So every year a group of my online friends always talk about going to Anime Expo in California, and every year I talk about how I should go. Well in 2009 I finally went. And it was awesome.

So I woke up that morning at 6AM CST (4AM PST) to get ready for my flight at 9AM CST (7AM PST). At the airport I sat around watching Yogi Bear on some random tv they set up near the gate. There was this group of 4 people around age 25 or so there also watching. It took them about 10 minutes of watching it before they actually figured out what it was. Then one of them kept commenting on how the show made absolutely no sense and they wern't really sure how it was so popular in the first place.

So on the plane I managed to somehow get really really sick. My family has a history of motion sickness so I assume it was that. I forgot to take any medicine against it since I hadn't really had any problems with it in the past few years. I ended up vomiting twice on the airplane and I recall sitting there with a vomit bag on my face as we landed. The random man and lady around me were probably like "worst plane ride ever" with me sitting between them.

Eventually the plane landed around 11:30AM PST and I came out at terminal 1. After retriving my bags I called Dovac and asked him where everyone else was. He stated they were all waiting for him to come pick them up at terminal 4 so I started walking there. After a minute or so I stopped and asked somewhere where terminal 4 was since it seemed like I was going nowhere. He was like "Oh boy it's like 10 minute walk down a ways, you should probably take one of the shuttles they run between terminals." I was like, whatever and spent 10 minutes carrying my bags on down to terminal 4 where I meet up with Stele, Panda, and Faker. Dovac pulled up litterly like 10 seconds later and brought us over to a Carl Jr.'s down the road where everyone else was waiting. We split up into 2 cars and headed out to the Los Angeles Convention center since we couldn't check in to the hotel until after 3.

After a wild ride with Dovac's brother (whom had only been driving for 2 weeks apparently) we made it to the LACC and went towards the west hall entrance to find where the registration desk was. When we got there we were meet by a gaurd who told us we could only enter from South Hall, so we headed on over there. Once inside we followed a trail of signs that lead us back over to the other side of the West Hall entrance doors, which then lead us up some stairs that took us back to the stairs beyond the South Hall entrance, which then lead us outside somewhere with a bunch of people standing in line.

After standing around for about 10 minutes Koru says, "Oh right guys I don't think registration opens till like 1, and every year the computers break and we spend forever standing around waiting for them to fix it." Which didn't bother me at all since I was really still a bit sick from the flight as well as driving around town for awhile. I even found 2 guys off to the side throwing the frisbee around that I hung out with for awhile. However for everyone else it was horribly misserable. Most everyone in our group was completely white from not having left their house pretty much ever. So as the afternoon went along everyone became horribly sunburnt, except for myself. Cause I already had a tan from swimming, playing kickball, etc. I think even Koru had a rediculous watch tan by the end of the day. Also, at one point Jigglypoof finally landed at the LAX and took a shuttle to the LACC where he called Mandy. A hillarious event ensued that involved me getting everyone around our group to start yelling out Jiggly's name. Mandy gave his number to a bunch of random people too and we all kept trying to text him and call him to get him to find where we were since there was about 2000-3000 other people standing around there. Eventually Mandy wondered off and found him and brought him back to the front of the line where we were.

We stood in line for 3 hours before it finally moved inside where we stood in another line for about 10 minutes. Then when we finally got up there, turns out Mandy didn't bring any ID with her so she couldn't get her badge. I stood around and talked with her for about 20 minutes while Dovac went back to his car to get her purse and everyone else stood outside trying to unbreak some soda machine so they could get something to drink.

After all that happened we finally started heading out to the hotel. Since we had an extra person and had already smashed too many people into 2 cars, Jiggly ended up sitting in Panda's lap in Dovacs brother's car. We sat in downtown LA traffic trying to see if we could give Panda a hardon for about 10 minutes before I was like, screw this guys I'm tired of sitting in a car and I could walk faster than we are moving. So I got out along with Panda, Jiggly, and Faker and we just walked the mile or so to the hotel from there.

Like 20 billion minutes later everyone else got there and we parked all our stuff in our hotel room and headed to Dovacs Parent's Chinese restaraunt. I ended up not eating cause I was still pretty sick from everything that had gone on. Spent the entire time talking to WD, Ruri, and Dovac's brother about obscure RPGs. Eventually we left and went to Dovac's house where it was like 9000 Kelvins in his room and everyone played Street Fighter or something for like an hour while I sat outside waiting for them to all be done and for us to go back to the hotel.

We finally made it back to the hotel around 11:30PM. I started off the night sleeping on some random wood behind all the beds. I ended up moving after awhile because it was right by the air conditioner and for some reason that thing was on full blast so it was super cold. I ended up sleeping in the closet by the door the rest of the night. And that was the end of Day 0.

I don't recall entirely how Day 1 actually started. I remember I woke up at 5AM PST, because I wake up every morning for work around that time. But for whatever reason, everyone else didn't wake up till like 8 I think. I took a shower while waiting as well as I got on WoW for a few minutes and talked with my friend Cayte since she was online.

Around 8:30 or 9ish, we all left the hotel to try and find an IHOP that supposedly exsisted somewhere. We started wondering aimlessly down some street that Faker supposedly thought was the right way. After walking for a good 15 minutes or so I was like, "Guys this is a complete waste of time, Jiggly has a GPS, I'm starting a mutiny and making him captain." So Jiggly ended up looking up the place and it was in the complete opposite direction and after another billion years of walking we made it to IHOP.

There was some dude there in a female sailor's outfit and bunny ears. I believe it was sometime the day before that Koru and I wanted to try and see who could find the most traps during the convention. And we had started off to a good day.

At the LACC I wanted to take some video and Faker ended up wanting to take some pictures so he followed me around. My goal for the entire convetion was to get a ton of different people to dance for me on camera so that I could compile a music video with it all when I got back home. So I began asking anyone and everyone that was cosplaying to dance. Overall I got most everyone I asked to dance. I even had one girl spend like 5 minutes trying to find some music to go along with her dance. Which Faker didn't mind at all since he thought she was super sexy. I however just wanted her to do something quick so I could move on to the next person. She ended up dancing for like an entire minute or something before I just walked away.

As the day moved along I probably talked to several hundred people. By the end of the first day I had taken something like 300 videos of people dancing and then a bunch of videos of the convention center along with me talking to a bunch of random people. The most random of people I saw there was indeed Kel Mitchell. I seriously almost pee'd my pants when I heard his voice and saw him standing there promoted the crap out of some random ..thing. I still have no idea what he was promoting even having stood there for like 10 minutes.

During the convention they hold all these panels for people to visit that deal with anything from the Anime Industry to talking to special guests that have something to do with Anime or Gaming or Japanese Culture in general. The first day they had debate, masquerade ball, origami, Jrock, a couple of different publishers, glowsticking, and Mega 64. The Mega 64 one was the only one I cared about and it didn't start until 6, so I spent the entire day just walking around talking to random people and getting people to dance.

At the Mega 64 panel, everyone but me sat like, 8 rows back. I got there really early and ended up sitting in the second row. Somehow I ended up sitting behind Sean's Sister and talked to her for a short bit. I also got to talk to the Mega 64 guys for like 2 minutes and gave them all high fives. The panel itself was pretty cool. They talked about a lot of random stuff and showed a couple of new videos. After the whole thing was over, everyone in my group made me sit around and watch the new Gurren Lagann Movie with them. I asked Mandy what it was about and her responce was "digging holes". So naturally I replied with "is Shia Labeouf in this movie, cause I'm pretty sure I've seen this movie before". Everyone within hearing distance got a kick out of that and laughed pretty hard. I shortly after that fell asleep and woke up some unknown time later with everyone in the audiance freaking out and screaming. Something important apparently happened in the movie but I had no idea what was going on. I watched the rest of the movie and after that we all went back to the hotel.

Sat around for awhile talking about what each of us did throughout the day then eventually went to sleep around 11 or so. I think Mandy and Koru watched some scary movie or something, I don't actually remember. I slept in front of the door that night. And that's how Day 1 ended.

Woke up again at 5AM. Took a shower then around 6:30 I got bored and started waking people up. They had all asked me to wake them up early the night before but of course complained when I was actually doing it. I managed to get everyone up by about 7:30 except for Koru. As a last effort I ended up singing "Circle of Life" from the Lion King to him to get him to wake up. He responded with "I think that was the best way anyone has ever woken me up before." Koru, Mandy, and I then left to try and find a grocery store. I asked the guy at the Vallet desk if he knew where one was and he told us it was off 8th ave somewhere. So we walked down to 8th and saw a "Ralph's Market" truck drive by. Koru suggested we go towards where it was coming from and I suggested we follow where it was going, so we ended up going towards where it had just come from. After like half a mile I was like, forget this, and asked some random guy on the side of the road where Ralph's market was. He told us to go back where we had just gone from and then over to 9th street and it was right on the corner. So we walked around and eventually found it. Mandy and Koru went to the candy section while I walked around and found some actual food and drinks. Ended up finding some sort of cactus soda or something. It looked really crazy so I decided to try it out. Also noticed a box of another unfamiliar soda behind some pillar and was like, I've got to try this out. Was some really freaking gross apple soda. The Cactus drink wasn't bad. I don't actually remember what flavor it was supposed to be but it tasted like pinapple mountain dew.

So for Day 2 I decided to cosplay that day. I was dressed up as Rudy Roughnight from the game Wild Arms. The only problem I had with the entire outfit was the shoes. I'm pretty horrified of heights and since the elevators were on the outside of the building and we were on the 17th floor, I took the stairs every time we entered or left the building. Since I wasn't really used to walking around in cowboy boots, I ended up with blisters by the end of the day, and walking up and down the stairs didn't really help at all.

On our way there, like a block after the hotel, some guy stopped me and was like "ARE YOU RUDY FROM WILD ARMS", which was pretty cool that someone noticed me right off. Then like 5 minutes later, some guy yells out his car window "YEAHHHHH GURREN LAGANN." Now, having just seen part of the movie, I realize that one of the main characters in Gurren Lagann has blue hair. However I don't understand how the rest of my outfit looked anything at all like Gurren Lagann. Mandy made fun of me the rest of the trip for it. WHAT A JERK. . .

At the LACC I walked around for awhile. People would randomly yell out "YEAH RUDY" or "YEAH WILD ARMS" throughout the day at me. I had some random girl like, fangirl out on me about how much she loved Rudy. Only a few people asked me for pictures, mostly people just yelled out randomness at me or stopped me to talk about how awesome Wild Arms is.

For panels that day they had; a bunch of publisher related stuff, photoshop coloring, a scavenger hunt, traveling to japan, resin figure building, belly dancing, and a bunch of other really random stuff. I think they also had the AMV contest at some point along with a concert by Morning Musume. I didn't end up going to any panels at all that day and I think we actually ended up leaving the LACC at like 6 or so that afternoon when the dealers room closed.

For dinner that evening we went to the Johnny Rockets right across the street from our hotel. Sometime during our meal this random girl came over and started talking to Mandy about how lonely she was and how she was there all by herself. It was kinda creepy but then at the same time kinda neat. After dinner everyone but me went swimming. I played WoW till they came back. We talked about random stuff for awhile and then went to bed. And that's how Day 2 ended.

I don't really remember a lot of what went on Day 3. We got there and went to some Blazblue panel, I got horribly bored, and just wondered around for awhile. I eventually meet back up with everyone around 2 for the Power Rangers Panel. The panel mostly just consisted of people trying to get them to say lines from the show. Half way through the panel everyone left. Mandy, Koru, and I walked around the dealers room for awhile. I managed to actually get Kel Mitchell to talk to me for a short while. Nothing else interresting was really going on so we left after that to try and find some Carl's Jr that didn't actually exsist. We wondered around downtown LA for like an hour before giving up and all went to Subway to eat. The journey was actually pretty entertaining because everyone was just compairing everything to WoW related stuff. After Subway we went back to the LACC and to my suprise ended up in a Vocaloid panel.

Seriously like 2 minutes into it I turned over to Koru and said, "So far this convention I havn't really had any idea what's actually going on. But for the first time this entire trip I actually know what's going on." Now, just a quick note on Vocaloid. I LOVE Vocaloid. I love the idea behind it, and I fully support the Vocaloid movement. So this panel was probably one of the greatest things ever to happen there for me. After about 10 minutes, the rest of my group got bored, so they all left, I moved closer to the front, and listened to the creators of the Vocaloid program talk about the Vocaloid movement and how it's affecting the world. They also showed a bunch of really cool fan made videos and a few other things. Towards the end of it, my group came back and was like "hey we were supposed to be in this room all along." Apparently there was supposed to be some Hgame panel there afterwords and they wanted to get good seats or whatever.

After the Vocaloid panel, they made everyone leave the room so they could check ID to make sure everyone there was over 18. The line was seriously the most rediculously and unnessesarily long line there. Like freaking every male and the convention was in that line. Mandy and I didn't really care but we wanted to hang out with the rest of the group and nothing else was going on so we stayed along. When I got to the door they handed me some random stack of crap that I ended up leaving on some table I found in the back on my way to my seat. I feel asleep almost instantly after I sat down since it was already like 11PM.

Woke up an hour later and everyone around me had random paper's pulled out in front of them. To my left was numbers 297, 298, 299, 300 and then to my right was 302, 303, 304, and 305. Turns out I woke up when they were doing some raffle. The lady up front yelled out "AND OUR NEXT WINNER IS NUMBER....301!" So everyone in my group starts franticly looking around for which one of us had 301 and next thing I know everyone is peering at me asking where my raffle ticket is. Of course I had gotten rid of it with the random stack of crap so Koru starts freaking out getting really angry. I turn around back where the table was and there was some old man there with a big smile on his face and I turned to WD and was like, I bet that old man got it and he's like OH BOY OH BOY! Mandy and I kept laughing while everyone else just kept raging and digging through the trash can. It was pretty freaking hillarious, the rest of the trip I tried to bring it up as much as possible. They never gave away whatever I had apparently won because 301 never showed up. Best day ever.

When we got back to the hotel, some of them went off drinking with Dovac or something. I went to sleep instead. DAY 3 OVER.

I let everyone sleep in that morning and just sat around playing SNES games on my brother's laptop for a few hours. Eventually Panda got up and went to the convention center to get some Blazblue guy's autograph or something. Around 9 I started freaking out yelling at everyone that we were missing Origami class. I got a good laugh out of it but everyone just kinda grumpily got up.

Not much was supposed to go on that day and in fact the expo ended at 3 that day. I found out that I had apparently missed 4 screenings of the movie Chocolate and was a little dissapointed. I'd wanted to see that movie for awhile and this would have been a good chance to see it but I didn't notice it was playing until way to late. The only panel I cared about seeing that day was the Zelda one they were holding at the end of the day.

I walked around for awhile with someone. I think it was Mandy and Koru but I'm not really sure. Like 2 hours before the zelda thing I started heading over to the Zelda panel area cause I REALLY didn't want to miss it. Rediculously enough, a line had already started forming. And not just any line, but a long line. So we all sat down, I called the rest of the group and told them to come to the line, and we sat in a line that apparently ran on for about a half a mile on down. They eventually had to close off the line and all sorts of other mess. I was really glad I randomly decided to show up early.

During the panel the guys talked about a bunch of myths and whatnot, and during one of the videos I noticed the guy put in for his name "TSA". I instantly (and loudly) gasp, and started quitely fangirling out to Mandy. I'm pretty sure that throughout the entire crowd, I was probably the only person there that actually knew who TSA is. I then had to spend 5 minutes explaing to Mandy who he was and eventually after it was all over I trampled over everyone and went over and talked to him for a minute or so. It was pretty awesome getting to meet someone I've looked up to as a speedrunner for years and years. I still to this day will randomly sometimes watch his Zelda 2 speedrun. It was also pretty funny how Mandy noticed after I told her who he was how extremely accurate his movements were as he would play the zelda games during his panel.

Don't actually remember the rest of the day. I think we just sat around the hotel talking about anime and everything that had gone on during the convention. Eventually Day 4 ended.

I got up that morning and remembering how horrible my first plane trip was, I went and bought some Dramamine from the hotel gift shop. Most everyone's flights left around 11ish so we took a shuttle to LAX around 8AM. My flight on the other hand didn't leave till 3PM so I ended up having to sit outside the Southwest Airlines bag checkin thing for a couple hours, then eventually was able to go inside where I just slept till my plane took off. Got home around 10PM CST that night and imediatly went to sleep. Longest day ever. At least the plane trip went a lot better than the first one. Boy do I hate flying.

So anyways my trip had ended. It was a lot of fun and I plan on going again next year. I only actually took pictures the first day, but here they are anyways. Note: I got shakey hands so I'm pretty terrible at taking pictures.

I also compiled a lot of the video I took into 2 very entertaining videos on Youtube. You can either view them here or click on the links for the actual Youtube pages.