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Okay. This post is like YEARS long due, and it’s also incomplete but I figured I should get it posted so. Here. It’s two years late.

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Okay. Because I have time, I’m going to attempt to write up an Anime Expo 2008 report. Attempt. Please do not expect much, because it’s been nearly two weeks now and everyone know how bad my memory fails. With that in mind, IKUZO~!

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Day 0 - Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008

I went to work as normal, then after work, I rushed off on time to the Los Angeles Convention Center (LACC) to pick up badges. Thank God I borrowed Auntie Nancy’s GPS or I would’ve been phenomally lost in that area. Scary… Parking as easy but EXPENSIVE. $12, just to pick up badges. Damnit. There were people in costume already, as usual, but I didn’t want to attempt it, I mean, I came straight from work afterall. Line was short, very short, but I had apparently forgotten Nori’s registration print-out so I couldn’t pick hers up. Wargh. They got it the next morning so that worked out okay, whew. I went home to pack (haha, yeah, total last minute) and assemble costumes. I couldn’t decide what costume to wear for the life of me, and didn’t until the next morning…

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Day 1 - Thursday, July 3nd, 2008

AX’08 officially started! And I was dead asleep. Mew called me in the morning and I roused, finished packing, and put on my Neji (Naruto) costume. Costume! It was so hot that, even though I wanted to wear my Yorihisa costume (I put it on halfway before I realized how hot I was getting), it was too hot and too much work to go through at home. It was a long drive to LACC and everything, traffic galore and all, and so that was that. Neji it is! Totally half-assed though. I later remembered that I left my Yorihisa shiny bling-bling jewel at home, DAMN. Oh well, the genbu I met up with didn’t have theirs either. ::shrugs:: So once I got to LACC after fifty-five minutes of suffering (but happy suffering with musics in my Masaomi!), I phoned my AX roomies for that night. I had arranged for us to stay at the Lincoln Plaza Hotel in Monterey Park, since it was MUCH cheaper and I really didn’t want to deal with the neighborhood of LA at night. ::twitch:: Gas is gas, but safety is not exchangeable for anything. Not here. Er anyway, I had gotten there a bit late, and my roomies went to the opening ceremonies, which is never quite something I care for, so I lined up for SekiToshi’s panel ahead of time. Surprisingly, there were VERY few people lining up, well “very few” meaning much MUCh less than I expected, but it was still a good amount. Makes me happy. There were a lot of Saiyuki cosplayers, obviously, quite a few Sanzo’s, of course, and a couple of Duo’s and one Heero that I saw. Yay for SekiToshi character cosplays! I guess I was glad to not see a Riki… or I would have been… well nevermind. At one point, I took off to ask about guest reception tickets again, and lo and behold I struck gold, merchandising actually knew what I was talking about and had tickets! I purchased three tickets, one for myself and the others for Mew and Sunshine. The one major downside of this guest reception is that… it was at frickin 8am in the morning the next day. VHUT SO EARLY??? Oh well, sacrifices have to be made for SekiToshi, waking up earlier isn’t really that daunting anymore.. I think. Anyway, I saw a couple cosplaying Alexiel and Lucifer while at the merchandising booth, made me very happy! ^0^ Oh and, oddly, people were asking for pictures of my seriously crappy Neji. I WAS SO CRAPPY THAT DAY, JEEZ! Some people seemed really excited too, but why on earth? I didn’t put on white contacts, my hair wasn’t pinned back properly, and I was missing *all* the bandaging as well as my kunai baggie. >_> That and I was wearing my watch, vhut. However, I did not see any other Neji’s that day… I guess there were much more on the day of the Naruto cosplay gathering (Saturday), but I wasn’t roaming for them on that day either. Ahem. Glad I didn’t join them, the group was huge (I spied them from the top of the escalator on Saturday and saw a pimping Jiraiya, I wasn’t particularly fond of that display…). Anyway, back to Thursday report, I talked to some people in line, and once again, reconfirms what I know about anime fans at conventions. Some are nearly there for no reason at all other than that they just always came or they’re there for some form of work or another. And then there’s the crazy otaku type, and also the elitist type. Ergh elitist. ANYWAY. When the opening ceremony ended, my roomies joined us and I met everybody. That’s right folks, first time meeting all of them, and first time speaking at *all* to some of them. ^_^;;; In total, they were Mew, Nori, Priscilla, and Sunshine. Tara joined us the next day, but yeah! They joined me in line and we eventually filed in to see the utterly wonderful Seki Toshihiko… SAMA! ::rolls:: Uh anyway. We sat in the second row, and Mew moved us off to a side.. Anyway. SekiToshi came out in a red shirt with Momotaros’ face on it, lol, He is such a professionally obliging man. Perfect even, such a Japanese gentleman, and.. just super fabulous. SO CUTE! Of course of course, who’s writing this report? Mad mad Seki fan, am I! I know he’s not *my* Seki but he’s a Seki and Seki’s are topnotch in my book! Okay no more self insert. He sung one line from his Duo song, that he couldn’t remember, so the person requesting gave him one line to sing, more like four words. He’s too cute though haha. Diane, who I later met, requested him to sing “DOUBLE ACTION” from Kamen Rider Den-O and he said he couldn’t remember, but Sang-ah stood up and belt out a line for him, and SekiToshi complied. SO AWESOME!! SO AWESOME!!!! Sang-ah’s vocal ability is super awesome too, but I’ll get to that later. XD But!! SekiToshi’s vocal blurbs made me sooo squealy. He did a bunch of shouting type lines, like Momotaros, and some really loud “GOMENASSAI~~~~~!!!” lines. 8D I caught a “SAAAAAI!” on my camera, uh, yeah I fail at catching complete words. 8D OH! SekiToshi also did the “Okay~?” at the end of his “DOUBLE ACTION” singing bit, which was uncannily like my Seki’s. Whoa. He also had the… WAIT NO JUMPING AHEAD OF MYSELF, NEXT! Um. Then I finally worked up my gut to line up for questions… but I didn’t get there in time, Shokotan panel right after, so whatever. 8D That one girl I remember (ahem…) from before asked him to sing “Flower Shower,” which, in my point of view, was a little rude. She doesn’t know the song herself it seems and asked him to sing the entire song? Be a little more modest about your request, please. >_> She also asked out of turn, might I add, but since she was being rude about it and neither Seki-san nor the translator heard her, I spoke a little louder what the song title is. Meh. The one thing that irked me during the panel. Anyway, afterwards, Sunshine and I headed to line up for the autograph line, and I was very annoyed to find out that they were passing out autograph tickets at the panel exit, but for some reason I DIDN’T GET ONE??? Sunshine got one, but she was so sweet to wait in line with me. I felt horrible since I ended up yakking to infinity and beyond with Diane and Sang-ah in line, who were holding seiyuu magazines I wanted and I ended up flipping through them and squealing. I could’ve been a little more courteous, you know, standing in line pretty much right in front of SekiToshi (yes he was within eyeshot AND earshot of us babbling) and yet, there we were, babbling about other seiyuus… lots of them, might I add, one after another. 8D Diane is a big Kamiyan fan, but we had a long squee time over Hiradai. :3333 HIRADAI MARRY US! LULULUL!! Ooh, I got tingles from typing that. 8D But yeah, she loves “Yukifuru Machi no Ceremony” as much as I do, same sentiment, and we were just.. babbling loudly about Hiradai and his utter cuteness… in front of SekiToshi. X_X!! Hopefully he was too occupied with signing things to… overhear us. ::coughs:: Anyway, they were cosplaying from Hitman! Reborn, and they looked damn good. X3 I split up from them after getting my autograph, what, two hours later?? Because the standby line didn’t get anything signed for the first round, so we ended up standing the entire time and through his break and had to wait for him to sign more people’s stuff before our line moved at all. ::grumbles:: He is SO WONDERFUL THOUGH!! When I went up, I have to admit I was extremely nervous. Granted that I had been trying to decide where to have him autograph on my NeoRomance Festa 4 in Osaka DVD for the ENTIRE time and still not deciding, so I went up to him with the thing and was like… sign wherever you please ToT~!!! I was unnerved when he looked at me inquisitively with a “Yes?” expression on his face. @_@ I don’t know why that scared me, but um… 8D So after he roamed the DVD slip a bit, he chose where to sign.. and then thought a short moment and wrote the date in. I was grinning like my mad cheshire kitty when he seemed so thoughtful about where to sign. SO CUTE! I went away a little trembley in the knee, don’t know why, but was immensely relieved to be out of line. I don’t know why he makes me feel that way… maybe that’s why Naokun did the fainting act when SekiToshi went BANG! at him. O_O;;;;; He’s really direct and his attention is so focused on you that you, well I, feel faint. ::collapses on desk:: Uhm. Afterwards, our group met up, well because most of us were getting autographs, and then we headed off to the dealer’s room for a quick spin. They were walking too slow and stopped at one point, so I ended up wanting to take a quick lookover of the dealer’s room. Mew and Priscilla followed me, and I ran up and down and found one thing, a Ryuuki zipper fastener! Unfortunately, that is the only Seki character item I bought, I’m so unfaithful. ToT!!! Anyway, we cut our rendevous short because my roomies were hungry, so we headed back to cars. Nori rode in my car while I talked her ear off and played her plenty of bad music Corda songs although she was sleepy as hell, and later I stuck in Kaoru Maniac. ::grins:: Well, you know how I am. :D The two of us checked into the hotel, because we’re rooming under only occupancy of two people. ::grins even more:: Harhar, little do they know there would eventually be six of us in there instead. X_X;; Sooo, we all met up at hotel, unloaded somewhat discreetely ehehe, and we had to drop off Priscilla’s car at the Garfield Hospital since we only had one parking pemit for the hotel, and yeah! Once everybody was in my car, my Kaoru Maniac CD was right in an.. interesting scene. And it was fun. 8DDDD Well every other track only has a really long h scene in it, so it wasn’t like I could avoid anything. So glad all my roomies are bl lovers AND SEIYUU FANS alike. I drove them off to Garden Cafe since they said they were really hungry, and horrifically, we each ordered our own dish. So. Guess what? NOBODY FINISHED THEIR FOOD. I called my dad to come pick up my leftovers and I made him pay for my portion bwahaha, free meal YES. Originally, I had wanted to take them all across the street for frozen yogurt, but everyone was way too full as is, with leftovers too, to want it. So we slipped back into our room afterwards, and all was peachy. Everyone was so tired, since they were driving down and didn’t get much sleep (if at all), they all passed out relatively quickly after some people showered. I slept last, as usual, because the next morning would prove deadly…

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Day 2 - Friday, July 4th, 2008

Happy 4th of July! We rose bright and early, so very early, 6:00am? Something like that. I was terribly difficult to wake up and my roomies had one hell of a time trying. I binded and donned my Yorihisa costume. Yup. Yorihisa wants to see SekiToshi! Oh yeah, of course he does… ::coughs:: AND SO! I drove Mew and Sunshine off, and we were early because, well, I forgot that it was the 4th of July and that traffic would be sparse, but no matter! Early is better, no rush, no worry. Once we were there, we met up with two of Mew’s friends and paraded into the Nokia Theatre eventually. Or whatever that place is, it wasn’t the actual Theatre itself, that’s for sure. I binged my plate on blueberries, blackberries, and this really sweet creme thingy. 8D At first, I was seated with my roomies and their friends at the Shokotan table, but as I know there’s plenty of people who really want to see her and as adorable as she is, I don’t know much of anything about her, I left with Diane and Sang-ah to go upstairs because I had a suspicion SekiToshi’s table would be upstairs. Lo and behold, it was. :D Unfortunately, the seats were all taken already, so the three of us sat off to the side tables to… LOOK ON. ::rolls:: And so we did, we did! SekiToshi came out, and stared at me for a brief moment that felt a little too long, possibly because of my costume and not that he recognized me as one of the freakish girls who were staring at him for prolonged periods and babbling about his coworkers in his presence. Anyway, he was CUTE AS CAN BE and, uh, scared me a bit from his… cold yet formal friendly aura. Or maybe I was just scared stiff from his gaze. He definitely has a less exuberant aura than my Seki, but it was very.. strong nonetheless. ::rubs arms unconsciously:: The three of us were so fixated, and I sneaked a picture (bad me! GOMENNASAI, SEKI-SAN!!!) because I was sitting to the side, and… AHH. Yeaaah. I think he knew I was taking pictures, because I could feel this scolding parent energy directed at me every so often. ::sniffles:: Gomennasai ne… I really, really had to do it. ToT And so after the first rotation, which had to be the LONGEST fifteen minutes of my life sitting there, fidgetting in my Yorihisa costume, and wanting to fly into a seat the instant they told us to rotate. And lo, time came, and the three of us bounded forward. Unfortunately, we were a little slow and there were only two seats for the two of us, so I offered to split a seat with Diane, and Sang-ah did too, but then SekiToshi’s manager was like “Ojou-chan, dozo~~!” and offered his seat. SO CUTE!! I like his manager LOL. Or whoever he is. She was so bewildered, because she ended up sitting RIGHT next to SekiToshi. ::ROLLS:: WHAT A THRILL!! I was glad I wasn’t directly next to him and asking questions, I would’ve died. So with people distancing myself from him, I was very, very giddy. I was very happy to find that Luna and her friends, being that they were also…

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Okay, this post was two years ago and I never finished it, I forgot entirely actually so um. I’ll just. Post it now. x_@;;