My first Con in Texas! (First time being in Texas altogether too!)
The con experience at San Japan was definitely much different from the ones I usually attend in Arizona. The people were nice and the staff did an excellent job staying organized and on top of things from what I saw. I was a little disappointed with the location and how spread out all the panel rooms were from each other. It was very easy getting lost at the location considering it was my first time there. From the pictures and videos I had seen of the previous years it looked more close knit and better contained than it felt this year. With rooms being inside, outside and a whole other building (that I didn't even find till the last day) I feel like I missed out on so much now that pictures are popping up on the internet. So many people and things I missed out on ;~; It was also interesting to see how the cosplay and the artist ally's differed. To me it felt like there was less emphasis on accurate and detailed cosplays and a much higher emphasis on detailed artwork. (this is merely my opinion formed by what I experienced. I missed a lot so I could be wrong.) Everyone was extremely nice though and I had a wonderful time!
Friday: On the first day of the con I brought back my old Sailor Jupiter cosplay, this time updated with a wig and shiny new tiara! PoisonousRationality (Rati) joined me as Peter Pan. We started the day attending the Masquerade Ball Dance Lesson Panel and stuck around long enough to learn 2 basic dances. It was going kind of slow and we were getting hungry so we left early and got ourselves some con food lunch before wandering around the artist ally until it was time for the Reverse Q&A panel with the VA's. It was very entertaining and not at all how I thought it would go down. It was nice to see the voice actors interacting with the audience and enjoying themselves rather than having to answer the same questions they always get asked at every con they attend. After that we weren't quite sure what to do with ourselves and so we headed back to the hotel and changed, had some dinner and ended the night with some dancing on the river before heading back to work on finishing our outfits for Saturday.
Saturday: The night before I finished sewing on clasps to keep my vest together for Gumi and helped Rati to cut and style her Len wig so that we could wear our newly crafted Ah! Its a Wonderful Cat Life cosplays for Saturday. We spent most of the day in the vendor hall and artist ally browsing and buying lots of art (I've never really bought art at a convention before D: ) I failed at trying to learn the Cat Life Dance in the Dealer hall from another Cat Life loving con goer and later stood in line for over an hour to meet and get an Autograph from Matt Mercer~. At some point in the day we went and got food at Hooters, which was good but I felt bad for the waitress serving the table next to us because they were very loud, obnoxious and probably slightly drunk guys who kept asking her unnecessary questions, she seemed to be handling herself fine though. Once we were done wandering around the con we changed and took a stroll down along the river and got some ice cream~ We even ran into a Henry (FE:A) cosplayer who we had seen the day before and found out her Facebook page ^^.
Sunday: On the last day I wore another of my new cosplays, though I was sad that the volume of the skirt had gotten deflated in suitcase on the flight over..I wore Sakura's sunflower dress from the Tsubasa R. Chronicles Artbook while Rati went as Judal from Magi. Not a lot of people recognized me, as I figured, but they thought the dress was pretty and that made me happy because I put a lot of work into it and it was a lot of fun to make! Rati's Judal sure was popular, as it rightfully should be because she looks dang sexy as Judal, albeit being on the short side. It wasn't until later that day when we were wandering that we ended up finding the whole other side to the con in the Hyatt hotel that had the maid cafe, craft room, photo booth and lots more people! When we were done with the con we walked to Sushi Zushi and then waited an hour to ride the Taxi boat for an hour to get home, but it was a nice experience and we got to see even more of the river than before and it was all really pretty and we just had a great time.
Unfortunately the actual camera we had brought we forgot to charge/bring the charger so we were left with only our phones for cameras, so pictures of our outfits are scarce to come by...Oh well, Saboten is in a month and we'll be re-wearing the new ones there along with even more new ones and we'll have cameras so there will be pictures soon!
-Rinko