Tuesday 10 April, 2007
Post-con
After getting over my post-con blues yesterday - though not entirely my post-con exhaustion - I thought I'd list couple of things about the weekend and Sakura-con.
- The official patron saint of the trip was Bob Marley. I was saved by a Rastafarian cab driver on Thursday when my taxi didn't show up, and he was playing Bob Marley and I found that it was next to impossible to stress while listening to reggae in the middle of the worst Easter traffic jam wondering if I'd catch the train. So I adapted that way of thinking for the rest of the trip, singing "No woman no cry" in the shower on Friday morning when I was panicking about everything - I swear it helps. Unfortunately on the down-side, having Bob looking over your shoulder meant that sometimes were were forced to chill and wait in queues for long periods... but at least everything went ok.
- Border crossing by train was the easiest ever. We slided past the huge queue of cars, and we didn't even have to get up from our seats - the officials came in, looked at our passports, made a joke and that was it. We were absolutely stunned, they didn't even ask how long we were going to stay.
- The train was a winner's choice anyway, so comfortable and nice. And people were so happy to see the train, they kept waving at us. Except the man who took down his pants, mooned and slapped his cheeks... but that made me laugh too.
- Having a hotel across the street from the convention center was amazingly handy. We continued the tradition of room service breakfasts - when you need to get up at 7am to be ready for your photoshoot, the last thing you want to do is get ready even earlier so that you could go downstairs for breakfast.
- I was blessed for the first time in my life, I think, in the opening ceremonies. By a Shinto priest, too. There was a blessing ceremony in the start of the opening ceremony that included chanting by the priest, and us bowing our heads and in the end clapping our hands. And so the con was blessed, and us too - and since we had a wonderful and safe con maybe it did work. It was interesting to see though how the church-going American folks instinctively knew how to behave: the first time we had to bow the priest didn't say anything but everyone knew anyway and we were left looking like the heathens we are. Later on luckily the priest did say "bow your head" and "please straighten" which helped... I did my own loving-kindness metta meditation while bowing my head - strictly speaking it's Buddhist but the sentiment is the same with any prayer. There were three kami-samas that were respected, first one I can't remember but the other two were the one for arts and entertainment and the last one was Seattle's own kami-sama.
- On Friday I lost the count of how many photos people wanted to take of me around ten - but the real figure was probably around 20-30. On Saturday we hit that within first hour or so, and the actual figure that day was probably around 200.
- Saturday was also the first time my husband was the more popular one! We joked that while I was his attractive feature (i.e. I wasn't the main attraction but a nice bonus in his photos), he was my lovely item (i.e. the thing that made me interesting and lovely). Like I suspected he was mobbed for photos everywhere he went and we got lot of photos taken together - but this continued even when I wasn't there, whereas I was left relatively in peace when I was alone. I'm so proud of him!
- For the first time I was meeting people that knew me by my net alias kolibri (that I use on most boards), instead of my real name. Kinda weird. We met up with some people from Cosplay.com, most notably the lovely Panda-chan and her husband who are also the kind of 30-something anomalies in the cosplay "circles". We also met up with lovely saxophonist Hector who we knew from Anime Evolution last year, who played anime tunes again much to crowd's delight.
- We also met the wonderful Dr. Antonia Levi (who shall be casually known as Toni from now on), a professor of Japanese Culture who we met last year at Anime Evolution. We listened to a panel she did about Howl's Moving Castle and I had tea with her afterwards. She actually lives in BC now so we promised to get together later on... she's lovely.
- I was buying erotic manga and anime at MediaBlasters' booth in the dealers' room on Sunday when the guy behind the counter spotted my Rammstein hoodie - I ended up getting a nice discount on my manga and DVDs. He was upset that Rammstein had to cancel their tour to America in the wake of 9/11 and he never had the chance to see them live although he had bought a ticket and all.
- Bus is a winner's choice too. We had to take the bus back because there's only one train each direction a day, but it was peaceful and easy, and border was nearly empty on Sunday evening. Coming back to Canada is never a problem - the only question they asked was where we live, and Vancouver was the right thing to say for them to just wave us through.
- I spent the Monday going though the photos, selecting and editing them, and then uploading... Then going through forums to post the links, look at other people's photos, re-connect with people we met, reading and sending PMs and by the end of it it felt like just another con day. Yet it was over and I was feeling a little blue in the evening... my ego gets very attached to people, places, events and things and putting them behind is sad.
Here are some of my favourite photos:
