Event: Sakura Con 2003

Date: 2003.04.04~06

Location: Sea-Tac Hilton, WA

Written: 2005.03.18 (wow....)

The first time you do it, you're usually a little nervous. You don't really know how things work or what you should do, but you do your best and just have as much fun as possible. The second time around, you may feel like you're starting to get the hang of things, and you end up having a really great time and wanting to do it some more. By the third time, you feel a little bit bolder. You want to go for longer, try out some new things, maybe even wear costumes. I'm talking, of course, about going to anime conventions (what did you think I was talking about, you perverts? :P) What follows is the tale of my third trip to an anime convention, Sakura Con 2003. Not only was it the first time I went to a con for a full weekend, it was also my first cosplay experience. I do believe that full geekdom has finally been achieved ^_^

It was the end of the first week of Spring term 2003 at Portland State University. However, instead of sitting in class like a sucker, I was sitting in the passenger seat of the cheetah-like Kia as it sped its way up I-5 from Portland to Seattle. The other occupants of the car were my fiance Josh in the driver's seat, and his friends Nate, Monty and Shannon in the back. Even though I had already missed a day of school that week when I took the test to get my driver's license (finally, at the age of 19 :P), I figured it didn't really matter, since it was only the first week, anyway. No big loss ^_^ Anyway, the mighty Kia (don't worry about the overload of Kia descriptions, this is the last con trip it will make :P) arrived in SeaTac in the early afternoon, and its passengers unloaded to go claim their room. My friend from PSU named Tara had arrived with my other friend Kristen and Kristen's brother Stephen the night before and had reserved another room for us, and thus me and Josh's friends went through the "fun" process of checking in and then going off to either pick up our badges (me, Josh, Monty and Shannon) or register (poor Nate had to face the registration line alone :P). We found that this year the con had become so large that it now occupied space in two hotels; most of the con was located in the Hilton, but the game room had been moved across the street to the Marriott. This was good since it meant there was room for a lot more gaming, but it also required a bit of a trek to get to it. Anyway, one of the first things we decided to do was go to the dealer's room (of course!) It was pretty much the same as the year before, and I ended up buying a couple of anime books, one of them being the second volume of a trivia book series. At some point I made my way to the gaming area along with my friends, where we found they had DDR, Para Para Paradise, Guitar Freaks, and many more games. I tried out Para Para for the first time, and I thought it was really fun. I also tried out Guitar Freaks and I really, well, sucked :P I tried it a couple more times during the weekend, but I never improved, so I guess it's a rhythm game I'm just not going to be good at ^_^;;

As it started to get into the evening, the time was drawing nigh for signups for the karaoke contest. I've been in choirs for many years and, though I don't really have the best solo voice, I still enjoy singing in front of people and seeing how I compare to others. I went over to Kristen's room to see if she wanted to join me and, after a little last minute song memorizing, she agreed to come compete, too (she was cosplaying an Azumanga Daiou summer uniform, by the way....I should have a picture somewhere, but I can't seem to find it). The two of us, along with Tara, who wanted to come watch, got in line for the contest. Unfortunately, soon after we got there we were told that the contest had already been filled up and that the line we were in was now for seating to watch the contest. We still felt like we wanted to see it, so we stayed in line and I was soon treated to my first anime karaoke contest. The contest was pretty interesting, with entries ranging from really good to totally tone-deaf ^_^;; Some highlights included a pair who sang the Excel Saga theme song and got the whole audience dancing around the room (they won audience choice), a guy dressed up as Midvalley (with a saxophone and everything!) who sang that song that goes "Ba, ba ba ba, ba ba ba" (no, I have no idea who sings it or what it's called, but I know I've heard it somewhere before) and played his saxophone, too (I think he got the "up and coming star" award which was a replacement for the kids award since no kids entered the contest), a girl who did a great filk called "Midgard Booty" which I found to be really funny even though I haven't played Final Fantasy (she, very deservingly, won best of show), and the last performer, a guy who did a J-rock song called "Zan" and had a tarp under him because he was doing what is apparently the singer of that song's trademark by coughing up (what I hope was fake) blood during the performance (I think he got an award for best visuals).

After the contest, it was time for open mic karaoke. Since we had brought our CDs and gone through the trouble of memorizing our songs, Kristen and I decided to sign up (Tara was tired that day and had gone back to the room during the contest). We had to wait awhile for our turns, but after about an hour I got up and sang "Deep River" by Utada Hikaru (since I didn't have the karaoke version of the song, it's probably better that I didn't get into the contest since I might have not been heard over the original singing). After me it was Kristen's turn, and she sang a song I don't remember the name of (give me a break, it's been almost two years >_<) There's a lovely image of my karaoke performance at the bottom of the page (the glare off my glasses makes me look kind of demonic ^_^;;) The picture was taken from a site called "Obsessed with Anime," and a link with all the pictures taken by that site can be found here: Obsessed with Anime Sakura Con 2003 images

After our karaoke experience, Kristen and I headed over to the Marriott for some late night gaming. We thought the lines would be short since it was so late, but apparently many other people had the same idea, and the lines weren't all that much shorter than they had been during the day. Still, we had fun switching between DDR and Para Para for awhile (of course, we did have to deal with one person who was playing Para Para's lesson mode for a while, meaning he got to play about eight songs while everyone else waited for him to be done). I think we left around 2AM and returned to my room, where Josh, Shannon, Nate and Monty were still up. They were planning to watch Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro later that night. I think it came on at 4AM, but we were all confident that we could stay up and watch it. After awhile, Kristen decided she couldn't stay up any longer and went back to her room. Finally, the movie came on, and....well, I don't remember too much after that ^_^;; I remember seeing parts of it, mostly near the beginning, but most of the people in the room were either falling asleep or fell asleep during the movie. I think Monty was the only one who stayed awake throughout, Josh and I were fading in and out, and Nate and Shannon were just completely asleep. (Josh and I rented the movie a couple of months later and realized just how much we had missed. Occasionally one of us would say, "Oh, I kinda remember this," but for the most part we had been dozing ^_^;;) After that, those of us who weren't already asleep finally made it the rest of the way there.

The next morning (or, rather, later that morning ^_^;;) I awoke and got dressed for my very first day of cosplaying. Kristen had made outfits for herself, her brother, Tara and me based off outfits worn in the stuffed animal kissaten episode of Azumanga Daiou (pics of all of us can be found at the bottom). It was pretty exciting walking around and having people ask to take pictures of me....I felt so special ^_^ Before leaving the room I watched a little anime on TV (*gasp* they show anime at these things now? LOL). The channel seemed to have a fighting theme going at that time, and I saw Ayane's High Kick and some show about cute girl prowrestlers (all I remember is that they had some tough coach who had them doing things like practicing throwing themselves to the mat 2000 times). I think I also saw some of Grappler Baki this day, though not at that time of the morning (the cord cutting, gah!) That day we took another trip to the dealer's room, where I picked up a couple of items including a mighty Inuyasha pen (ph33r the mighty pen, it shall destroy you ^o^) While in the dealer's room, I ran into a student from one of my PSU Japanese classes who happened to be a staff member at the con, and she liked my outfit ^_^ I don't really remember too much about the afternoon, I think I did a little DDR in my cosplay outfit, though. I also caught a bit of "This is Otakudom" and got a CD of it to watch later since I'd missed a bunch....totally hilarious ^o^

Since tickets to the cosplay event had been gone since early in the morning, we decided to watch it on TV. Before it came on there was some live-action Japanese movie about men's synchronized swimmers....all I remember is that at one point, a guy lost his swimsuit in the water and his girlfriend pulled out a pair of panties from her pocket and threw them to him to wear (because, yes, all girls carry around panties in their pockets....or did they mean to imply she took them off through her pocket? o_O;;) We also saw some Japanese game show where someone would name a color in three beats (say, yellow, purple, red) and the contestant would have to name three things of those colors in the next three beats (say, banana, grape, apple). It got kind of tricky when they would have two of the same color in a row and the person would have to think up two different things of that color. But anyway, about the cosplay, the problems I'd had hearing the performers the year before seemed to just get worse when watching it on TV. I don't really remember all that much about it ^_^;;

At around 9PM, Josh, Nate, Shannon, Monty, Kristen and myself headed off to where the anime music guessing game was being held. It sounded like an interesting contest and something that I might do good at. However, it turned out that a LOT of the songs were from things that weren't commercially released yet. I got a couple easy ones during the early "warm-up" songs like Cowboy Bebop and the first Inuyasha theme, but for the most part I had no idea what the songs were from. When the real contest began, the room was divided up into four groups, with the idea that a couple of people from each group would move on to the final round. Well, Josh and his friends knew they stood no chance of competing, so they formed the "spectator" group in the middle. Basically this meant that whenever there was a song playing that no one could identify, Josh would jump up and yell that it was Prince of Tennis (this convention was the first time he'd ever heard of Prince of Tennis and he thought it sounded like a stupid name, so he wanted to say it mockingly at every opportunity ^_^;;) One of the few times he didn't jump in and call it out it actually was Prince of Tennis, and he asked the moderators of the contest to play the song a bit more since he'd been yelling it out so much, so he might as well hear what it actually sounded like. After hearing a bit of it, Josh yelled, "That sucks!" He didn't realize at the time that the contest moderators were cosplaying as characters from Prince of Tennis ^o^ When I told him later, he didn't particularly care, either ^_^;; Another funny moment was the Hikaru no Go cosplyer not getting the Hikaru no Go theme song and shaking his head after realizing his blunder ^o^ After the official contest ended, the moderators had more music for us to guess just for fun, so we stayed longer. The one victory I can claim in this whole contest is that I was the only one to recognize the Key the Metal Idol opening theme song. After awhile, it seemed like every other song was from the same few long-running series, a couple of which were Inuyasha and Detective Conan. So we eventually just started yelling those out at random (and Josh, for the sake of being thorough, continued yelling out Prince of Tennis occasionally ^_^) I think we scared some people in the elevator later that night when we were in there screaming out "Detective Conan! Prince of Tennis! INUYASHA!! Anyway, after we exhausted the supply of anime songs, we went off to do some more late night gaming, and we eventually went to bed (and since it was the weekend of the beginning of Daylight Savings time, we lost an hour of the con....boo, give us our con back!)

And then it was Sunday morning. Didn't really do much that day, besides make one last trip to the dealer's room, where I picked up an awesome 6 figure capsule set from Inuyasha. Probably did some last minute DDR, too (and the gaming area was smelling none too fresh by the third day of the con ^_^;;) But my friends and I had an awesome time, and my first full con experience only whetted my appetite for more!

Pic 1: My lovely karaoke pic. Note the glowing demon eyes *_*

Pic 2: Azumanga stuffed animal kissaten cosplay! (From left: Stephen, Kristen, Tara, and me)

Pic 3: This one is from Fan's View. You may notice on that page that our pic is the icon for Saturday afternoon cosplay pics! How awesome ^_^