Maryssa's return to sunny California...she's on a mission...to visit the Mecca of Bemani... Arcade Infinity!!

AX01 Day 1

I got no sleep, as expected, the night of tuesday, July 3rd. Finishing up costumes and packing, of course! My limo for the airport picked me up at 630am on July 4th. I got to ride a brand new 767 to L.A. and it was really nice! Lionel of usagichan.com picked me up at my gate and after collecting all my heavy stuff, we were off to the AX welcome-wagon van! We picked up a con straggler looking for a ride, as well as one of the japanese translators. It was a short ride to the Hyatt, and once I got to my room 1438 I was SO excited! I got a big end room right outside the elevators, almost double the size of the normal rooms! Plenty of room to fit 7 cosplayers! I actually ran into Annie on my way upstairs ^_^ As soon as I got my stuff settled, I called up Henry because he had hinted to me that a few people might go out to Arcade Infinity that afternoon. So I met him at his room on the 10th floor where everyone including me was verrrry hungry. So myself, Henry, his friend Frank, Kelly, & Gina were off to Subway. Yum! To go or not to go to AI? Of -course- we go!! It was about 40 minutes away and I was jumping with excitement the whole ride there. I mean, this is the Bemani capital of the country! It was such a beautiful sight as I walked up those stairs ;_; So we go in and I play a few rounds of ParaParaParadise 2nd mix and DDR 5th mix. It was really hot that day so we didnt stay long. We went to one of the Chinese places downstairs and got boba tea...yes I was scared to eat the little tapioca things in it! And just then who should call, but Mappy who was with Jenny & Leo! They were in California already but they had told me they weren't able to get to the hotel until the next day...so I was suprised to hear they would meet me there in an hour! Our little group raced home to the sounds of Initial D. We got back to the hotel where I met the 3 of them at the front. I help them get their stuff up to the room and we all get out the glue guns to start finishing costume pieces. The rest of my roommates, Yaya, Jeremy, and Meg, wouldn't arrive until after midnight, so we chilled out for a while. I finally gave Chrissy a call, so her, Sarah, John, & Kris came up to our room. We all went to pre-reg and came back to watch the 4th of July fireworks and to play some DDR. Everyone was really tired and wanted to be ready to get up for opening ceremonies, so almost everyone crashed except myself, who stayed up to go pick up my other 3 roommates downstairs. I chatted with Lord Wein for a while and a few other people, but finally I saw Yaya walk into the lobby! Yay! I took them upstairs and got them set up. We were finally all ready for the con to start!

AX01 Day 2

We all woke up WAY earlier than planned, I think around 7something! Probably since we're all east coasters so it was like getting up at 10. We all got into our first costumes. I got into 4th mix Charmy since we would have a little DDR 4th mix group to walk around with. Jenny & Leo stayed behind to finish their Girl from Phantasia costumes for later that day. Mappy (as Rage) and I found Chrissy (as Yuni) and Sarah (as Ni-na) and we were off to opening ceremonies (after realizing way too late that we had been in the wrong line). We were almost the very first people Kevin Lillard caught on film for fansview.com! It was cool to finally go to a convention opening ceremonies, especially Anime Expo's 10th anniversary one! All the japanese guests were introduced and I went wild for Inoue Kikuko-sama. She's too adorable! The voice actor guests did a special live demonstration dub for us at the end of that, it was really cool! We had to get back to the room to change costumes but first the 4 of us took a cute group pic on the DDR 4th mix machine in our hotel! Ah yes did I mention the selection of arcade games right downstairs from our hotel room? DDR 4th and 5th mix, ParaParaParadise 1stmix Plus, Drummania 3rd mix, Punchmania (the Fist of the North Star thing), and SNKvsCapcom and Guilty Gear X games. Pretty sweet! Anyway Mappy had to be at the room at noon so Jenny & Leo could get him into his Girl from Phantasia costume so they could walk around in their group. I put on my Venus costume and thats when I found out that a whole lot of people had arrived, including Michi, Elaine, Miyu, and LAYNE!!! I knew layne was going to come even though she told us she couldnt afford it!!! =D We wanted to go see Inoue-sama's panel but it was really far and we had to go pick up Allison from her Dejiko audition. I ran into Dommi & Christy around this time and grabbed Miyu in her Mars costume and John so we all went over to check out the dealers' room. It was SO hot and smelled like fanboy, so I just could not stay in there for very long. We wandered alllll the way back towards the hotel in our really painful shoes (actually I took mine -off- for a while) and then to the room in the convention center for Sailor Jamboree's SeraMyu panel. The poor girls didnt have microphones or a vcr so they had to improvise a lot of the panel. I think they did a very good job considering though =) and I won a Transylvania no Mori musical program book from Char ^.^ Thanks!!! I got to finally meet Barbie and my idol Kaie-sama and got pictures with them! *_* hehe. Okay I was FINALLY ready to go back to the room and change out of that painful costume into some normal clothes. But wait, Lionel had my badge and room key x_X he had run off with Char to go get her badge... so I had to wait around random peoples' rooms until Lionel's friend finally got a hold of his cell phone. I waited in their room with Elfie and Sung till he got back, and then I finally got to my room. After I changed I waited for Mappy to get back so we could go to the Sailor Jamboree reunion dinner. Food!! A real meal! We had yummy seafood and I think I ate a little too much ^^;; I think when we finally got back to the Hyatt we hit the arcade room again and did some PPP for a while and checked out the other games. We forgot to hit the dance, but it was kinda far anyway =/ We should have been preparing for the DDR tourn the next day, but oops!! ^^; We all just had craziness in the room till we crashed.

AX01 Day 3

Nothing major planned for this morning. I got into my Miki costume to be ready for our little Chrono Cross group in the afternoon. I found Chrissy in her Riddel dress and John as Fargo. Got lots of interesting pictures in this costume =p Met up with Canasian in the lobby too. Coolest thing though was I went to play PPP in the costume and did Night in Arabia with my cool flowy things ^_^ I think it was quite a show for the fanboys though as you could see most of my @$$ in the costume under the transluscent skirt ^^;;; We got it on video and stuff though, heh. Got Canasian to play a song too. I couldn't play DDR in the flip flops, so I just videotaped Mappy playing with Enoon on Enoon's CRAZY edits. Man, that guy is insane! Made friends with Karl aka Snorkel109 after Mappy played a round of DDR with him, and then we played lots of PPP with him and I taught him how to do Deluxe! This was all in my Miki costume too so everyone was staring. We went back down to the lobby around 2 and found a bunch more Chrono Cross people and eventually had a little group for pictures...Henry finally changed to Serge so we had him as well as Tenken as Kid. Later on in the con I saw a lot more CC cosplayers, I wish I had gotten pictures with them! Well the DDR tourn was drawing near so we went back upstairs so I could change... I just realized how exhausted I was getting and wasnt sure if I could pull off a good enough routine to go against all the SoCal people... But I changed and we headed down there to find out that we had missed the sign-in anyway though. ^^; So at least we got to watch most of the freestyle routines. Got a great videotaping spot, right infront of the 5th mix machine and right next to Chang0 and the TCL crew...they were so funny! The best routine in my opinion by far was Fiona & CrackPr0n's Dynamite Rave "L337 AZIAN RAVARE". They made fun of everything that anyone has ever seen done in a DDR routine before. We'll cap the video and put it up on fujikon soon. We got Jenny & Leo in their Angelic Layer costumes to try PPP and they were pretty impressive for a first try! We hung there for a while before the big KOF group thats tradition for west coast cons. I changed into my Nakoruru costume and almost immediately found Kevin Lillard ^_^ Went outside the Hyatt to find the huuuuge group of SNK cosplayers! We took tons of group pictures and a lot of really funny ones. While taking the big group pic Rey crawled out infront of us and showed his homemade HYA shirt to which we all yelled out HYA HYA!!! Got to talk to a lot of people during this time, it was really fun! Mappy and I went back up to the arcade room and got a cute picture of me playing SNKvsCapcom as Nakoruru. When I was done another guy asked me if he could play, and Mappy said to him "how many times do you get a chance like that, to ask Nakoruru if you can play SNKvsCapcom?" hehe ^_^ Played a little bit of DDR 5th mix as well. Wheeee freestylin to B4U glorious style as Nakoruru was interesting. That wig was hot though! Went to the room and ordered some yummy chinese food with Jenny & Leo. After we ate, we realized it was too late to hit the second dance =( so the girls decided to dress up like cute funky japanese girls to go play ParaPara. So I had my blonde wig, sparkly silver top, black pants and platform sandals. We all played lots of PPP and DDR like this. I met up with Lilli from the Silent Dreams UBB, she is so cute ^_^ After we left the arcade, there was some more insanity in the room till we crashed. Man, but we had to sleep on the floor this night ;_; At least it wasnt freezing like at Katsu ^^;

AX01 Day 4

Saturday we slept in a bit late since there was nothing major going on that we were really involved in...not many people wanted to get up ultra-early to get masq tickets. There were a few groups I did want to see, like PhoeniX SeeD, Yaya's group, Jenny & Leo, AGSMA, etc, but we got it on videotape (thanks Jeremy!!) so all is cool. Mappy and I got into our Thousand Arms costumes and met up with our friend Erin downstairs for our mini Thousand Arms group! This was probably one of the best parts of the convention. We got to meet a japanese guy who worked for Red Company (who worked on the game), as well as the guys from Atlas who helped create the game! They took our pictures and told us they would feature us on their website! It was just so weird because of how obscure the game is, we had no idea there would actually be even -fans- at the con who knew what it was! How coooool! The guys even got a cute picture of Erin (Marion) and I (Wyna) beating up Mappy (Meis). ^_^ We also got lots of pictures taken by the adorable japanese cosplayers who knew the game as well. The cutest one was a girl by the name of Rei, who was so excited when we recognized her costume was from Five Star Stories. We all exchanged contact information and took lots of pictures together. We all went to the dealers' room for a while where I checked out a lot of great CDs that hopefully I could buy later on. We ran into Aaron there too who took a kickin' pic of us. Well it was getting semi-late at this point, and we had to be back for Jenny & Leo before they left for the masquerade meeting at 4. In the lobby we ran into Elfy and Shawn the Touched! We took a picture together to represent fujikoma! =p Once back in the room, Jeremy volunteered to go with Jenny & Leo instead of Mappy so we got to hang out together that night as well. They were running a little late but thank goodness the meeting started late so they were still in! They wound up winning the Banzai Anime award too!! While everyone was out at the masq, the rest of the con was... dead! We had changed into normal clothes and started wandering to see if we could find anything, and didnt find much. So we figured it was the best time to buy things in the dealers room now. So we made another trip there and Mappy bought his ParaParaParadise game & controller and I got a bunch of CDs. We chilled out on the grass outside the dealers room for a while and just relaxed. We found Canasian, Dommi, & Ollie there and chatted with them. Dommi and Ollie went off to watch the masquerade so Canasian said it would be a good time for us to make our alcohol run. We waited for him to get back from hell knows where, and when we found him again we walked down the road to the Rite Aid. We bought $80 worth of booze!! Apparently there was also some rap artist there, I cant even remember what his name was, but thats what the guys said while I was picking out what to get. We left with a few bottles of white zinfandel, midori, absolut mandarin, captain morgans, and a case of Mike's Hard Lemonade. Yum! It was way too much to carry back so we took a cab back to the hotel. We dropped it all off in Dommi Christy & Canasian's room. I think Canasian had to go find people at the masquerade or something then so we went and played some more DDR and PPP and stuff, and I got to chat with Mike (strider) of TCL. AND I finally found Chris M who I had been looking for the whole con to hang out with. I told him to come up to the room to drink but I later found out he was really tired and stuff so I didnt get to see him after that 2 minutes ;-; Finally the masq was over but poor Christy had a terrible migraine so we let her sleep in the room. We brought some stuff up to our room and had a few drinks but not much. Everyone was just all wired and exhausted from the masq! So Jenny & Leo came back with their award and Yaya, Christy, & Nadiene's group won best of show! It was great! The rest of the night we were all insane in the room and took lots of funny video footage until we just couldnt stay awake any longer.

AX01 Day 5

Con sundays. I was planning to be in the Fashion Show but I didnt get up early enough and didnt really wanna rush into a costume. Had to help everyone pack up anyway so I just wandered around in normal cothes with Mappy in the dealers' room and picked up last minute stuff before he had to leave. Him, Jenny & Leo took off in a rush for the airport. So then I went with Canasian to his room for a while to chill, and Dommi,Christy, & Ollie came up too. Then Yaya, Meg, and the Neko Twins came up as well and we all did little drawings for each other. Its always nice to just chill out with people like that after all the con madness. But eventually Yaya, Meg, and Jeremy had to get ready to leave, so I helped them get all their stuff out of the room and said goodbye to them outside the hotel. Then I was alone so I went up to the arcade room where I found Chrissy Sarah & the gang, and I got to say bye to Allison, Michi, & Layne who I hardly got to see for most of the con =( Chrissy, Sarah, John, and Kris could finally bring their stuff up into my room, which was now semi-clean, and we just talked about the stuff we did. I found Kevin Bennett and the gang, and they came up to say hi in the room till we all decided we'd go down to the jacuzzi. We all changed, and first hit the arcade room which was still going strong, with the games set on free play!! We finally made it down to the jacuzzi which was quite interesting. We talked with Kevin, Marco, and Brad, and all realized that we all know each other and how small the anime community really is. It was so funny. We were all going to drink with them after we got out of the jacuzzi, but we were all really exhausted from the convention. So we just crashed when we got back to the room, to the disappointment of Kevin =p

AX01 Day 6

We slept nice and late! Ahhh I think I slept 12 hours! How refreshing! We planned to drive over to Japan town to do some shopping and to get yummy Mochi ice cream! We ate some really nice ramen and curry at a restaurant, and then went to a little mini arcade in the mall to play some DDR4th mix and Drummania. We went to the Mitsuwa supermarket where we bought some Pocky and other usual japanese snacks, and then hit the bookstore and finally the snack shop to get some Mochi! mmmmm! We went to the other little shops down the road and unfortunately the import game shop had just closed ;_; We went back to the hotel for a couple of hours in preparation for the Arcade Infinity gathering at 9pm. We got there earlier than everyone else, but soon Gina & Chrissy of Sailor Jamboree showed up with Wayne, and then Chris, Kimi, & Rene of PhoeniX SeeD came as well. We all had so much fun playing ALL the games. We hadn't eaten dinner so we went with SeeD down the road to a very yummy asian restaurant where I had beef udon that Kimi recommended. It was yummyness! And I got the rest of my gang to try boba tea. hahahah!! I was actually normal about drinking it this time! When we were done we went back to the arcade to burn off the food =p After SeeD had to go home, my gang of 5 all did the session mode, with Guitarfreaks, Drummania, and Keyboardmania all together! The song we did was really hard though so we didnt pass the song ^^; it was really cool though! We were mostly out of tokens and we a little tired so we all took one of those print club sticker pictures and then headed back to Long Beach. We all had to start getting our stuff together because we were all leaving the next day...my plane was at 1pm and the rest of them were off to Vegas. It was so sad saying goodbye yet again but we had so much fun and we will all see each other at the next con!! =)