This season’s Hidamari Sketch x Honeycomb is really hitting the ball with the stories and movement upward from high school to college. This week’s particular episode struck me since I’ll be moving out of my college town soon and into the big world. Even though a large distance will soon separate me from friends I have come to know over my seven years of undergraduate and graduate school, I can rest easy remembering that they’re only a simple text message, E-mail, phone call, or Skype chat away.
My time in Los Angeles flew by much too quickly, and before I knew it, Day 4 and my flight had already arrived.
This was probably the second busiest day of the convention. Despite only attending two events, I still felt overwhelmed due to the active nature of them both.
The only Nichijou cosplay I could find! When not posing, she pushed the shark around in a blue cart.
Day 2 of the convention was easily the busiest day, with delays affecting the shuttle system, panels, and especially the concert. I had quite a few activities scheduled for this day, but was unable to make many of them due to the time crunch and the often disadvantageous distances across the center. Lesson learned: don’t even think about trying to attend events back to back. Nevertheless, this first day to myself was amazing in almost every aspect.
Late night + early morning makes Marina a grouchy, apt-to-motion-sickness gal. The day began at 8 AM, and I stumbled on home at about 9 PM to give myself some extra time before Day 2, which will be my busiest day of the convention.
My adventure started a bit on the wrong foot–I was so excited about the trip that I didn’t sleep a wink the night before my very early morning flight. Coupled with the fairly short distances and almost zero layover time, I wasn’t able to snag any zzzs on the way to L.A. By the time I finally made it through the airport, to my hotel, and to the Convention Center to pick up my badge, it was already 5:30 PM. 
The happy result of this was that by then the line was a constant flow and the whole process only took a painless 1.5 hours (compare that to the 3 hours and up some people waited at the start!).
Although I was unable to meet up with any of my forum friends, I did get to enjoy a dinner with a large group of fellow anibloggers and co. in Little Tokyo, all at the patient coordination of zzeroparticle. Honda-ya was a great little Japanese restaurant, and my takoyaki and zaru tororo perfectly complemented the chit chat I shared with Icy and Blitzwing, who were kind enough to oblige my shyness. Zzeroparticle was a champ with the organization of over 30 people who were spread out over four different tables. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to meet everyone there, but it was nice to see such a sizable group from many different locations get together in one location out of love for anime and blogging.
Dun-da-dun!!! This will be my first ever convention (of any kind), and I decided to go big by choosing the biggest anime convention that the US has to offer: Anime Expo. I have been to an academic conference, but I’m preeeetty sure that the experiences are worlds apart. For starters, I’m set to throw down some serious cash if I’m able to find what it is I’m wishing to see–with the second season of Moyashimon soon to air, and Fate/Zero garnering a lot of attention at the con, hopefully there will be plenty of plushies, wall scrolls, figures, and BDs for everyone! I honestly don’t really know what to expect, but I’m going in with some tentative plans for these upcoming days.
It’s survey time, and I thank Ace Railgun for starting this fun activity. This post will also be added on to my About Me section. The questions start centered on anime, then move on to more personal questions. If you have any additional inquiries, please leave a comment!
Kai of deluscar kindly asked me to participate in a project discussing anime and time management. The prompt, as quoted by Kai, describes this as “…a project where everyone can share how [they] manage their time efficiently, juggling between studies, work and anime…” I always find joint projects like this (like the recent Carnival discussing anime rating) a lot of fun since it not only helps me out when I run dry on inspiration, but it also creates a ton of collaboration between writers and readers.
