Cosplay!

Arc and Suki in their cosplay outfits. Arc has a slightly odd sense of humor and thought the ears were utterly hysterical.









This was Day 3 of the convention. I didn't take too many Pinky photos because I had brunch with a friend and then went to "High Tea" (with scones and cucumber sandwichs!) and then back to the convention to see the Megatokyo panel and then some more sightseeing (but it was dark). So not too many photo ops!

Hikaru goes to the Aquarium

Hikaru likes science museums and aquariums, so he had to go check out Baltimore's Aquarium. He was a bit miffed we didn't make it to the science museum too, but we just couldn't get to everything!

But first we had to head over to dinner. We meant to go to a restaurant in Fells' Point, but strangely it was closed! There was apparently a power failure and they'd lost all their food!! But it all worked out because we found this awesome sushi restaurant right in our hotel's building (I could so have lived in that hotel forever...)

Suu stopped to admire some flowers before getting dinner...


It may seem a bit cruel to eat sushi before going to the Aquarium, but it's ok, we had veggie sushi and veggie tempura! They had some of the most interesting veggie sushi I'd ever had...



And you got an absolute *mountain* of tempura!!


After dinner, it was off to the Aquarium. If you show up before 8, they let you stay until 9:30 or 10 (after the aquarium closes). I guess this isn't really the "thing to do" on a friday night though, so we had the whole place to ourselves, practically! The first room we stopped in at the Aquarium was full of skates and sharks. It was pretty neat, but a little too dark for photos. Also a little too scary for good photos - you walked over bridges over open tanks of water!

However, one part of that room was safe for Pinkys: the seahorse tank!

Alice liked the seahorses...


Here's a better view of them:


Next up was the dolphins. But those, again, were too difficult for Pinky photos, so we skip them! We do have one picture of Hikaru checking out the machinery that was "behind the scenes" of all the tanks.

Pretty neat, eh?

Then it was on to the special exhibit: frogs! Hikaru was esp. excited about this, since he likes frogs almost as much as dinosaurs...





This is Hikaru with the Poison Dart frogs. They were really cute!


And very colorful...



These ugly customers were pretty fascinating too...


After we finished looking at the frogs we went over to the main exhibit. I think it was an exhibit on Australia, but it's amazing how fast the details blur.... *wah!*

At any rate, it had a lot of cool landscaping, with parts going way up into a third story with birds flying around the tree canopies. And parts going down to the first floor (a waterfall). So it was pretty neat. Here's Hikaru on the way in:


Inside the exhibit (2nd floor) were tanks of water with the fishies, etc. in them. Here's Hikaru admiring something in one of the tanks. What's that he's looking at?


Look out Hikaru!


And that concludes Day 2. *Whew!*

Dealers' Hall

After we finished touring Fells Point, my friend retired back to the hotel room (along with my Pinky clan) and I skipped back over to the convention for a whirlwind dash through the dealers' hall. I had just over an hour before I had to meet back with my friend for dinner and our trip to the aquarium and I was planning to make it count. Although I didn't buy any Pinkys at the convention, I wanted to make sure I found (and documented) all of them. There were only a few vendors that had Pinkys (or maybe I should say *still* had Pinkys) there, but the ones that did have them had a fair number. I didn't see too many rares (or perhaps they all got snapped up before I arrived...), and I didn't see too many of the brand new ones (repeat caveat). The dvd girls were not there, and I didn't see to many sakuras or choroQs, although there were some. Talking to the woman at the HLJ table, I kind of got the impression the dvd girls were never there (and it wasn't just that they were sold out), but as I never asked point blank, I guess I don't now this for sure. I figured if HLJ didn't have them, than no one did. At that point I was still waiting for mine to arrive, and it would've been slightly tempting to buy them there, even tho they were already in transit to my house...

At any rate, this is what the Pinky hunter could find at Otakon:


One of the first booths you run into is one of the few not selling anime merchandise. They had more traditional looking goods from Japan, including a nice selection of dolls.


Depending on what direction you are walking, one of the next places you come across with Pinkys is Anime Sekai. They had a nice selection of Pinkys, including some rare-ish ones like the Eva girls... but their prices weren't the best. They weren't bad, they just weren't the best. If I had been desperate and impatient, I might've spent a lot of there without realizing I could get better prices elsewhere. Not to pick on Anime Sekai, of course, we're only talking a couple of dollars difference!

One weird feature of the dealers' hall was that it was almost impossible (at least to me) to figure out which vendors were which. Very few tables had signs indicating who they were. I guess this doesn't matter to your average shopper, but I like to know who I am buying from so that I can check their website once I am home. I figure if they have good stuff at a show, they are worth checking back on at other points in the year too. To be honest, I can't understand why so many places didn't have signs. Surely they *want* to advertise? Usually you get advertising even when you aren't looking for it, it's weird not to be able to find it when you actually want it. I ended up asking who people were for nearly every picture here. I took notes, and hopefully I haven't scrambled my pictures and I'm naming the right stores....

This one I am sure of though - JPNToys had a very nice selection of Pinkys and some of the best prices.


Yes Anime also had a decent selection and relatively reasonable prices


The best prices, however, hands down, were at HLJ. Unfortunately this also meant their stuff went fast! By the time I got there, it had been severely depleted.


Hometown heros (located in Waltham, MA - formerly in Cambridge, MA) Sasuga Book was as popular as ever. Although they mostly sell books, they do tend to have a healthy selection of Pinkys at most conventions. I believe they were the only people selling Arc... Of course I already have two Arcs, so I don't think I even looked at the price.... I did buy a copy of Dolly Dolly tho. I would've bought a couple, but Dolly Dolly is actually pretty pricey. C'est la vie. So many nice art books at Sasuga. Really makes I had a lot more money. And time to read. And that I could read Japanese...


Of course even though I didn't buy any Pinkys, I did manage to spend a fair amount of money! I think Wizzywig ended up with most of my money. They're a fun store, but somehow they always seem to have more (or better?) stuff at conventions than they do on their web page. I never buy anything online from them, but they're one of the most fun tables to browse (at the giant FOUR conventions I've been to... oh well). They have a physical location in Ann Arbor, MI, and I did actually get to go to their store once. I think if I lived in MI I'd definitely be there all the time, and the fact that it's located there was definitely a selling point in Ann Arbor's favor! (irrelevant side note - Ann Arbor is actually a really nice town! Too far away for regular visits from Boston, but very nice)

I'm not actually positive, but I'm pretty sure this Hidamari display was Wizzywig... Or... maybe not. Whoever it belonged to, it was cute! (And I didn't take any good photos of Wizzywig's stall. So... let's say it is, even if it's not!)


And that's way more than I needed to say about the dealers' hall. Up next - sushi dinner and the Baltimore Aquarium!

Fells Point

Alice came along for our tour of Fells Point because she heard there was some good boutique shopping to be found there...

Can you find her in this picture?

Apparently the building used in the TV show Homicide is located here. It actually looked pretty abandoned and empty when you got up close. I'm not sure what this building was (or is?) used for *other* than the TV show. I might've been more impressed if I actually watched Homicide...


Shoe shopping:


Ooh - sweater sale!


Unfortunately, she couldn't find anything in her size... :P

Otakon!

Recently, I went to Otakon 2006. Actually, it wasn't that recently anymore... it was a couple of weeks ago already! But I took so many pictures, I have been taking forever to sort through them all in my (sadly limited) spare time... However! I'm finally ready to start posting 'em all here. I'll have to do it in a couple of blocks tho, so that I can fit them. Although the purpose of my trip was to go to the convention, conventions make for very boring photos of Pinkys, so mostly I'll be posting pix of my gang running rampant thru Baltimore!

If Anime Boston is Suu's birthday, then Otakon is the birthday for Alice (Arisu) and Hikaru. (Everyone else came via mail order) So they had to come along this year, of course. And where they go, Suu and Akito go. And I also had to take along the Arc twins for good measure. So we were a large party!

The first day of the trip was largely filled up with driving down to Baltimore, and the Pinky gang didn't get out for any photo ops. Once we arrived, we ran along to the convention center to register and then to find some food... that didn't result in any photo ops either. So it wasn't until the next morning that the gang got their camera time.

We stayed in two different hotels on our trip. The first night we were just outside of Baltimore. That hotel wasn't the nicest, but it had one really awesome feature - breakfast was free, and it was a make your own waffle bar! As soon as Arc heard that, she was there to check it out (everyone else was apparently too lazy and slept in... ^.^; Arc is very motivated when food is involved tho!)

Assessing the situation:


Close-up of the waffle apparatus:


Ta da! Breakfast!


After our hearty waffle meal, we headed off the convention. Fortunately we had already registered last night when the line was manageable. The first day convention line is a scary, scary thing. Last year I was in the line. And it was raining. For hours. It wasn't pretty... So this year I made sure to get that out of the way early!

Here's Arc gloating over the line she isn't in:



The convention center is full of model boats, inspiring grand thoughts of a Pinky Pirate photo shoot... But I was too chicken to try to climb over people and velvet ropes to set up the shot...


The first morning I went to a panel on toy collecting. I'm not sure I learned anything new - except for the fact that my little Pinky collection is nothing! - but it was fun anyway.


After the panel, I decided to meet up with my friends and go look for some lunch/tour Baltimore. I really wanted to hit the dealer's room immediately, but there was a huge line and I didn't see the point of waiting in it. This was a bit of a miscalculation, apparently, as a lot of good deals and rare finds disappeared within the first hour or two of dealer's room action. Despite the registration line, i's easy to forget how many people are really there, but let's face it, 22,000 people is a LOT of people! So I missed my chance at $12 Street Fighters at the HLJ table. I actually didn't end up buying any new Pinkys at all. But that's ok, there weren't very many that I'm looking for (except for cheaply priced doubles) and I did buy some other cool stuff. The Pinky gang decided this was ok, as they are concerned about quarters getting crowded back at home anyway...

Tomorrow I'll post some photos from the Fells' Point which is where we ended up looking for our lunch. Our second hotel was very close to that neighborhood, which turned out to be kind of nice (even tho it was a bit of a hike to and from the convention center) because that was actually a fairly nice area to hang out in.