Article: Sakura con 2009 Fridayless

Sakura Con 2009 Fridayless

Sakura con is my yearly anime tradition and some traditions you should try hard not to give up. However this year was a bit different although every year although you could say that for every year. Most notably I was not able to attend on Friday as I had work. After money is more important than anime if only because money allows you to buy anime, rent an apartment to store your anime and buy food so you don’t die of starvation before finishing your favorite new show.

I was able to arrive bright and early on Saturday morning and was able to get through registration faster than you can pick up a burrito at Taco Bell. This is in clear contrast to the horror stories that I heard of people on Friday waiting five hours to get their badge. As always remember to pre-register.

After getting my badge and clearing out the memory on my digital camera (something I should have done on the bus ride there) I set out to take pictures of cosplayers. I didn’t get to take as many pictures as I did last year, partly because I missed Friday which is a really good day to take pictures, especially since the registration line is a great place to take pictures since the cosplayers are pretty much stuck in line. I was still able to get a good amount of good pictures of the more interesting and well made costumes.

I always try to impart what wisdom I have learned about convention going to the readers. For 2009 I have learned these two things. First if you are going to a local restaurant you probably want to eat lunch as soon as the place opens. It is sort of like a reverse dealer’s room as the line only gets longer the more you wait. Secondly you may want to prioritize what you buy in the dealer’s room to getting specialty goods first. The reason for this is that I have found that while manga sellers at conventions usually will give you a discount they usually are not a better deal than what you can get on Amazon or with a Border’s coupon.

In an effort to make this article more interesting as well as take advantage of the special opportunities that conventions offer I attended one of the panels hosted by one of the guests of the convention, in this case the esteemed voice actor Kappei Yamaguchi. I found him to be an friendly and interesting person however I have the feeling that attending voice acting panels is really only for people that have really connected with one of the actor’s roles can enjoy all that much.

Another thing that I did at the convention was attend the manga library. I think I wrote about this in another convention report but I spent more time at the library this year. One reason for this is that the manga library now runs 24 hours a day making it the perfect time waster between events that you want to attend especially if that time that needs wasting is at 7am and you can’t think of anything else to do.