Archive for the “Convention” Category

I was going to take a week off to go to Japan during Tokyo Game Show, but my schedule wasn’t working out, so I decided not to go this year. I would have had a free place to stay, since game illustrator Kayura Yuka had offered to let me stay at her place (and share a room w/ the dogs).

Broccoli USA president Kaname is going for business, though.
And he’s getting offers to go out to eat w/ all sorts of people.
Like Bushi Lord president Kidani-san. And Bandai Visual Konno-san (they’re gonna go eat sushi!).

I would have had plenty to write about in Industry Babble for a month!
But I guess I’ll have to find topics in the US. Or relay whatever Broccoli USA president Kaname reports to us. It’s too bad…

Yaoi Con Day 2

I’m back in LA already.
We left a bit early so we wouldn’t be back past midnight. That kills us each time we go to a Bay Area convention.

I didn’t do anything industry related today, so here’s a recap of what I ate.

In-N-Out burger on the way up.
I like to get the cheeseburger, lettuce only. So no tomatoes, no onions, no thousand island dressing, no pickles.

Freelancer Fawn, freelancer Saki and I had pho on Friday night. The weird looking thing in the tall glass is the “three flavor drink” that freelancer Saki ordered. It contains some green jelly (long pieces) and some red jelly (round pieces).

Freelancer Brian, freelancer Saki and I ate soon tofu on Saturday night. At the same plaza as the pho place the night before. This is a photo of the appetizers they served us. I like how each restaurant has their own variety of appetizers. Too bad they didn’t have cucumber kimchee here.

And Vietnamese noodles on the way back down to LA. Beef tendon stew with rice stick noodles. It looks spicy, but the red color is more from the tomato-based soup.

Hm, a lot of Asian food.

Oh shoot. I forgot to mention that AAA Anime Distribution sales manager Vince bought me crab on Saturday night. Even though we had eaten soon tofu earlier, the crab was devoured that same night. Mmmmm, crab.

See, I did eat something that was very San Francisco-like.

Yaoi Con Day 1

As I was walking to the Yaoi Con hotel, I saw a car with this license plate

It says “Ashi Nyo.” Maybe a Di Gi Charat fan? Or maybe it means something else in a different language.

As we were setting up, freelancer Brian called to let us know he arrived. He was reporting on behalf of MangaCast. And I guess he was one of the few reporters (or only?) who went to Yaoi Con, since everyone else was at NY Anime Fest. It felt strange not to see any of the usual press corp walking around to chat.

But then again, there weren’t a lot of the usual industry folks either. Or it wasn’t the same as the last few years.

For the vendors, I only recognized two people. Perhaps because I haven’t been in enough exhibitor’s hall this past year (I didn’t get to work the booth at most of the cons this year)? Or maybe the usual folks went to NY Anime Fest (I see a pattern here…)

It was nice to see cosplayer Yaya exhibiting for the first time at Yaoi Con. She was selling cat ears. Of course I realize at that point that I forgot to bring COSMODE USA to the event…

And for the industry side, Aurora Publishing’s Mika-san was there w/ her crew. She wasn’t in cosplay though! Maybe she wasn’t feeling well!? *laugh*

We were both sad to learn Digital Manga’s Rachel is no longer with them. And that TokyoPop’s Lillian wasn’t at the con this year.

There was a newcomer this year, though. Yaoi Generation is a new publisher & we got to meet president Thuy (she was right next to our booth). And me, being the osekkai person that I am, was telling her about printers, distributors, contracts, licensors and whatnot. If I were ever to be a consultant, I’d be poor since I give away a lot of info for free.

Oh, manga artist Nase Yamato came by the booth & so we chatted for a bit. She took some promo posters to give away to her readers in Japan. I realized I should have asked her for autographs on the same posters to give away to our readers in the US, but my mind was slow today. The 6-hour drive the previous day must have overloaded my brain or something.

Hmm, maybe this post should have gone on the Broccoli Books production blog. Eh, I’ll just add a link to this page.

I’m heading up to Yaoi Con this weekend.

I got couple of emails and messages from various people in the industry asking if I’m going, so maybe I’ll have food photos from eating dinner w/ them.

I hope it’s not too cold in the Bay Area this year…

So Anime Expo was over. Cy-Rim rev and Aina Kase mini concert stages (all three of them) went really really well. Game producer tororo was looking forward to bringing more artists to Anime Expo next year.

Monday after AX
Anyway, dwango AG Entertainment’s president is a firm believer that in order to be a good performer, you need to see top notch performances. Apparently it’s something Sony Music group does often & he wanted to implement that for his artists too.

So a trip to Las Vegas was planned to go see various performances.

As we checked out of the hotel & loaded the group onto the 8-passenger van… one of the members said “I can’t find my passport.” (I’m keeping him nameless, but not hiding the gender because… you’ll find out soon enough)

We looked through all of their rooms, all of their luggage, both mini vans, plus the 8-passenger van… no passport.

Where could the passport disappeared to?

“The last place I used it was at the strip club last night.”

So I call the strip club that the group went to the previous night. I get the answering machine. Well, I wouldn’t expect them to be open at 8:00am.

Anyway, I call up the Japanese embassy to see how quickly we can get a new passport made & what was needed. Photo, airplane ticket, and $22.

We send the rest of the group off to Las Vegas & assure them that I’ll make sure he’ll join them in Vegas. I have to arrange for plane tickets too, but more on that later.

Anyhoo, I had planned to take the rest of the group to Universal Studios or shopping for today (they were leaving for Japan on Tuesday). But that plan had to be rearranged. I drove the group to Little Tokyo to get photos taken.

Then to the Japanese Embassy to fill out the paperwork for a new passport. They told us that if we find the old passport, we wouldn’t be able to use it anymore… and the timing sucked. The Japanese Embassy closes at 12:00pm - 1:00pm for lunch. The strip club opens at 12:00pm.

Do we wait an hour to see if the passport is there or not & make a new passport? Or should we just make a new passport?

We went with the latter… got a temporary passport made. And 10 mins later, we find out that the passport was at the strip club! Gah!

Anyway, we go pick up the passport anyway, decide that the Grayhound bus is the cheapest way to get to Las Vegas & dumped a guy with very little English skills into a bus that’s going to take 6 hours to get there.

No worries, I was able to take the rest of the remaining group shopping to the Beverly Center, Century City mall, The Grove & ate soon tofu.

Oh, and he made it to Vegas okay.

But I now know what to do when guests arrive. Besides taking them to Target, I need to take them to Kinkos and make a color copy of their passport. And have them carry the copy around as a form of ID like how travel tour groups do (at least the Japanese ones).

Working during the convention is busy, but deal-able since there’s so little options guests & staff can have. When you give them options… that’s when it’s hellish! Anyway, here’s part 2 of Anime Expo 2008 recap.

Day 2
Friday was the first concert + the Circus panel day.
The concert went well & there were 300+ attendees at the Circus panel. 1-hour isn’t enough time to let everyone in, do a panel discussion, then a Q&A and then a give-away. Next time I’ll schedule a 1-1/2 hour time slot.

Oh, on the way to the panel room, we bumped into Cy-Rim rev vocalist miru’s mom & her aunt! They had flown all the way from Japan to see miru’s mini concert stage… but they had missed it. Why, why, why didn’t they tell me they were coming? I could have arranged for their hotel, their escort to the convention hall… *sigh* I’ll remember to ask “will any family members be coming?” next time… although this is the first time a family member came all the way to the US.

Since the panel ended at 10:30pm, we went to eat at a ramen shop in Little Tokyo called Kouraku (they’re open til 2am).

Day 3
We decided to have a second concert on Saturday, since miru’s mom wasn’t able to see the concert on Friday (she was leaving Sunday). But before we had the concert, we went to Shokotan concert at the Nokia Center.

Aniplex’s Kodaka-san had arranged for three tickets for us, so we had the three performers go inside to watch the show. Then I bumped into VIZ law intern Hidehiro, who had a spare ticket. So I sent game producer tororo inside. Then I bumped into Sakura Con staffer Hitomi, who had another spare ticket. So I sent Cy-Rim rev & Aina Kase manager Hase-san to see the concert.

Of course Hidehiro told me later that industry members could have picked up tickets easily… see, things work differently at new venues! Well, I knew this year was going to be the “learning” year.

I also bumped into lots of industry people at the concert, but they were all there 30 mins late. I guess everyone thought the concerts were going to start late like 2007… and the lines outside were really long too.

We rushed out of the concert and did the autograph session. And then 1-hour break before the second mini stage.

Busy, busy… but not too crazy.

We went to eat at Tokyo Table, a fusion-ish trendy Japanese izakaya. My childhood friend Nori-chan, who works for a video distribution agent joined us.

Day 4
Last day & one more concert.

Two members of dwango’s music label division dwango AG Entertainment arrived from Japan to join the group & watch the performance.

All done.

We went to eat Brazilian food for the last day.

The next day, half of the group was going to head out to Las Vegas… when all sorts of problems occurred. But I’ll save that for part 3.

I realized I didn’t blog during Anime Expo 2008, so I thought I’d do a little recap.

Anime Expo is always, ALWAYS a busy convention… and this year was a three-parter, where I worked two full weeks on guest relations alone. It didn’t help that the convention was in a whole new venue, making it extra work to learn how to get around places & stuff.

For those who didn’t see me during the convention, I was coordinating stuff for Circus again this year. This year they brought two groups of singers — Cy-Rim rev (duo) and Aina Kase. Both of them are produced by tororo, who is the US-loving CEO of Circus.

Day 0.1
The group arrived two days before Anime Expo. It’s because half the group had to be there for setting up the booth the day before the event. The other half (performers, manager & associates who tagged along for the ride), needed to be babysat… er, taken around town.

But first things first… a trip to Target to buy necessities!

The six people in the mini van I drove bought two shopping carts full of stuff. I think the other mini van that Broccoli USA president Kaname drove bought more stuff, but not nearly as much as this.

This is only the beginning of the shopping spree.

Later that night, we went out to eat in Los Angeles Chinatown with MangaGamer.com owner Takeuchi-san. We had big sweet shrimp, Peking duck and other stuff. Yum!

And this is only the beginning to all the stuff we ate for the next two weeks.

Day 0.2
While the set up staff were busy working, I took our guests to the Chinese Theater in Hollywood. Is it still called the Chinese Mann Theater? We looked at the footprints & took photos with people in costume who ask for tip.

miru from Cy-Rim rev & Aina Kase pose in front of the Chinese Mann Theater.

Then there was a lot of shopping at the Virgin Mega Store. miru & Aina both loved tokidoki’s bags and t-shirts. They would have gone crazy at the tokidoki booth at Comic-Con. (I didn’t check to see if they were there at Anime Expo)

I accumulated a lot of points with all their shopping & have $25 worth of vouchers now. I just looked at them, and I have until the end of September to use them. I’m going to the Hollywood Bowl next week, so I guess I’ll grab something then.

I was going to take them to Amoeba afterward, but they did so much shopping already, we decided against it.

We went to the convention center to do a little bit of sound check for the performers. And after set up was done, we went to Morton’s Steakhouse for dinner.

This is Masa of Cy-Rim rev holding up the bone of the 48oz Porterhouse steak. Note that this was shared by Broccoli USA president Kaname & game producer tororo.

Day 1
Since nothing was scheduled for the first day of Anime Expo, I took the performers, illustrator Kayura Yuka & staff to Santa Monica.

They have a little amusement park section on the pier, but I’ve never been on any of the rides. We decided to go on the Ferris wheel. It goes around pretty fast. No wonder there was a little boy crying the entire ride.

And more shopping at the Third Street Promenade…

And we ate at a quaint little Spanish restaurant called La Paella near the Beverly Center.

This black tray? It’s squid ink paella, a dish with seafood and rice(?) cooked in squid ink. It was soooo good!

Okay, that’s the first part of Anime Expo recap.
The next batch will be at the actual event… cuz at this point, we hardly stepped foot in the convention center.