Friday evening i was at my dads fixing up his computer "Monique" in a last minute cleanup before i left for the con. this was the last day i'd be spending at his house and felt kinda bad leaving him and his WindowsXP all jumbled up like it was but somehow i managed to fix his poor "Monquie" into working condition. we headed off to get my cousin Kevin who would be attending his second year at Ohayocon. and even though he didn't get the overnight experience the first time, this time he would surely get the full con experience.

Arriving at the HolidayInn with a fully packed parking lot, the con seemed the same at first, but once we scouted out the entire place, it seemed quite large. There was hardly any badge checking so we just went around to several rooms looking for the hotel room guys we were sharing with. Erin showed up in the lobby then and we went to the Art room. Yaya had a bunch of art displayed here which looked really amazing, as well as some other artist (Nina?) who had coloured fantasy drawings which blew Erin's mind. Danny T was there and luckily he had gotten a key from Jinnai so we were all set.

Our room was on the second floor. THE BEST floor. why? the green room, consuite, and all other head staffer's rooms were located here which made easy access to parties and food. and BOY was there food. not *quite* as much as the all-hallowed A-kon11 but enough to last a starving con goer the full weekend and then some. Fridges & coolers full of soda, huge bags o' popcorn, chip & dip, veggies, this place had it all! how can they afford all this?? our room was pretty spacey. two beds, cable tv (with Jon's PS2 hooked up), and other neat accomidations.

Since i had gone out of my way to drag along the SambaDeAmigo maracca set, i went to check out the videogame room to see if they still needed it. it seemed they were already pretty overstocked ^^; The video game ROOMS were divided into two sections. This setup rivaled even that of gaming gurus WEDOCA even! The platform games which had Dreamcast, GameCube, Playstation2, Playstation, SuperNintendo, and 8-bit NES were all in one room. the second room was all about simulations and Bemani. Totally deck'd out! BustAMove2, PopNMusic, Guitar Freaks, SambaDeAmigo, DDR5thMix, and even ParaParaParadise! of course the room was sweaty as an armpit, but hey it was loud and full of music simulation games, so what did you expect? DJPara2k was hosting the rooms so i got to meet him which was cool.

Friday seemed to shut down early and everyone was worn either from flying up to the con or just from getting set up, so we began drinking early (11pm heh). Erin and Kevin were busy watching random shows and previews on TV so i went off to see what was happening still with the late night con scene.

Open Mike was fun. got to see Ava's friends all act out some naughty jrock dance on stage, Norm & BokkenGuy sing DennisLeary's "I'm An Asshole", and the final act of the night came these two guys calling themselves "Testicular Defibrulation". the two guys didn't even seem like Otaku. they were more like the popular guy in high school, but they were SO funny. while the quiet one played the guitar, the keyboardist sang lyrics in a AdamSandler/ChampiontheDog style way. some songs they sang like "Poop", "I Wanna Lay Rei Ayanami" and "PikaCHU". they were totally vulgar and everyone was laughing like crazy at the lyrics they came up with. totally awesome!

BigFire had picked up now and lots more people were all packed into the room. Canasian and i loaded up on the goodies and went roaming the hallways. Ava was looking for Dai but we couldn't find her so we went back to her room and chilled there for awhile. her 3 friends came in and we had Cherry & Grape Pucker amongst other things. One of her friends was draining the vodka which was amazing at first but he told me it nearly killed him the next morning x_X. Canasian and i went off again back to BigFire but some of his Al & Michi got worried about him so they made him sober up by walking it off while drinking lots of water. no fun =[

Saturday morning Erin, Canasian, Kevin, Khorey and i went out to eat across the street at *Bran Adams* (too cooooolllddd for Dennys). Had a semi-big meal and talked about Cosplay Politics and other things. Got my registration badge (since they were actually -checking- them now) and went to the dealers room with my cousin. the room was massively overpacked. you would have to double the size of it to actually fit all of the stuff and then youd need another room of space for people to walk in. so they enforced a limit on how many people were allowed in. if you had a red or green badge you could get in anytime (lucky staffers XP) but we ended up waiting for almost 15 minutes. the room had a pretty nice selection. i didn't find any FF10 stuff like i had hoped but the DigitalDiscs table had a slew of new soundtracks i wanted and there was some Initial D goodies i couldn't pass up on.

There were a few videos i had wanted to see but the play times were kind of thrown off, or the movies (StarOceanEX!) weren't played at all. we tried to get into "This Is Otakudom" but the room was beyond overpacked. you couldnt even find standing space in that room, but it was cool to see more people appreciate fan parodies.

Back in our room Erin and Kevin were watching the entire ROCKY series on the tv. haha, alllll day they played Rocky movies one after another. every so often Jinnai would swing by the room asking for something. "Wheres the ps2?" "Wheres the clipboard?" "Wheres my CD?" "Wheres my gun?" (Wait; that was Ollie). i gave him a Surge to cool off and he downed it all in 2 gulps. Wow!

Around the time for Cosplay, Kevin had to go so my dad took us all out to Dennys across the street. There was no WAY to get in the cosplay line now. It stretched from one end of the hotel to the other, and then around the corner! Saw the Digital Disc guys up at Dennys, ate a good meal, then headed back. It was drinkin' time!!

Because of the previous night, Canasian was being totally lame about drinking again. That ddn't stop Erin and I. we busted out the strong stuff and hit a few room parties. We were totally on the PaRtAy floor too! its suprising the party wasn't busted because the girl hosting it was all "FREE alcohol! Bring your friends" and most of those friends weren't even legal. gah! Big Fire was warming up too, but this time there was the Godzilla bouncer actually checking to be sure the person was invited and not some random crasher. I -was- invited to another special party: the StaffOnly VideoGame room party. what happened there? DDR OHA! it was pretty crazy, but it was nice to be in the gameroom without a huge crowd of sweaty fanboys. Thanks DJ Paranoia! The night sort of dwindled from there on out. BigFire was pretty much full and everyone was tired. so we got packed and went to sleep.

Sunday was simply rush, rush, rush! got up, called for the Shuttle, mad-dashed downstairs, and headed off. only got to say goodbye to about 3 or 4 people so be lucky if you saw me Sunday! haha. Plane trip back was fine and i didn't forget anything at the hotel (i hope)

+Good+ Everyone goes to this con! well, as far as bigname cosplayers and eechiparcheesi peoples. its so great to hang out with everyone again and just have FUN like cons should be! Game room was awesome!

+Bad+ dealers room was *gasp* SMALLER this year than last. and considering they had twice as many dealers, it made for an extremely cramped place to be.

+Ugly+ smoking area located -right next- to the elevators! first off, smoking indoors sucks because no matter what, the smell hovers all over the place. second, why place it right by the busiest traffic area; next to elevators and on the way to videogame/anime rooms? take it outside people!