June 1st, 2007 by Shades
Location // Ventura, CA
Time // 7:00PM
Event // None
Day// # - 1
the day begins as I wake up eagerly awaiting going on a trip to Northern California for FanimeCon 2007. So it starts off normally….. Wake up, eat breakfast, run some errands and such, just to kill time and make the time to leave come a little quicker! So the day goes on by, I go and text scsa to see what time he will be arriving. Then as I get bored at home, I go to the mall to kill some time. Go to the EBGames here and hang out with them before I go on vacation. Then as the night progresses, I get a reply from scsa saying that he will not be able to come and pick me up until the next morning around 6am. “well, at least I can try and get some sleepâ€, I replied to his text. So there goes the night, waiting and waiting to go on my trip.
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Location // Livermore, CA
Time // 6:00AM
Event // Fanime 2007
Day// # 0
So my morning begins waaaay too unexpectedly. I had previously asked my mom last night to wake me up a little earlier than 6am just so that I can get all of my belongings ready. Instead, I get a call from scsa saying that he’s already here. “-___-x;†was my facial expression as I was woken up suddenly as the phone rang >.> 5-10 minutes later I finally make it out to where he had parked. We greet each other again, and all the other stuff that friends do. We then proceed to our wondrous trip.
(Around 1pm; same day)
We arrive at scsa’s hometown of Livermore, CA. It’s quite the nice place to live in, as it appears similar to my hometown down in Southern CA. We go and meet up with several of his friends which are really awesome people to talk to.
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Location // San Jose, CA
Time // 11:55pm
Event // Fanime 2007
Day// # 1
well, my new buddies and I didn’t even go to sleep throughout the night, so I decided that it was time to use my laptop to go online since we were really bored and since my laptop was the only one capable of reaching more wireless access points compared to scsa’s. Lol …. but anyway, we spend the night just doing random things while watching digimon (scsa’s note: Digimon sucks but second season Mimi is cute). Later throughout the night (or morning now I should say rather, michael starts to play Super Swing Gold on the Wii since he likes that game now. Then around 8am that morning we go to the convention center in San Jose to go pick up our badges and go get some breakfast. After we arrive, he takes the honors in showing me around the convention center just so I can get a feel on how/where things are. Then as we’re walking around, we start to get photos of cosplayers! (yay!) After a while of being there we go back to our friend’s place in Livermore to get our luggages ready to take to the hotel room we will be staying in.
As we reach the hotel room later that night, we go in to get ourselves accommodated with the room and set our belongings and then pass out sooner or later. (Finally after 2 long ass days with no sign of sleep whatsoever.)
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Location // San Jose, CA
Time // approx. 6:00AM
Event // Fanime 2007
Day// # 2
I had woken up to the chilling temperatures of the hotel room’s AC. No one else was awake other than me, so I was really bored on not being able to find something to do. Eventually more people start to wake up, but still haven’t talked to one another yet as I am still trying to wake up myself even after writing this (8:30am presently). And now there is some construction going on outside and made us wonder what they were doing…..
Around 1 or 2pm, we are in the Hotel Room playing Super Smash Bros. Melee on my friend’s Gamecube, and began to get owned again (I suck with using a Gamecube controller nowadays) >.> and I was still awaiting the time on when I would go to the Play! Concert.
The time now is about 5:30 and I am in the Karaoke room waiting for me turn to go up. So a few minutes passed by and it was eventually my turn to go up. I had sung Velvet Underworld by Weiss Kreuz. Awesome show if you ask me.
Fast forwarding to approximately 6:30pm the same night, I go into the cafe section of the convention center to once again steal their WiFi Internet.
The time is now 8pm…. And FINALLY can I witness one of the coolest video game symphonies around. Everyone goes into the venue, gets their freebies, and then go to the balcony to get seated. Then around 8:10 the concert begins and greatness is born. The pieces they played were from the Mario, Shenmue, Oblivion, Lair, The Darkness, Halo, Zelda, Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross, Final Fantasy, and another piece I forget about already.
At approximately 10pm the concert ends and I go outside all happy-like because I really enjoyed it 100 percent. Afterwards I start walking around and eventually get lost somehow (yes I was stupid enough to get lost) so I met this one guy who was also lost, so we walked around together in hopes of finding the convention center… in which we did. I guess we were destined to get lost so that we could keep each other from getting even more lost. Now, around 11pm I finally make my way to the convention center, go up to my room, and begin blogging what you are seeing right now. And now it is time to sleep so I will blog more tomorrow. D:
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Location // San Jose, CA
Time // approx. 11:50PM
Event // Fanime 2007
Day// # 3
Well today, Scsa and I met a friend of mine from the Anime-Expo forums. She was really cool. 
Then we went to Sekihiko-san’s panel. Afterwards Scsa and I went walking around a bit more and then went to the Masquerade later on, where we met Lynne again ^^. Afterwards, Scsa and I decided to go to dinner @ a Jack In the Box since we were both starving.
That’s about all that went on day 3. Not too exciting. lol
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Location // San Jose, CA | Livermore, CA
Time // approx. 8:00AM
Event // Fanime 2007
Day// # 4
Well, this morning I had woken up around 4AM due to unknown reasons. Then again around 6AM only to find that Scsa and one other guy were still sleeping. So around 7AM, I finally begin to wake up completely, only to find Scsa reading a manga.
In present-time, which now happens to be 8:30am exactly, I am here writing this out while listening to Megadeth’s ‘A Tout Le Monde (Set Me Free)’ on my PSP since my laptop’s power supply was snapped into pieces somehow last night. But at least I got to fulfill my mission this year… which was to have a picture taken of me “battling†a Sephiroth & Cloud cosplayer. (I was cosplaying as Reno).
The time is now 11:10pm & I am eagerly waiting for tomorrow to arrive so that I can finally go home. So many things have happened in a week’s time frame that even now I am beginning to cry a bit while writing this as I am going to miss my new friends that I have made over the weekend here in Northern California.
Although it was nice to be able to hang out with Scsa and his friends, I really did enjoy their company. I’ll be totally honest when I say this … but I really do like the guy. He is surely a cool person to hang out with once you get to know him.
Another year, another convention attended. Only next year will it keep getting better …
</end of Fanime 2007>
Now Playing —–
Artist // Weiß Kreuz
Album // Die Bleibende Erinnerung
Song // Beautiful Alone
July 5th, 2006 by Shades
Day 1 (11:59:33 PM PST) July 1st, 2006
Well, I had arrived at Anaheim, CA around 10:30am on July 1st, 2006 … so when I got there, a friend of mine and I decided to stop for breakfast. Also, I had called up a friend of mine to tell him that we arrived and decided to tell Michael, another friend of mine who frequents Anime Reflections, to come and get us so that we could save ourselves the walk. So as Hector and I got there, we went to our hotel room and dropped off our stuff. Afterwards, I get a call by Ryuji, an awesome friend of mine and co-admin of Anime Reflections. It was awesome finally getting to meet this guy since getting to know him in November of 2005, when I had recently rejoined AR, and just so you’d know …. No I did not end up glomping him like I had planned to do so >.>
Afterwards, when we introduced each other and all that stuff, both Ryu and I ran off to the convention center to pick up our badge holders. Quite a long wait it was to just get a simple holder and lanyard, neh? So with that said and done … Rachel, Ben, Hector, Ryu, and myself go and get some dinner at a Red Robin nearby.
Coming back from dinner, we all split up somehow. But first, we go to the 5th floor into the patio area out here to hang out. Afterwards, when a couple of people went separate ways, I decided to go and have a walk around the hotel and then to the convention center to browse about. Ryu and Ben had gone off to a video room while I decided to stay and do things on my laptop for a while.
So now I am here on the Patio area with Ryu and Ben just hanging out since I’m one of the people of the group that has a keycard, and so they’re basically making up for ditching me earlier for the movie, which I didn’t really mind about. It is now 12:07am PST here in Anaheim, CA, Hilton Hotel, Floor 5 hangout area.
~ ShadowTurk signing off (for the moment >__>)
PS .. ryuji is such an AWESOME person to hang out with.
Day 2 (12:22:41 PM PST) July 2nd, 2006
Well, it is day 2 now and Ben, Ryu, and myself are still out here hanging out doing nothing but talking the night away. It’s really nice though because I can use the time to get to know the two of these guys more since I just met them for the first time. And they are really cool people. What we have planned for today is that we go to breakfast eventually, go to more events at the con, and then hangout with some of my friends who work at the EB Games in Ventura, where I come from. So I really don’t know what else is to go on for the day… so I will keep you all informed as to when things go on.
It is now 6:51am PST. Ben had gone off to Michael’s car to charge his phone’s battery, while Ryu and I came back up here to the 5th floor hangout place to, you guessed it, hang out… the both of us have had NO sleep within the past 24-hrs, but I am here typing this on my laptop while my friend here is catching a quick snooze for the while. I, myself don’t know what to do other than to stay here with him, only because he seems to be one of my only other friends at the moment (other including Ben).
10:58pm PST it is now… Ryu and I are once again hanging out in the usual spot on the Hilton. We had recently come back from watching a Showing of the Kamikaze Girls at the Anaheim Convention Center. So we decided to just come up here and rest until we figure out what else to do next, that is… if the both of us don’t go to sleep. Throughout earlier in the day I had chosen to go to a couple of Panels inside the ACC, those panels were the Mick Takeuchi panel, and another one I forget the name of at the moment.
Afterwards I spend the next 7 hours by myself as Rachel, Ben and Ryu decide to wander off somewhere while I was attending the two panels. I go up to the hotel room we are staying in and encounter James. He decides for the both of us to go to enter the Karaoke contest, in which we did. We had practiced a couple of songs from Weiß Kreuz, though one of them did not sound the way we wanted to sound. We decided to change one of the Weiss songs to Gessekai from the band Buck-Tick. I had learned that we had lost in the competition afterwards… but it was really fun in doing Karaoke for the first time.
11:10pm is now the time as I write this… and nothing new seems to be occurring at this moment.
Day 3 (9:28:03 PM PST) July 3rd, 2006
Day 3 of Anime-Expo 2006 has come and is almost near ending as I am currently writing this at 9:30pm PST now. During this day of Con, I have become feeling more sentimental towards people unlike any other time throughout the years. This year has been so much more of a blast compared to last year’s AX since I really didn’t have any friends to hang out with. But this year, even though MY group of friends (excluding Lee & James; noting AR members) was small, it has been such an honor in hanging out with the 3 other attendees of the Anime-Reflections forums.
As I progress throughout the day though, I start to wonder … I love the 3 people in my group to death; Ben is a weird, but awesome person to call a friend, an energetic guy who can usually be of help when needed, and just an overall cool dude. Rachel… well, she reminds me of my sister at times whenever she bursts out laughing. ïŠ And last but definitely not least, there is Ryu. Being the one I’ve wanted to meet and hang out with for quite a while now. Quite frankly, just being around him is what made my weekend an awesome one here at Anime-Expo. Had he not attended AX this year I wouldn’t know if I’d be able to enjoy myself for the weekend? I’m just glad that he did attend.
What we had done today (being Hector, Ben, Ryu, & myself) was that we went to breakfast at Carl’s Jr. early in the morning to start ourselves off. Then afterwards, we went back into the hotel Lobby and decided to hang about while. Ryu and I then decided to walk over to Target to get himself a blanket, and so that I could get myself foot-care. Then as we leave Target, the both of us ponder getting pizza for the 4 of us to eat. About an hour later, after we had finished eating the pizza, we go and check out the Console Room in the Hilton.
Skipping a lot of hours later, Ryu and I decide to go to the Sheraton Hotel to leech off of their wifi internet to get in touch with the AR irc channel. After talking to the people in there it was time to go to sleep.
Day 4 (4:42:43 PM PST) July 4th, 2006
Well, Anime-Expo 2006 is now officially over. And I should just say that this year has been a total blast mainly because I had met some AWESOME people along the way. I was really pleased to have made it to this year’s AX because of the members of AR (Anime-Reflections) that had attended. The day had started when Ben had woken up around the early morning so that he could catch the shuttle to the airport and go back home. I was kinda sad when I noticed he was gone when I had awakened because I wanted to say goodbye to him. t.t ah well. There’s always the next year. Afterwards, when I noticed that Ryu had awakened, he went down the the lobby shuttle place to see if he could book an earlier flight back home. In which he did. Then as we parted, I succeeded in holding back to sobbing as we said our goodbyes and such. I just haven’t been the same all day since I kept thinking about it so much.
But for all of you to know, Anime-Expo 2006 was a really fun experience for me, especially with all of the people I will call my friends for life who came and kept me good company. I love you all to the ends of my heart and I really hope it stays that way forever.