Hi there!
Just over a year ago I moved to Seattle, and the weekend after I arrived was Sakura-Con. I had to work that weekend, so I didn’t go to it.
Not to be defeated, I reached out to friends to see if anyone wanted to go this year, and one of them, the most reliable of the group regarding attending conventions in fact, confirmed he’d go, so I put in for the time off and purchased my badge earlier this year.
Normally, I lead my convention reports with “Day 0.” Well, this year we get “Day -1” due to my friend’s flight times. As my apartment is very close to the Seattle Convention Center, and with only one person flying in, the plan was to have him crash in our living room using my sleeping bag and a spare pillow, and us make use of public transit to get to and from the convention.
Day -1, April 16: This was a normal work day for me, so after my out of office went up at 4:00p local, I locked into Flightradar24 to track my friend’s flights. As the time passed, I took a shower and ate dinner, watching a movie before I headed towards the airport around 10:00p local. My friend’s flight landed around 11:05p, and after I located him and we got his luggage, I headed back up I-5 to my apartment.
Upon arriving at the apartment, we got him set up in the living room and stayed up a bit introducing him to my roommates as well as catching up on things.
Day 0, April 17: We woke up relatively early and headed up the road a bit to the Flying Heritage and Combat Armor Museum in Everett. As the friend who flew in is also a military otaku like myself, we had an enjoyable time there. Afterwards we headed to Alderwood Mall to hit up Daiso, get lunch, and get some stuff at Costco for the weekend since we were close to there.
We headed over to Kirkland at this point to lay flowers at one of our friend’s graves, but we were unable to find hers at this point. My friend emailed the caretakers of the cemetary, and we headed back to Seattle proper where ran through a dispensary.
After a little while we decided to head out to get dinner and pick up our badges. We selected the MOD Pizza closest to the SCC, and after we were done there walked up to the SCC and got in line to pick the badges up. It was roughly a 3-hour line, which is still less than the lines my friend and I were in at Anime Boston in 2008: 8 and 4 hours respectively. After we got them finally we took a Lyft back home.
Day 1, April 18: The first priority in our schedule today was to get to the SCC to sit in on Tokui Sora’s panel: she is a voice actress from several anime my friend and I are fans of. It was quite a good panel and well worth sitting in on. Immediately after we made a beeline to the scheduled autograph sessions for both her and Sally Amaki. Eventually they split the lines, so we went to Sally’s line and got her autograph.
After this we headed into the dealers’ room and wandered around to see if there was anything we couldn’t live without. I picked up yet another pin for my itabag, and he got some stuff at Retro Saikou, a vendor we are quite familiar with that we saw at AWA many years. I’ve bought several soundtracks from them over the years, and it was definitely good to see them up here.
After we left the dealer’s room, I grabbed a bag of chips and a Powerade from one of the food vendors in the SCC before we took the bus over to Capitol Hill to attend the monthly Out in Tech meetup at Stoup Brewing. It was quite an enjoyable time as always, and once it was done we took the bus up a couple of blocks to get food at Dick’s.
After dinner we decided to visit a friend of mine who works at another bar in Cap Hill, got a couple of drinks and some food there, then after that returned to the apartment to hang out.
Day 2, April 19: We could start a little later today, so we headed over to get in line for another scheduled autograph session. This time it was just Tokui Sora, but we didn’t make it into the final line, and as the next thing we wanted to go to was Sally Amaki’s concert later that afternoon, we decided to head back down to the International District to get lunch and visit a few places
Upon arriving in the ID, we went to Uwajimaya and found food for lunch there. After eating lunch, we decided to head next door to Kinokuniya. I found the FF14 Eorzea Academy manga as well as the first volume of the FF Ultimania Collection, both in English.
Unfortunately, as I was descending the stairs from the upstairs section here, I missed the last step and sprained my ankle.
I very gingerly walked back to the bus stop there and took it back to the apartment where I took some ibuprofen and put my ankle on ice.
My friend opted to go back to the con, and I rested best I could. I apologized profusely because all our plans for the weekend got messed up here. Bleh.
Day 3, April 20: We had already decided we weren’t going to go to the con today, but our plan to go to the Connections Museum got screwed up. We did take the time to head over to Kirkland, laid the flowers we got on Thursday at our friend’s grave and each had a moment there. After that we hit the nearby Safeway to get stuff for dinner. It ended up raining that day, which oddly enough had on all the funerals in my family I attended over the years. Truly, the universe wept with us once again…
Anyway, we were gonna get something else at Costco, but as this was Easter, Costco was closed. We hit the QFC I get my meds at to get the final bits then headed home. Not long after we began prepping dinner, and had a really good dinner.
Day +1, April 21: It was really different to wake up and not have to rush to get out of a hotel room on the “final” day of con weekend. We had made plans to go by The Museum of Flight today, but obviously with my ankle still sore, it was best to just hang out at home. It was actually really nice. I showed my friend some of the content in the “current” FFXI and stuff, so maybe he’ll return soon enough.
The day went on, my friend started packing up at a leisurely pace vs. the rushed pace all previous conventions have had, and as dinner time approached I ordered Shake Shack for us. Soon after, he finished packing up and headed downstairs to catch the bus to the airport.
I got a couple of text messages that he was able to transfer to the train without issue, and made it to the gate.
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Despite the little mistake I made on Saturday, I did enjoy what little time I spent at Sakura-Con. I will likely attend next year, and if the rest of my usual group actually flies out for it, we’ll have a hotel room. I’ve not quite figured out which one to aim for, but it will be a Hilton or Marriott property near the SCC.
That’s a year off, though, and a lot can change in that time.