I have found heaven

June 1, 2013

and smells like sugar and bacon.

Café Dulce located in the Japanese Villa Plaza, at the heat of Little Tokyo has this wonderful, evil, yummy donut.

Thank you FanimeCon!

May 29, 2013

This is the first time we have attended this convention, we leave San Jose tired but with great memories, lots of pictures and many many hours of video.

The panels we attended were very good and had lots of information, the panelists really know their stuff.

The exhibition room was of a decent size and we found several goodies could not resist buying.

Artist Alley was huge! If you couldn't find something you like, you weren't looking.

We could not attend the AMV contest, maybe next year.

The masquerade only lasted one hour and a half but the performances were really funny, well executed and the costumes were great.

The overall feel of the convention was really relaxed and laid back, attendees were pretty much left by themselves. Besides staff members located at the entrance of event's rooms and at the information desk, you would rarely see a staff member or a security personnel walking around the convention floor.

Suggestions:

1. Please, get more printers for next year and a barcode system. 6+ hours of wait time for badge pickup is ridiculously long.

2. Always check your sound equipment before you have to use it. During opening ceremonies is not the time to figure out which microphone works and which one doesn't. Always have a wired microphone tested and ready to go.

3. I feel really bad for the performers at the masquerade. They put many weeks, if not months, preparing their costumes rehearsing their lines, going over their movements again and again, just to have their whole skit blown out by someone at the sound table who doesn't know the difference between the play and the stop buttons.

Also number the entrants and announce who was in the skit at the end of each skit or walk on. This will buy you time if the next skit drops out or needs time to set up.

4. People at the information desk should know at the very least the major event times and places. They should know stuff!

5. The Program Guide is very nice and high quality and almost useless.

While the Pocket Guide contained the name, date, time and location for a panel, the Program Guide only contained the name of the panel and a small blurb about it but no date, time or location for it.

There is no easy way to find a panel from the Program Guide to the Pocket Guide and vice-versa.

Nevertheless, we had lots of fun and we will back next year.

Day Four at FanimeCon

May 26, 2013

Today FanimeCon was in full force.

Cosplayer running around all over the place, lots of panels to attend and of course the Cosplay Spectacular (aka the Masquerade)

Today we attended several panels: Female Characters in Anime, How Anime gets Made, Sewing your First Costume and Armor for Beginners. Very nice panels with lots of information,

All around the Convention Center there were gatherings of Cosplayes and a walls of photographers taking pictures and asking for different poses from them.

Kim and I agree that the level of difficulty and detail for the costumes on this convention is up to par with other conventions. FanimeCon's cosplayers holds their own.

The masquerade was held at the San Jose Civic Center, just across the street from the Convention Center.

The majority of the skits were very funny and the costumes were very nice as well.

The only problem with this event were the on going technical problem with both the lighting and the recorded soundtrack for the skits.

It was not until about the middle of the masquerade that the problems went away. I have to say that the fans attending this event were super cool about the problems riddling the performance of the cosplayers.

Day Two at FanimeCon

May 24, 2013

Today was a very educational day.

Since this is our first time here. It took us some time to get our bearings and figure out where are the Halls and where are the Salons, but we got it.

We attended the opening ceremonies, a panel, visited the artist alley and the exhibition hall. This is definitely a smaller con that we are used to.

It might not have 44k attendees or a dozen guests of honor, but there is plenty of people all over the convention, plenty of cosplay, the exhibition hall an artist alley are quite large and we are ha having fun.

Tonight we escaped the convention and walked a couple of blocks to the Camera Cinema 3 theater, to watch the original Ghost in the Shell movie in the big screen.

By the way, you can see all the pictures we have posted from the con at: http://www.tentaclecouple.com/fc-13-at-con-photos

Day One at FanimeCon

May 24, 2013

This is our first time attending FanimeCon at the San Jose Convention Center. We usually stick to our four main conventions (Comic-con, AM2, Anime expo and Dragon con), but this time around we had more freedom of movement and we decided to give it a try.

Their list of events has several of the classic attractions like masquerade, anime music videos, guest of honor panels, signings and so on. Their panels are really heavy on cosplay and steampunk related topics and I am curious on several of them.

There are plenty on attendees for this convention, we started making a line to pick up our badges at 6pm, by 9pm, we were half way down the line (still outside the hotel) and the line behind us kept on growing.

We entered the hotel at 10:30pm, went upstairs just make another line inside a ballroom with at least 600 other people.

There was no bar code on our confirmation email, that could explain the slow line movement we are experiencing.

This reminds me of Dragon Con, two years ago we waited for about 6 hours to pick up our badges, that year they didn't have bar codes either, you had to line up in front of a desk based on the first letter of your last name and they looked up your registration inside binders... terrible system.

Last year at the same Dragon Con convention they used bar codes and the whole process only took 5 minutes from beginning to end. Technology is a wonderful thing.

Is midnight, and we just left one ballroom to enter another one. Fortunately this one has the registration desks at the end of them.

We got our badges at 12:20am. Total waiting time: 6 hours 20 minutes.

Next stop, Denny's. See you in a couple of hours.

Hello FanimeCon!

May 23, 2013

We are in the beautiful city of San Jose, California waiting in line to pick up our badges. Where are you?

Good Morning Hawaii

April 7, 2013

Leonard's Hot Malasadas is as traditional in Hawaii as apple pie is in the mainland.

A Malasada is a Portuguese doughnut, or a doughnut without a hole. They are prepared upon request and they are delicious.

Leonard's have a store in Waikiki but you can usually find their trucks parked in the parking lot of a mall.

The Nu'uanu Pali Lookout

April 7, 2013

The Nu'uanu Pali Lookout is the location of one of the most important battles in Hawaiian history.

It was here, in 1795, that Kamehameha I fought one of his fiercest fights to unite the islands. Kamehameha succeeded after his conquest pushed all enemies over the edge of the lookout point. When the Pali Road was constructed in 1897, the remains of 800 men—from the Batlle of Nuuanu—were found at the base of the Ko`olau Mountains

The Byodo-In Temple

April 6, 2013

The Byodo-In Temple is situated at the Valley of the Temples Memorial Park was established on June, 1968 to commemorate the first Japanese immigrants to Hawaii. The Byodo-In was built entirely without the use of nails.

It is a scale replica of a temple at Uji Japan that was constructed over 900 years ago. The Byodo-In is built to represent the mythical phoenix, its wings upheld by pillars of stone. Folklore tells of the phoenix arising from the ashes to reflect the promises of hope and renewal.

The statue of the Buddha inside the temple is thought to be the largest figure carved since ancient times. Towering more than 18 feet, the immense figure is an original work of art carved by the famous Japanese sculptor, Masuzo Inui.When the carving was completed, it was covered with cloth and painted with three applications of gold lacquer, gold leaf was later applied over the lacquer finish.

Hawaii in Movies

April 5, 2013

While I was getting lost in Waikiki, I stumble upon an alley displaying these posters of old movies.

It is interesting to see how Hawaii is used as one of the main attraction or as a selling point for a movie, a part from the actors themselves of course.

- "Hey, do you want to see an Elvis movie"
- "Nah, I have to do my laundry"
- "It was shoot in Hawaii"
- "I will make the popcorn if you get the sodas"

Call it charm, mystique or just plain exotic; Hawaii has it, and it is something that, I think, no other state has.

When was the last time you saw a movie pimping the fact that it was shoot in Florida or Arkansas?