Jphip people next to us, so we (mostly Mike.. XD) went to say hi. They didn't seem too into chatting with us, so we left quickly.
I think we ate lunch and went to the Arcade room after that. Then at 5:30pm was a screening of Evangelion 1.0.1 dubbed. It was really good dubbed. I liked it subbed, so... :P
It was a long day, so after that, we went back to the hotel.
Day 3 (July 4th)
Autograph day!
Tsunku's panel started at 9am, so we headed to that, but got there at 9:30. It was pretty good, but Yaz/Dragonlady/wtfever ruined it with her fail translating and not knowing anything about H!P.
We headed to the Exhibit Hall around noon and walked around till 1pm, when we decided to line up in the autograph area. The groups of people began to get so big that they told us all to come back at 1:30. So what did we do? We sat down nearby. We came back at 1:30 and ended up at the end of the line, which was quite confusing as people would try to line up behind the lady and then basically get told to GTFO. They eventually extended the end a bit. We ended up talking to the people around us. Found out the guy in front of us was also an Eri fan. The girl behind us was telling us about the first autograph sessions and how they got handshakes and got to talk and stuff.
I don't remember what else happened in line other than...I got interviewed by two Japanese women who had a semi-hard time speaking English. They asked me how long I've been a fan, what my favorite song was, how I found out about Morning Musume, who my favorite member was, why, how old I was, etc.. It was pretty cool! And it kept my mind off how nervous I was to actually SEE the girls.
The moment of truth finally came and...was ruined in 5 seconds. "NO HANDSHAKES, NO SMALLTALK, KEEP THE LINE MOVING!" FFFF...and the girls were completely out of order, so I was frantically trying to re-order my gifts..which in the end, I didn't need to bother with anyways. While we were standing in line, Aika was just...staring at us, grinning like a dork. SO CUTE. :wub:
Got up to the table and Reina was first. I must say, for not liking Reina at all before...wow! She was amazingly pretty in person. And as I struggled to get my poster on the table and hand the girl behind her the gift for her, she gave me the best expression ever. Almost as if she felt REALLY bad for us and all. It was nice. Next up was Linlin, who very happily said "HI!" as I watched her sign. Next was Takahashi, who I honestly don't remember seeing or anything. :( Niigaki was after her..and again, I don't remember seeing her. Up next was...Aika! She said "HI!!" and signed happily. She definitely jumped up in my ranking after this. She is so freaking adorable in person! Just after Aika, the person behind her took all my gifts, since I was having a hard time handing them out. XD Next up was... ERI! :DDD I was shaking at this point. She saw my shirt and went "OHHH HAAIII!! ^___^ SANKYUUUUU~" I melted and stared down at the poster as she signed it. Dear lord, she was..STUNNING in person. Beyond belief! @____@ Sayumi was next and all I remember was watching her sign. The way she signed was cool. Then came Koharu, who looked VERY out of it. It was almost weird, the complete opposite of how she was at the panel and concert. And last was Junjun, who was VERY VERY happy. She was amazingly beautiful in person.
After Junjun, I grabbed my poster and in a daze, was rushed out of the booth. I kinda stopped after the exit and was all O______O; until another staffer was all GTFO.
Mike and me sat down for a bit to watch some more people leave in a daze and then left for a while. We came back just before the session was over to watch the girls leave. That angry staffer was funny as hell. Yelling for people to leave the area, only to have them come right back in 5 seconds. People sang happy birthday for Sayu, who apparently peeked through the curtains, which I missed since I'm short. XD We clung to the wall and pretended to talk about anime as the guy tried again and again to clear the area of people. Dumb, considering they held the session next to a bunch of tables, IN THE EXHIBIT HALL. Good luck in getting people to leave for good, man. Eventually the girls left and people were all ZOMG YAY and tried to run around the other side to catch a glimpse of them, only to be booted out of the way again.
After that we ran around the exhibit hall and watched a fairly unknown jpop group called C-ZONE. They were really good! We then went to their autograph session, not having anything to sign, but got one of their fliers signed. They gave VERY firm handshakes and were very nice! My favorite is Shizuka~ <3
So..we got 2 autograph sessions in one day, lol!
Oh yeah! The gifts I got for the girls were San Antonio postcards, which I drew on the back of. Each one had a picture of each girl (in Haromoni@ outfits) and a little note for them. I regret not taking pictures of them now that I think about it..
Day 4 (July 5th)
I don't really remember what all we did on this day, but it was the last day of the con. I think we just walked around the Exhibit Hall until it closed. Had some nice ice cream. We went to the Arcade for a bit. Then we caught the end of the Charity Auction. Good lord some of the stuff there sold for insane prices. A Robot Chicken shirt that was worn AND signed by Seth Green sold for $500. Mike tried to go for the Morning Musume signed poster, but it went up to $1700 and that's TOO MUCH. The Hangry&Angry one went for $300. I think the highest thing we saw was a Gundam 00 sketch that went for $3000. Overall, it was a cool experience.
And of course, the closing ceremonies started late after the auction. Morning Musume had already left LA, so they weren't there, but they had a video.
We headed back to the hotel, grabbed some pizza on the way and stuffed our faces.
July 6th
Last day in LA... :(
We woke up early and started sorting through our stuff, making sure we were mostly packed and ready to go. We went to Little Tokyo one more time. We ate at the Curry House again. Mike had Beef Curry and I had Menchi Curry (breaded hamburger). I kinda wanted to try their shaved ice, but it looked HUGE, and the curry was filling, so I figured it'd be best to pass on that. We did some more shopping at Kinokuniya and headed back to the hotel.
We bagged up a bunch of our expensive items and got directions to the nearest FedEx. On our way there, right next to the station, we saw a cop car speed up, sirens on..pull up behind a car. The cops got out, guns drawn and the guy in the car in front of them got out with his hands up. As soon as we knew it, there were at least 15 cop cars (I'm not even exaggerating here, we counted all of them XD) in the area. We hid behind some pillars for a bit, and when things calmed down, continued to the FedEx.
We got the stuff sent out overnight and went to check out. We then went to the station and took the Red Line again back to Union Station....when we got there we got lost. Major lost. It looked NOTHING like it did when we first arrived, so we had to be in a different part of it or something. Eventually, I asked some guard how to get to the FlyAway buses and he directed us down a long hall. We paid for our tickets and waited. The trip to the airport was nice, but I was starting to get a little sad. I didn't want to go back home.
Did all that fun stuff at the airport, then found our terminal and had some dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen. Our flight wasn't until 7pm, so we had time to just chat and play Mario Kart.
We made it back to San Antonio alright. The weather was nasty and muggy, because it had apparently rained that afternoon. Natalie picked us up, after getting lost in the airport 2 times. XD Then I dropped my house keys in her car, so I had to call her and have her come back. We went to our separate rooms and pictochated for a while before I could hardly stay awake.
July 7th
We mostly just sorted out our stuff and lounged around. I took Mike to Bill Miller's for lunch and he was all 8D cause it is awesome. We went to Wal-Mart, got some medicine. Lounged around at home some more. Lots of hugs were had. <333333333
July 8th
I was really sad..I didn't want Mike to leave, but I knew it was time. We had lunch at Bill Miller's again and came back to make sure he was all packed. I cried like a baby. It felt amazing to have someone there to comfort you when upset, though...especially him. Heh. By 1:30, we both knew it was time for him to go..so I tried really hard, smiled and sent him on his way. I took a nap afterwards and read the note he left for me at 5pm. I cried again, but I knew things would be alright.
July 9th
Back to work. I was super sick and I think I had a fever. Was sent home at noon. My mom got mad at me and told me to go to the doctor. I went at 7pm, didn't get outta there till 9pm. Found out I have a sinus infection. They irrigated my left ear out for some reason, which took forever. Took my doctor's note to work and told them I MIGHT be back 2 days from then..
The only pharmacy open was CVS, so I was there from 10-11pm waiting. Went home, konked out.
I then called in sick 4 days in a row. Just went back to work this Wednesday.
Oh yeah and, jphip lost all my respect after this trip. We wrote about our experiences there and Mike was attacked by Daigong for no reason. Apparently they didn't like his negativity about the con. We both deleted our reviews there, but the deal breaker was Shineru calling us "spoiled" because apparently meeting Morning Musume should make up for all the shitty aspects of the con. Morning Musume was great, but even if C-ute went to AX next year, I wouldn't go.
Whatever, they can have fun in their inner circle (WHICH BTW, SO DOESNT EXIST according to daigong).
I think that's about it...I'm sure I missed some stuff, but I needed to write this before I put it off forever. I will post pics later, this entry is long enough. XDDD
June 29th
I went to work like usual that morning. Faillll! I regret not taking that morning off so I could do other stuff, but oh well, MONEY. Got off at 1pm and ran to Walgreen's to pick up some last minute gifts for the Morning Musume girls. I'm such a cheapass...but I knew I wasn't gonna finish my original gift plans. I didn't have a big selection, but oh well, I just grabbed whatever postcards I saw and ran to look at the stuffed animals. Found a cute little purple turtle for Eri and went to check out. Only 3 bucks! Awesome~ I went home and attempted to pack. I am horrible at packing, seriously. I got my toiletries all packed, but clothes..I fail. I think I packed those just before we left the next day.
Anyway, next thing I knew.....it was 2pm and Mike knocked at my door... !!! :D I meekly opened it and the shy side of me went full force. Hahah. I am so glad to finally have met him! We talked for a bit before going to Sonic to get some food in his belly and then we were on our way to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Great movie, I must say. It was about 7pm-ish when we got outta there and headed back to my house. I was afraid of this part, because I didn't want my mom grilling him all hardcore. We got home...and cars were there, but nobody was inside! Phew, lol. :P They came home a bit later and things went pretty smooth. I'm glad she didn't get all overprotective mother and shit. We watched some more tv before heading to bed.
June 30th
We woke up at 8am. I finished my packing around 10am. XD I think all we really did was sit at my computer all morning. Natalie picked us up at 10:40 and took us to the airport. We headed to one of the checkin things outside, but the guy told us United didn't have one, so we had to go inside. It was all computerized now, which was cool. Someone came over to weigh our checked bags and give us our boarding passes. We dropped our baggage off and headed to see where our terminal was at. We then walked back to the food court and decided to try a place called Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers. We shared a 6 finger meal. Holy crap it was amaaaaaaaazing. The sauce was epic and the chicken was delicious! I wrote a comment card and left it with them. I think by this time, both of us had gotten over our shyness. The way to my heart, food. lololol, just kidding.
After we finished, we walked around some more and I stopped at Starbucks because I was craving a Green Tea frappo. I got it and made Mike try it. He said it was super sweet. That's Starbucks for ya! :D
Our flight departed around 1:49pm and we were headed to Los Angeles! :DD
We got there around 3pm LA time and went outside after getting our baggage. Holy crap the weather is the best there. I was all "Zomg it's cold!" since we've had 100's here for a couple months. We took the Union Station Flyaway, which is a shuttle bus that goes directly to Union Station from the airport for only $6. It was PACKED and we had to sit across from each other. There was a lot of traffic, which I was expecting..but I didn't realize just how BAD LA traffic is. We got to Union Station about 30 minutes later, bought our tickets and went inside. We were pretty much just following people and ended up at the end of a line. Some guy came over and was all "What you guys riding? Red Line? You can go buy tickets over that way!" We thanked him and went to the machine down the hall. Got tickets for the Red Line (which is basically a subway) for $1.25. Took the Red Line to the 7th/Fig station after some confusion as to which side to get on. We made our way up several escalators and out into downtown LA....
Mike took out his GPS so we could figure out how to walk to the hotel from there, but it wouldn't work. So...I looked at the street signs and tried to figure out where we were. After a few minutes, I noticed a block down, there was an IHOP. Ahah! I remembered there was an IHOP across the street from our hotel. So, we headed in that direction and finally made it to our hotel.
The outside was all...fancy and glass. It was fancy inside too. We checked in and got into the elevator. It had super weird red lighting and was stuffy. Our room was nice. Our view was not. The bathroom door was a sliding glass one and when closed all the way there was a gap. If someone was sitting at the desk and looked over, they could see pretty much everything at the toilet. :P I figured just putting a towel in that gap would work, and it did! We got hooked up to the internet and looked at the DASH schedule. We wanted to go to Little Tokyo that night, but the bus stopped running at 6pm, so we decided to just stay in that night. We went to Subway and brought it back to the hotel. After that we just watched some tv and went to bed. I had a hard time sleeping the first night. I fell asleep quickly, which annoyed Mike. :P But..I woke up about every 2 hours. I think it was the initial shock of being in a new bed (and lol, sharing a bed)
Day 0 (July 1st)
Happy Birthday to Mike! <3
Got up at 8am and got ready to go to Little Tokyo. We didn't realize most stuff opened at 11am, so we walked around for a bit, then went to this little cafe, Senka Cafe. Mike got a blueberry tea and I got a green tea smoothie. The girls working there were supppppper cute and very polite. We witnessed a guy order an Espresso and then try to get the girls to fill the rest of the cup up with hot water. They kept insisting that was an Americano and he paid for an Espresso. I lol'd because I deal with shit like that every day at work and it sucks ass. I gave the girls a nice tip and we we headed out. We walked around Little Tokyo some more and some of the stuff in the shopping mall a few blocks down opened at 10am, so we peeked around a bit. We bought some of that awesome bread that has stuff inside it and headed back to the other shopping center.
The place we planned to go to, Curry House opened at 11am and when we got there around 11:30, it was already packed. We both ordered Chicken Katsu Curry and it was the best curry I have ever had. If I could eat that stuff everyday, I would. Mmmmmm~
We headed over to the Kinokuniya book store and got some idol magazines. We then headed back to the other shopping mall to go to a collectors store and Mike got a Nagato Yuki figure that was super cool. We were just about out of time, so we decided to head back to the hotel.
We dropped our stuff off and made our way down to LACC to pick up our badges and tickets at around...2pm, I think? When we got to our hotel, I realized I didn't print out my confirmation email! I quickly checked and was relieved to know you could just type in your name and it'd be ok.
We followed some people up to the front doors of the smaller main entrance and were told to go allllllllll the way around to the place where the line was, only to find out, they could have just let us through those doors in the first place. Ugh. We got to the line and...yikes. It wasn't TOO bad yet.
We were about 4-5 loops into the line. By the time 3pm rolled around the line had doubled, almost tripled. 4pm came...and we were STILL waiting. Staff came by once or twice with a mister, but that was all I ever saw. No mention of what was going on, nothing. The only word on what was happening came from the mother of a girl in front of us in line. They only started letting us in at 4:30, I believe. I could be wrong. But we had to wait in ANOTHER line inside. And of course, the line we picked went to a standstill! >_< The lines beside us kept on moving, but we stood there for another 30 minutes, with no word from staff or volunteers about what was going on. Eventually we got through and rushed over to the ticketing booth, which already had a fairly large line. It was snaked around the side of the building to some doors, under the shade. By the time we got to the end, they started moving the line out into the sun. At this point I was pissed beyond belief and honestly, I didnt care how good/bad of a seat I got for the concert. If I wasn't already burnt to a crisp from the badge line, I would be now! The ticket line took at least another 2 hours for us to get through. Thankfully we got fairly good seats, Section C Row 8.
After being sunburnt to a crisp and tired as HELL of waiting in lines, we walked back to the hotel, stopping at Famima on the way. It was right around the corner from our hotel, so very convenient. It's basically a Japanese style convenience store. They have ready-to-eat food, chinese buns, japanese weeaboo food, etc.
That was our first full day in LA,and only the beginning of the terrible con experience...
Day 1 (July 2nd)
Opening Ceremonies were alright. They started about 30 minutes late (supposed to start at 9am), which we soon found out was the norm at this con. We had seats behind a camera lady, so we didn't have a great view, but oh well!
We went to line up for the Exhibit Hall around 10:30-11 am. It wasn't too bad, other than the fact that it was a never ending line. At least it was in the shade. We figured we weren't going to have a chance in hell at getting those autograph tickets. By the time we got in and found the H!P/JpopHouse/Japan Files booth there was what looked to me like...a huge CIRCLE of people around it. We tried to figure out where the end of some sort of line was, but of course AX staff knew nothing and a lot of people were just lining up with no clue what they were in line for. We found what we thought was the end of the line and then some Naruto-tard started yelling at us that the end of the line was elsewhere. We tried to comply, but ended up back where we were. A Japan Files staffer tried to figure out what was going on, but ran off quickly, only to have the line messed up by an AX staffer. While we waited in the Japan Files line, I noticed a LOT of Japanese fans were just walking up to the JpopHouse booth and buying stuff, while no one in line objected. Yet if anyone else had done the same thing (and when the lines were being sorted out, this did happen on accident) people in that line got I-fucking-RATE. Sure doesn't seem fair to me. Also, Hello!Project is SRS BIZNIZ, GAIZ. I understand some people were upset that there was line cutting going on, but jesus. A few people were getting TOO UPSET.
We got to stare at the Hello!Project booth for a long time. They had 2 costumes on display. A bunch of signed posters, a tv playing concerts, a bunch of old H!P merchandise, etc..
Eventually we made it to the Japan Files booth and could still see several autograph tickets, so we got VERY lucky. I honestly wanted to avoid the Japan Files booth and go for merch at the other one, but beggars can't be choosers. The staff at the Japan Files booth was...very rude and tried to rush us all a bit too much. I understand it's tough to work through a rush (hell, I work at Starbucks, I know ALL TOO WELL), but that's no excuse, honestly. I bought the Shoganai Yume Oibito single and some orange and blue glowsticks, while Mike bought Platinum 9 Disco, Shoganai Yume Oibito and a lot of blue glowsticks. I wanted to stop by the other booth to get some other stuff, but the line was bumfucked at this point and we didn't want to bother.
We went to the Morning Musume panel at 2pm. It was nice and the girls are just like I imagined them. Some people asked dumb questions, but I was expecting that.
I..honestly dunno what else to write about the panel. XD
After the panel was over, they were going to be giving out autograph tickets, which we decided to pass on since we had our guaranteed ones. This would later turn out to be a mistake, since those autograph sessions included handshakes and a lot of talking. Oh well! We decided to head back to the Exhibit Hall to check out the Jpop House booth. I got a Morning Musume in LA tshirt, both photosets, and a poster. After that we looked around the Exhibit Hall some more and headed back to the hotel.
We came back at 7:30pm for the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann subbed movie. I don't think they realized what a horrible idea it is to show subbed movies in that room. For one, the seats were facing forward and the screen was in a corner. Second, the subs were at the bottom, so everyone had to sit on the edge of their seat or lean foward. Basically, there were heads in the way of the subs. I could only really see the top part of the screen, but from what I saw it looked like an alright movie. Oh well!
Day 2 (July 3rd)
Concert day! It was a pretty exciting feeling from the start, but the day was not free of troubles. While we walked through the lobby, we noticed the girls were rehearsing. I also noticed SEVERAL people with their cameras out filming what they could see over the blacked out doors. There were staff standing EVERYWHERE out there and not one was saying a thing to anyone. So we took out cameras out. I took a short video, not much. Mike even went up close and tried to get some. No one said a word to us UNTIL we started putting our cameras up. An AX staffer came up to Mike, me and some guy on the stairs and was all "GIVE ME YOUR BADGES. NOW" The guy on the stairs freaked and was all "You aren't gonna give it back!" and disappeared when the staffer wasn't looking. I just about shit bricks when he took our badges..but then all he did was take us up into the offices, filled out some paper and put a cute little star stamp on the bottom corner of the badges. He handed them back and told us to delete whatever we took. We were free! Honestly, part of me was upset because I knew better than to try..but the other part of me was pissed that several others got away with it while the staff just stood around like idiots. Heh.
Anyway, the concert was GREAT. We lined up around 11am just to make sure we got the best seats in our section. They weren't too late in letting us in and we DID get good seats. Very left seats in Row 8. Being short, I was fucking excited!
The concert finally started and one song into it all, my arms were tired as fuck from the arm movements/waving glowsticks around. I gotta give it up to the wota, I dunno HOW they manage to do it for the full concert on top of the wotagei stuff they do before it! The guys in front of us were Chinese fans and in the middle section to the side of us were all the Japanese wota. It was amazing. Seeing the girls live, RIGHT THERE...wow...I dunno how to describe it.
I must say the camera work was shit, though I hardly looked at the screens since I was so close. Other than that...it was just so....surreal, I guess. Oh and the AX staff were pretty damn anal. I noticed a lot of the wota in the section next to us were doing their cheers or whatever and ended up slightly in the aisle, and the staff would run over and be all NO NO GET BACK IN OMG. They also came around twice to check for tickets. What a fucking buzzkill, man.
I lost my voice afterwards from yelling for Eri so much! It was so worth it. She is such an amazing performer...
Yossi and Tsunku came out for the OPV Contest Results. Tsunku looks much better in real life than in pictures. The OPV thing took 30 minutes of the hour and half concert, faaaail.
After the girls left the stage, we all started chanting "ANKORU ANKORU" hoping for an encore. We did it for at least 10 minutes until AX Staff was all GTFO OUT GUYS. :(
Here's the setlist:
- Member introduction VTR -
01. MIKAN
02. 3,2,1 BREAKIN' OUT!
- MC1 (greeting MC) -
03. SHOUGANAI YUME OIBITO
04. HOW DO YOU LIKE JAPAN? ～Nippon ha donna kanji dekka?～
05. RESONANT BLUE
- MC 2 -
06. - Medley -
I WISH
HAPPY SUMMER WEDDING
KOI NO DANCE SITE
SOUDA! We're ALIVE
THE☆PEACE!
RENAI REVOLUTION 21
- MC 3 -
07. LOVE MACHINE
08. SONO BAMEN DE BIBITTYA IKENAIJAN!
- MC4 -
09. AME NO FURANAI HOSHI DE HA AISENAI DAROU?
- MC5 (PV contest victory ceremony) -
EN01. 3,2,1 BREAKIN' OUT!
After the concert, we collapsed out in the lobby, pretty starstruck. There was a group of Jphip people next to us, so we (mostly Mike.. XD) went to say hi. They didn't seem too into chatting with us, so we left quickly.
I think we ate lunch and went to the Arcade room after that. Then at 5:30pm was a screening of Evangelion 1.0.1 dubbed. It was really good dubbed. I liked it subbed, so... :P
It was a long day, so after that, we went back to the hotel.
Day 3 (July 4th)
Autograph day!
Tsunku's panel started at 9am, so we headed to that, but got there at 9:30. It was pretty good, but Yaz/Dragonlady/wtfever ruined it with her fail translating and not knowing anything about H!P.
We headed to the Exhibit Hall around noon and walked around till 1pm, when we decided to line up in the autograph area. The groups of people began to get so big that they told us all to come back at 1:30. So what did we do? We sat down nearby. We came back at 1:30 and ended up at the end of the line, which was quite confusing as people would try to line up behind the lady and then basically get told to GTFO. They eventually extended the end a bit. We ended up talking to the people around us. Found out the guy in front of us was also an Eri fan. The girl behind us was telling us about the first autograph sessions and how they got handshakes and got to talk and stuff.
I don't remember what else happened in line other than...I got interviewed by two Japanese women who had a semi-hard time speaking English. They asked me how long I've been a fan, what my favorite song was, how I found out about Morning Musume, who my favorite member was, why, how old I was, etc.. It was pretty cool! And it kept my mind off how nervous I was to actually SEE the girls.
The moment of truth finally came and...was ruined in 5 seconds. "NO HANDSHAKES, NO SMALLTALK, KEEP THE LINE MOVING!" FFFF...and the girls were completely out of order, so I was frantically trying to re-order my gifts..which in the end, I didn't need to bother with anyways. While we were standing in line, Aika was just...staring at us, grinning like a dork. SO CUTE. :wub:
Got up to the table and Reina was first. I must say, for not liking Reina at all before...wow! She was amazingly pretty in person. And as I struggled to get my poster on the table and hand the girl behind her the gift for her, she gave me the best expression ever. Almost as if she felt REALLY bad for us and all. It was nice. Next up was Linlin, who very happily said "HI!" as I watched her sign. Next was Takahashi, who I honestly don't remember seeing or anything. :( Niigaki was after her..and again, I don't remember seeing her. Up next was...Aika! She said "HI!!" and signed happily. She definitely jumped up in my ranking after this. She is so freaking adorable in person! Just after Aika, the person behind her took all my gifts, since I was having a hard time handing them out. XD Next up was... ERI! :DDD I was shaking at this point. She saw my shirt and went "OHHH HAAIII!! ^___^ SANKYUUUUU~" I melted and stared down at the poster as she signed it. Dear lord, she was..STUNNING in person. Beyond belief! @____@ Sayumi was next and all I remember was watching her sign. The way she signed was cool. Then came Koharu, who looked VERY out of it. It was almost weird, the complete opposite of how she was at the panel and concert. And last was Junjun, who was VERY VERY happy. She was amazingly beautiful in person.
After Junjun, I grabbed my poster and in a daze, was rushed out of the booth. I kinda stopped after the exit and was all O______O; until another staffer was all GTFO.
Mike and me sat down for a bit to watch some more people leave in a daze and then left for a while. We came back just before the session was over to watch the girls leave. That angry staffer was funny as hell. Yelling for people to leave the area, only to have them come right back in 5 seconds. People sang happy birthday for Sayu, who apparently peeked through the curtains, which I missed since I'm short. XD We clung to the wall and pretended to talk about anime as the guy tried again and again to clear the area of people. Dumb, considering they held the session next to a bunch of tables, IN THE EXHIBIT HALL. Good luck in getting people to leave for good, man. Eventually the girls left and people were all ZOMG YAY and tried to run around the other side to catch a glimpse of them, only to be booted out of the way again.
After that we ran around the exhibit hall and watched a fairly unknown jpop group called C-ZONE. They were really good! We then went to their autograph session, not having anything to sign, but got one of their fliers signed. They gave VERY firm handshakes and were very nice! My favorite is Shizuka~ <3
So..we got 2 autograph sessions in one day, lol!
Oh yeah! The gifts I got for the girls were San Antonio postcards, which I drew on the back of. Each one had a picture of each girl (in Haromoni@ outfits) and a little note for them. I regret not taking pictures of them now that I think about it..
Day 4 (July 5th)
I don't really remember what all we did on this day, but it was the last day of the con. I think we just walked around the Exhibit Hall until it closed. Had some nice ice cream. We went to the Arcade for a bit. Then we caught the end of the Charity Auction. Good lord some of the stuff there sold for insane prices. A Robot Chicken shirt that was worn AND signed by Seth Green sold for $500. Mike tried to go for the Morning Musume signed poster, but it went up to $1700 and that's TOO MUCH. The Hangry&Angry one went for $300. I think the highest thing we saw was a Gundam 00 sketch that went for $3000. Overall, it was a cool experience.
And of course, the closing ceremonies started late after the auction. Morning Musume had already left LA, so they weren't there, but they had a video.
We headed back to the hotel, grabbed some pizza on the way and stuffed our faces.
July 6th
Last day in LA... :(
We woke up early and started sorting through our stuff, making sure we were mostly packed and ready to go. We went to Little Tokyo one more time. We ate at the Curry House again. Mike had Beef Curry and I had Menchi Curry (breaded hamburger). I kinda wanted to try their shaved ice, but it looked HUGE, and the curry was filling, so I figured it'd be best to pass on that. We did some more shopping at Kinokuniya and headed back to the hotel.
We bagged up a bunch of our expensive items and got directions to the nearest FedEx. On our way there, right next to the station, we saw a cop car speed up, sirens on..pull up behind a car. The cops got out, guns drawn and the guy in the car in front of them got out with his hands up. As soon as we knew it, there were at least 15 cop cars (I'm not even exaggerating here, we counted all of them XD) in the area. We hid behind some pillars for a bit, and when things calmed down, continued to the FedEx.
We got the stuff sent out overnight and went to check out. We then went to the station and took the Red Line again back to Union Station....when we got there we got lost. Major lost. It looked NOTHING like it did when we first arrived, so we had to be in a different part of it or something. Eventually, I asked some guard how to get to the FlyAway buses and he directed us down a long hall. We paid for our tickets and waited. The trip to the airport was nice, but I was starting to get a little sad. I didn't want to go back home.
Did all that fun stuff at the airport, then found our terminal and had some dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen. Our flight wasn't until 7pm, so we had time to just chat and play Mario Kart.
We made it back to San Antonio alright. The weather was nasty and muggy, because it had apparently rained that afternoon. Natalie picked us up, after getting lost in the airport 2 times. XD Then I dropped my house keys in her car, so I had to call her and have her come back. We went to our separate rooms and pictochated for a while before I could hardly stay awake.
July 7th
We mostly just sorted out our stuff and lounged around. I took Mike to Bill Miller's for lunch and he was all 8D cause it is awesome. We went to Wal-Mart, got some medicine. Lounged around at home some more. Lots of hugs were had. <333333333
July 8th
I was really sad..I didn't want Mike to leave, but I knew it was time. We had lunch at Bill Miller's again and came back to make sure he was all packed. I cried like a baby. It felt amazing to have someone there to comfort you when upset, though...especially him. Heh. By 1:30, we both knew it was time for him to go..so I tried really hard, smiled and sent him on his way. I took a nap afterwards and read the note he left for me at 5pm. I cried again, but I knew things would be alright.
July 9th
Back to work. I was super sick and I think I had a fever. Was sent home at noon. My mom got mad at me and told me to go to the doctor. I went at 7pm, didn't get outta there till 9pm. Found out I have a sinus infection. They irrigated my left ear out for some reason, which took forever. Took my doctor's note to work and told them I MIGHT be back 2 days from then..
The only pharmacy open was CVS, so I was there from 10-11pm waiting. Went home, konked out.
I then called in sick 4 days in a row. Just went back to work this Wednesday.
Oh yeah and, jphip lost all my respect after this trip. We wrote about our experiences there and Mike was attacked by Daigong for no reason. Apparently they didn't like his negativity about the con. We both deleted our reviews there, but the deal breaker was Shineru calling us "spoiled" because apparently meeting Morning Musume should make up for all the shitty aspects of the con. Morning Musume was great, but even if C-ute went to AX next year, I wouldn't go.
Whatever, they can have fun in their inner circle (WHICH BTW, SO DOESNT EXIST according to daigong).
I think that's about it...I'm sure I missed some stuff, but I needed to write this before I put it off forever. I will post pics later, this entry is long enough. XDDD