Fanime and holiday weekend

[nyankoframe]

Short post while I wait at the San Jose airport for my flight back to Seattle ^^;;

I ended up going for two and a half days of con, and it was really quite awesome overall! Some highlights (pictures to follow later):

meerkat is testing4l and gemlikeflame's friend whom I met last month when I went to San Francisco for the Cherry Blossom Festival of which I still need to write up and post pictures. I'm putting this here so that it doesn't sound so weird given that I hadn't mentioned her before.

- There were a lot of new series being shown, such as Zombie Loan, as well as new episodes of older series like the Bleach Arrancar arc (though I didn't watch that one). In fact, there was even a Nodame Cantabile marathon, but I gave that a pass because it started at 4:00 am... (!!!)
- I watched (part of) Char's Counterattack, as well as Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, the spoof/parody movie Nescaflowne and a translation of one of the recent Cowboy Bebop PS2 games (released in 2005/2006) by Studio Sokodei. It was really awesome (even if the graphics were somewhat blocky in places) and the translation was very good~
- There were a lot of cosplayers; most of them were from popular series, such as Lelouch (from Code Geass), various Naruto and Bleach characters, Spike, Vash, Haruhi/Kyon/Nagato, Phoenix Wright, Edgeworth and so on, but there were some unusual finds - such as a Blue Badger cosplayer (complete with yellow flag!) and several Wiimotes. I could've sworn I saw Fujita/Sara (Gallery Fake) and Ahiru/Fakir (Princess Tutu) cosplayers too, though that might've just been my imagination playing tricks on me... oh, and there was a longcat.
- testing4l's cats were as fluffy and adorable as ever! Meg was somewhat skittish though and actually hissed at me, but Tera was a fluffy wumpuscat and reacted well to being stroked (I think she purred). I wasn't attacked by either of them this time though, thankfully.
- I attended the "MAD about Nico" panel, and it was quite surprising how many people were in the room and how familiar they were with a lot of the demographics and terms/memes/concepts present on Nico, including someone who asked for specific videos (by name) to be shown. It was quite interesting and I came away appreciating Niconico Douga much more.
- I bought some DVDs that I'd been interested in: two Lupin the 3rd movies, Kiki's Delivery Service and Lucky Star DVD 1. I also got a Maromi tote bag for a good price and it's been very useful so far.
- Staying at meerkat's place was, again, awesome. She has a really good sense of how to decorate her apartment tastefully and made the atmosphere *very* relaxing and comforting, with coffee, cribbage, chocolate and cuddling hugs. testing4l and I played NHL '07 on the PS2 and we won the Stanley Cup with the Seattle Lemmings! It was really entertaining for me even though I'm not generally good at sports games and I'd never watched a NHL game before -- and I even took part in several fights!!! I might even take her up on her offer to watch a Sharks game live in the autumn in San Jose!
- Speaking of meerkat, we had an impromptu concert on Sunday evening at the UCSC music rooms for testing4l. We performed some solo pieces (I attempted La Savane ("The Savannah") and The Banjo with some degree of success, though I swear my arms fell off after the latter), tried the two-piano arrangement of Pas de Deux (with me on first piano and Meerkat on second piano) several times, and also tried Ses Yeux ("Her Eyes"), a lively polka for piano duet (I was primo and she was secondo). It was a lot of fun and I'm definitely going to be exchanging scores, and hopefully recordings, with her more often. We didn't record ourselves, but perhaps that can be arranged...
- I showed Lemmings to meerkat and she loved it -- she thought it was really cute!
- We met up with gemlikeflame for dinner and ice-cream last night, and the ice-cream in particular was absolutely wonderful! gemlikeflame and I swapped stories about failing mock driving exams (I went over the curb and rolled through a stop sign and she turned the wrong way onto a one-way street!), about con, and how driving a car was really convenient. I think I may just get my license before my birthday...


All in all, it was a really great weekend, and to put it in testing4l's words, I scored three times! I'm probably going to go back to work this afternoon, though I might work from home. We'll see about that...

Comments

[meiyo-chan.livejournal.com]

yaaa, great to read it was fun :D

I watched parts of Zombie Loan at our Japanese Popculture Club meetings... not sure if I like it or not, though.