Con Report: Anime Expo 2010

I can’t believe the con is already over…. this was my second Anime Expo (first one in 2005), but my first time staying at a hotel and cosplaying to it. I can honestly say this was the best con experience I’ve ever had, next to Sakuracon 2007. ;__; hope you enjoy my con report!

DAY 1

Painting shoes at 3AM. nbd…
Dyeing belts at 3AM. nbd…
Painting boots at 3AM. yeah……


After working on cosplay til 3AM the morning of, I slept like a baby with a million piles of fabric scraps around me and hot glue still on my fingers with paint on my knees (why.) We got to the airport with no issue, and decided to get some food before our flight to kill some time and fill our stomachs!

Italian soda! Tasted like those orange cream ice creammms. :3

alfredo fettuccine ♥! Favorite pasta!


Our flight was at 10AM, and I fell asleep through the entire trip. I was prepared with lots of DS games though! But I was sooooooooooo tired ahahaha. We got to the Long Beach airport at around 1PM, where my cousin picked us up to make a trip to Albertsons and stock up on hotel food (snack stuff and water bottles for the con. :3 )





Then I found out we had no ride to get to the convention center… and today was DAY ONE of the convention… we were stuck until 4PM or even later… and our roomies were depending on us to get their stuff in the room by a 6PM photoshoot which they had to get ready for… D: … my mom ended up buying a rental car (since she would’ve needed it anyways.) sorry mom ;__; love you!





We got to our room (which was huuuuuuuuuuuuge!!) I ran around taking pictures, as per usual. 

The bathroom was sooooooo fancy!


I got dressed into Rhyme, while Chong wore part of my Himawari wig. Then we went to get our badges! The place was paaaaaaaaaaaaacked with cosplayers and people standing around. Julia et al. were at a photoshoot, so we walked around a bit (it was burning hot outside…) I got stopped for a few photos, but for the most part we just ran around exploring for photoshoot places hahahaha. The AA and Dealer’s hall was closed at 6PM though. 🙁 so that was lame.





Ate dinner with my mom at Cavery’s, which was an interesting experience! You order up front, and seat yourself. Then they bring you your food and yeah… very interesting haha. 

I was craving salad… so caesar salad of course. 🙂 ♥
Chong’s! Can’t remember what it was…
and my mom’s! It was cranberry salad on a side… SOOO GOOD!
My mom went back to the hotel to work, and we continued exploring the area. Saw a lot of cosplays that were amazing! There was this one Beast girl who got stopped sooooooooooo many times – she was so cool!
There was this really secluded area up a level from the Dealer’s Hall — and we forgot to take pictures there!!!! DDDD:


wahhh. Then I got a text from Julia that they finished their shoot! So we headed back to the hotel. Once we got outside the main con center, we saw Shiya Wind and Court!!

I’m a really big fan of Shiya’s cosplays, so it was one of those things on my list to see her in person! I wish I got a picture with her… next year!!!
When Chong and I got back into the LA Live (where we were staying) we ran into Julia right away! Met with Jeanine, V, and Casey (our other roomies) and introduced ourselves, gave room info, and they went to go get their stuff from their friends’ room. We then took this opportunity to explore the hotel more hahaha. 
Went up the stairs to find this beauuuuuuuuutiful area! You’ll see a majority of our cosplay photos were taken here ahahaha. The lights changed colors!
We kept going up and up escalators and down hallways until we came to… floor 4 (?)! It was COMPLETELY DESERTED! Had lots of fun just hanging out and checking out all the cool stuff. This hotel is GORGEOUS! D8
Completely emptyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
Something Chong and I always do is explore the bathrooms of fancy places… I don’t know if it’s just an Asian thing, but I’m sure other people do it too… right?! hahahaha.
The signs were so adorable!


Headed back to our room, and our roomies came at the same time! They dropped off their stuff, and short bonding times were had. Mom ordered room service for a dessert and IT WAS SO GOOD AHHHH.

calamari! and creme brulee ♥! the presentation was ADORABLE. 




My mom, Chong, and I went to bed at midnight @___@ dead tired. hahahaha








DAY 2


Woke up at 7AM?! Got into Sakura & Himawari. Tried to eat breakfast @ Original Pantry but LOOOOOOOOOONG LINE. :C So we ate at L.A. Market at JW Mariott instead! 

My drink of the con. ♥ I swear I drank lemonade every day (or craved it, at least.) OTL
Adorable butter *A*


FOOD WAS SO GOOD OMFG. 


Classic Diner’s 2 eggs, 2 bacon, english muffin, and 2 pancakes w/ potatoes.





Headed to con after breakfast~ 





Then — ran back to the hotel for a photoshoot with Juliaaaa!!

I love sheer tights now, after this cosplay. hahahaha. Will forever use them when my knees are exposed =3= This costume was hard to walk in, because I had to keep my jacket like that, and those boots I’ve had since I was 8 or 9… hahahaha.
Chong so cute TT___TT !!!!!!!!!!
she really really made such an adorable Himawari ;__; I’m glad I bought this wig early so we could cosplay CLAMP together ><!!!

There were these really nice guys who asked us for our pic! Julia snapped a shot of us in our pose ^^ I wish we could’ve gotten a copy…


Proceeded to the Dealer’s hall after Julia ran off to do more photoshoots! Ran into Airika and Monica!!! :’DDD It was so cool seeing them again after so long! ahhhhh. TT____TT Then we got to the AA/DH and walked around until 2PM!

mana potions at this one booth! The lights underneath changed colors and made it look so cooooooool :’DDD
There was a Makeup & Cosplay panel we really wanted to go to, so we left a bit early to wait in line…. which was… HUGE. It went all the way through this sky hallway and around the corner… on both sides… it was insane. D: 
The lighting was beautiful though! So more photos were taken of each otherrrr hahaha.

While we waited I texted with Kevin about these free lemons we got after I bought a few pins from the Mr. Toast booth. 😀
soooooooo cute!!!


The panel finally opened up, and we all started filing into the room. It was packed, and still really cool – but all about prosthetics and mustaches 🙁 I was hoping it would be about contouring and eye makeup techniques for different character designs, but fake ears and noses is cool too… lots of people kept leaving though. 🙁 I felt bad, so I wanted to stay until she started the fake mustache. Chong kept falling asleep lol.





Went back to hotel. Chong took a nap while I worked on Len some moreee for tonight aha. Then Julia, Jeanine, Victoria, and Casey came back from their Odin Sphere shoots and we all went swimminggggggggg!



 I forgot my bathing suit at home so I just hung out with Jeanine and Casey on the edge of the pool. T3T lol… the water was soooooooooo warm though! ♥ ♥ ♥ Definitely not like Michael’s pool =___=…..

🙂 
idek girls in the bg…
Synchronized swimminggg! wahahahaha.
creeper from the deep!


Lots of unmentionable eyebrows, and this one creeper red-shirt dude w/ speedo smiling at us while he sat on the pool stairs ensued D; Eventually I jumped in with my shirt and trunks on and REGRETTED NOTHING. Wahahahaha. After about an hour? maybe, we all got out of the pool and went to go shower off the chlorine in the pool bathroom…….




…….OR SHOULD I SAY ANGRY HOT FOUNTAIN TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR. There were 2 shower areas, one was WAY too hot, and the other stabbed you with pressure. So we pretended to be meditating under one, and tagteamed the other. One person sprayed the (it was removable!) shower head while the other spun in circles to even out the heat. LOL And of course, eventually the whole bathroom got flooded with our shenanigans.. but it was just Chong, Julia, V, and I… wahahahahaha. e__e then we realized our towels were soaked as a result, and tried to dry off using the electric hand dryer.. which was one of these….




Needless to say, the elevator ride up was very… eventful. LOL

My mom’d come back from hanging out with my aunt, and with it Pinoy Pinayyyy!!! ♥ We don’t have any of these up in Seattle, so whenever we come down we always try to eat there! D: I was really happy that everyone loved the filipino food! Made me happy hehehehe.





After eating, we all took showers for realsies, and Chong and I got into Len and Rin! Ferngully was on TV, so we all watched for a while.. and ended up missing the light show OTL. oh well. hahahaha.

I asked Chong to help me with my Len ponytail, but due to the nature of my wig, it turned out really really fail… LOL so I went without. D;
Attended the VOCALOID panel at 9PM! It was crazy coooooooooool!! They played Just Be Friends first AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH */////* I was soooo happy!!!! Then they played a WHOLE bunch of adorable vids, like Cobalt Blue Bride (one of my favs now! ♥) and some other Miku ones. They had a video about a stray cat, which made me miss Nibbles (my cat) D; so I harrassed Kayla and asked her how she was doinggggg.


It was 10:30PM by now, I think, so we walked back towards the hotel to meet up with Julia for a VOCALOID photoshoot — until we ran into Airika in Toradora! She makes such a cute Ryuuji ;~; someday I’ll finish Taiga.. I swear… I have all the fabric OTL. 


On the walk back, there are these beautiful trees lining the sidewalks/Nokia Plaza area, and I just haaaaadd to take a bajillion pictures of them. ;A; I LOVE when trees are decorated with lights… I just… ahhhh so in love. hahahahaha ♥ ♥ ♥

We had to stand on those giant flower pots to take our cosplay pictures… e__e it was scary hahaha. (I have a really really really bad fear of heights/falling)
There were quite a number of people who’d asked us for photos, so we kept having to jump down from the pots — but someone asked if we wanted a picture together! It was so sweet, thank you so much for doing this for us!!!! :’D


Hmmm, oh but right before we were taking pictures.. I’m taking pictures of the tree, while I hear some guy say “don’t freak out” behind me… the only one close behind me was Chong, so I turn around and there’s this really tall Skeleton Guy looking at me.. and I screamed. Really. LOL I was so surprised, and his makeup was really well-done, IDK WHAT I WAS THINKING but I screamed OTLOTLOTL. I have this fear of zombie outbreaks and just the general undead attacking me…. I felt so bad because he even warned us not to freak out. D; He reassured us that he was with a female friend and motioned to her– and it was the Beast girl again!!!!! I felt loads safer after that though, dunno why hahahaha. He asked us if we were old enough to be out in L.A. this late, and if we were okay being by ourselves and asked us our age just in case. Then he was really surprised, but also looked a lot more relieved. Apparently we looked “way younger” than we really are — like 13-14 OTLOTLOTLOTLOTL||. They told us to be careful and have a safe night, and we continued on our merry way. But that encounter made us realize just how old we looked in these costumes…. so we decided to be a bit more cautious.





(this post is insanely long, omg. LOL)

walking back to Nokia Plaza!


I was taking photos, when some really tall guy started talking to me about how I should take a picture with him and Chong… Chong’s 5’0″, and he was like 7’2″? somthing like that… he said his name was Bert. 



Starbucks at 1AM! LOL. While waiting for our drinks, there were two Filipino guys who asked for pictures, then we talked about tagalog and how I don’t look filipino… story of my life.

Really cute handwriting!!
Met up with Julia and started taking peeectureeees!!!!
Haato! ♥
 I loveloveloveloveee this one ♥ ♥ ♥ thank you so much Julia ;__;
“Point over there and smile!!” 
we started messing around immediately after LOL
I was scaring Chong HAHAHAHAHA. I’m not strong, sorry………….

We had a lot of interesting characters asking to take our photos…..

this guy took a ridiculous amount, and none of them gave us business cards… so who knows if we’ll ever see them posted T__T





We finished around 2AM (holyjeez hahahaha) I was still awake, so while Chong went to sleep I ran around with Julia, V, and Jeanine for a 3AM One Piece photoshoot LOOOOOOOOL —> kinda scary because I’ve never shot people I don’t know… ;=;

 we all quickly became friends tho LOL the power of the chins
V and Jeanineeee ♥ ♥ ♥
JULIAAAAAAAA ♥ ♥ ♥
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
I CAN’T GET OVER HOW PRETTY THE JW IS AHHHH
SHE WAS SO PRETTY TOO ;___; I loveddd her headset! I can’t wait to start making Magnet Luka….

Our fav spot to shoot LOL!!!




On our way to the OP cosplayers’ room we climbed these eery stairs (their room was right above ours) — it made whale noises DDDDDD8. And then we knocked on the wrong door and died tenbillion times OTL.

not sure when I’ll finish editing these pics but this is the one that matters the most………………
taking a break!!
uguuuuuuuuuuuu
hey girl hey
classic photographer pose LOL


At the end of the photoshoot we were sitting down resting, when these two drunk guys walked up to us claiming to be employees for SME. Nice try….. I was kinda scared because they were pretty creepy, but we had more people so it wasn’t anything to worry about. We were right outside the hotel anyways. haha.  Finally went to bed, kuchoo kuchoo. e____e





DAY 3


We ended up going back to that hallway the other day to take more cosplay pics LOL.

Chongggguhh ♥ ♥!!

Whooooo is that girl I seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
We started walking through the support beams to get these shots LOL
After we took our photos, we met up with Julia, Jeanine, and V again!!! The TTGL movie was filled so they weren’t able to watch it ;___; we decided to go back to the hotel room after we were done running around!
This is a really awkward shot but I’ve been a fan of PikminLink (Li Kovacs) since I started cosplaying… so being able to run into her randomly as we were heading back to the hotel MADE ME SO NERVOUS AND HAPPY LOL!!! Thank you for taking a photo with me ><!!!!
Some shots of us we found on the internet! My tongue was actually stuck on the push-pop… and I didn’t want to rip my tongue off for the photo………….. so we posed with it LOL………
In the dealer’s hall!! 😀

And then….. Beardcon had begun.

Breakfast at 9PM first tho LOL!


DAY 4

Unfortunately, we had to leave Day 4 :(! Our first ever Anime Expo was a huge blast, and I’ll never forget all the memories I made and all the friends I made at this con. It’s seriously one of the best con experiences I’ve ever had ;__; !!! 
THANK YOU GUYS FOR THE GODIVA CHOCOLATES TOO OMG TT___TT WE ALL REALLY APPRECIATED THIS GIFT SO MUCH!! I’LL MISS YOU GUYS ;__;