Sakura-Con 2024
March 29-31, 2024
Seattle Convention Center
Seattle, WA
This year necessity drove me to write my retrospective almost a month after the fact. I tried to do my best to extract what I could while the event was still near in time, but mentally it has been a decade and a half. Every moment I spent having a little fun was a moment of guilt and anxiety, because when I got back from the convention it was time for my defense.
Tuesday 26 March: Day -2
There is a ton of paperwork for me to fill out and not a lot of time before we have to head west, so I had to start with a mad dash to campus. I need the rest of the semester (and, therefore, the rest of my grad school experience) sorted out before I go to the convention. Of course, a collaborator I only ever see on Zoom is arriving today to give a colloquium, and I'm going to be an absentee. Since I'm bailing and missing her talk, I want to make sure I catch her in person and am not a total douche. I spent the morning running between the ninth and twelfth floors (RULE: do not take the elevator if walking +-3 floors!) to catch my committee, grab signatures, blah blah blah. Up to legalese, everything is now figured out. I hand in the paperwork and as I leave the office I bump into... the collaborator!
Alright, that's very convenient. I told her I'm leaving for the week and she told me her grad school reunion itinerary (I met her here when she was still a grad student herself). I'm invited to dinner at a pub downtown. This is something I haven't figured out how to handle gracefully; there's no way I'm eating some canolaslop $20.00 bar burger, and I no longer drink, so going to these things means I'm a sort of weird wallflower. I quickly ate dinner at home and met the group for three hours of department gossip and names from semesters past. I'm reminded of frustrations from classes, which feels like another long-ago life.
I didn't get home until 2200, and tomorrow morning we're packing the car and driving. Suddenly I remembered something I forgot... Yui costumes require gitah and gitah amps, and my tiny travel amp has been gathering the scent of spices at another grad student's house for four years... These are night owls so I send a text and head over. In the process, a cart of Super Metroid is casually handed to me.
"We don't need this, do you want it?"
Uhm, yes.
2300, finally home and packed. We head to bed. I am leaving Renge behind; the tiny orange cardigan has started to feel like spandex on me. I'm not big, but I must have been a twig in that outfit's prime... which is a shame. I like the costume a lot. It turns out that finding a nice orange cardigan for a male frame of my height comes with a nontrivial pricetag. Problems for a different year. Aside from that, I've resolved to bring three quick and easy costumes, low-effort things I can get moving in quickly. With the defense looming over me, my minset before leaving is that I might not be able to let myself relax, and I don't want to do two-hour costume prep just to be an anxious mess.
- AKARI
- YUI
- FREDEROOBIE
And no books. Any minute I have spare will be spent adding a sentence to my dissertation.
Wednesday 27 March : Day -1
The whole drive to SakuraCon was mental math and wheels spinning. What are the deadlines? Which have been Robocop'd [meaning, things that could have been worked out smoothly with a human but are now rigidly reduced to binary on some spreadsheet]? Those I can't skirt around. Which deadlines are soft, and what can I stretch? There's not enough time for everything that I have to do and there's not a chance in hell I would have made plans for Sakura-Con, no matter how much I wanted to go, if that wouldn't have put Clay out, if Maddie didn't seem extremely excited about it despite not initially showing interest, and if not for it being ten years since I dragged her around the con center to give her an Iori Nendoroid petite.
There's a town almost exactly halfway through the six-hour drive that is the perfect break and gas-refuel point. About half an hour away from the town one of my wheels starts to feel like it's wobbly. I'm a new driver so this is a terrifying thing (spoiler alert: it turned out to be in my head) and I dropped my speed by 10 mph for the last eight miles. We gently rolled into the gas station and checked my tires.
Nothing! Nothing! I swear it feels wobbly! But I checked all the tires... We'll find out if I'm calling someone with an SOS in Snoqualmie Pass. In town we stop by a bookstore and pet the friendly bookstore tabby.
All was well. My dad drove the car when we went out to dinner that night and he thinks I just hit the truck speed regulation grooves in the road and got myself psyched out [It still felt weird to me for a few days after, but that's life in the fast brane]. The difference between starting the trip at 0900 and 0800 was significant, because we managed to beat the Tacoma rush-hour traffic (5+ hours from the carport outset). I also learned NOT to stay in the far-right lane in Tacoma, where one has to constantly fight traffic merging into you, with your own lane constantly morphing into a forced exit. Eight miles of this!
Nothing of note happens at home. My dad took a half-day from work like I hoped, so mom clearly spilled the beans that we were headed over. Max and Macy are both cats. My brother is in Africa. My sister is at dinner. Maddie is having trouble picking something that she can eat.
We made a small stop at a local game store and I picked up a copy of Super Mario World (SNES). This one is not signed by an acclaimed Irish poet (many such cases, unfortunately). This game has a soft spot in my heart; I remember playing it with my uncle when he was 15, and I was much smaller, back when my grandparents could afford a multi-million dollar, three-story waterfront house on Puget Sound. 2008 ruined all of that.
Thursday 28 March : Day 0
I'm completely disoriented from sleeping on the wrong side of the bed. Which way am I facing? What state am I in?! This is the sort of thing that makes Maddie happy, small price to pay.
Clay rolls by around 0930 to grab us to head to the ferry. My one request this time was that we repeat last year's day 0 Big Steak Breakfast... but I'm suddenly alerted that we have to get to Seattle so that he can meet a co-worker for lunch. Fine, I'm the foozle here. Eating in Seattle is expensive and difficult enough for me, let alone Maddie. I personally enjoyed the grilled steak powering me through a whole clean day last year. I should have made it happen myself.
I have two huge suitcases and one is busted, so I've let Maddie use the good one. One wheel on mine is missing all of its rubber so I'm more or less dragging a brick six blocks from Clay's place to the ferry. Maddie is struggling with hers and Clay only has a small bag... I keep hoping he'll offer to take hers. And keep waiting... Just when I'm thinking about how I could manage to drag both her and my bags and Hulk out,
SNAP!
The handle of my suitcase flies off as I go over a bump. Now I'm dragging a 60 lb bag from its top strap and I've completely lost the ability to speak as I focus on the physical task. This is what finally gets Clay to offer to swap bags with Maddie (though he reverses this after they get to the ferry). –Charge It 2 Da Game–
We have early check-in at the Grand Hyatt, room 1723. There are many pros and cons for the hotel switch experiment, but the first thing of note was that there are round the clock doormen for this hotel and no automatic doors. I don't know if this is really a draw, but it's a nice touch. The lobby on the other hand is quiet and small, not a good place to bump into people. No parties will be going on downstairs in this hotel, but since the hotel lobby of the Sheraton has become the Mahjong Horse Girls Strong Zero Latter Day Touhou Scene, I can't call that a loss!
Picking up badges is unexpectedly effortless. There aren't any lines if you get there less than an hour after they open on day 0! This is a nice way to come back to the game. They're printing first and last names on the badges again but Maddie brought novelty character print washi tape so we covered up our last names. The booklet has downgraded to a flyer and an app, and people are not happy (I'm people).
As far as I know, only Bri is headed to the Hyatt for now. Tyler is in Japan, Lars is at work. Clay tells me "there is some drama with the other hotel room", and it sounds like they're not sure if Tyler actually got a room or not. (I think what happened is that he knew he was not showing up until Friday, and only booked the room starting that day. More reasons why my room choice was good, Clay is reliable and Maddie and I come as a unit. Room filled.)
Bri misses her turn on the one-way streets of Seattle and ends up forced to head out of the city; this leads to a very entertaining LINE call which was mostly her incoherently screaming expletives at me about the roads in Seattle. In the meantime, Maddie, Clay and I take a trip to Seattle Coffee Works to set up the Hyatt Branch of the FrederiCafe in the hotel room. Employees: one. The Band of Brothers is deployed, the room party favors are put out, everything seems good to go.
Not a ton happens on this day 0. When the rest of the crew finally shows up we head back to the badge line, but SOMEBODY put a G in his last name instead of a K, and we're held up longer... Around 2100 the missed steak connection finally catches up to me and I am jonesing for any burger place. Anything. But Seattle is an awful night city and nothing is open. Finally, Cap Hill yields a burger joint that advertises Tillamook cheese and chocolate malts. Forgive me, for tonight I have sinned. A seventies sitcom-tier fatman in makeup and frightwig announced my order in a coarse, reverberating shout. The small town is gone; I'm back in the city!
Bed.
Friday 29 March : Day 1
Step one: seek out food. Team 1723 heads to Uwajimaya in search of sashimi and clean foodz to stock up the hotel fridge [the mission was a success, but note for the future: budget time on other days so that repeat trips can be made. We needed more.]
No one wants to take the light rail up to UW with me. Clay is catching up with his local crew, Maddie seems overwhelmed by the options of being somewhere fun again after so long, and room 2502 is [dead-set on getting plastic bowl fast food curry for lunch]. I expected this and actually it works in my favor, because now I won't bother anyone with my ulterior motive. I'm going on a solo-op.
Gotta Ketchum All
The daunting amount of work I'm dodging right now is gnawing away at me and I'm not going to be able to have any fun for the rest of the weekend if I don't do something today. I haven't seen him since the summer school I went to last summer, and I haven't had a Zoom chat with him since February. It's time to seek out Matt.
(Spied on the light rail: a woman in a Mariners jersey with a tacky clear plastic purse, extra gum, Ray Bans case, lip balm, Kate Spade wallet. Thanks for letting me profile you. Clear plastic bags are such a privacy scam.)
I cruised The Ave briefly and stopped by the bookstore, but... I don't really need to be at bookstores and thriftstores anymore. I'd rather have the time to sit and read the things I have. Funny how that works. Around this time Tyler arrives from his direct Japan -> Seatac -> Seattle pipeline. Sorry, I can't help you with your bags this time!
Operation Ketchum an enormous success. After making it to the university I bent my brain to recall maps forged in 2015. Decayed memories were just barely sufficient for me to find the physics building. I can't believe I used to be able to find my way around this place. The familiar stairs to the fourth floor are my best bet on where to––
They're locked. Is this the end of the line? Mission failed just as I got here? Perhaps rolling around the corner to the third floor to another staircase will help... Yep, this one's open. I don't know where Matt's office would be, whether he has one, or if he's even there [I would later discover that his schedule only brings him to campus a few times a week]. But I know that, if he has one, it's on the fourth floor. Three turns out to be the astronomy floor [we should really split our department this way, down to funding and prelim format] but on the far side is another staircase, which this time lets me in to the Institute for Nuclear Theory.
My best plan is to find where grad school offices are and knock on doors. On the flip side, I go to a slum and this is a major university. Does a place like this even give every student an office? I'll do my best, and if all I can do is snap a picture of his door and text it to him, that's fine. I pass by the faculty and postdoc offices and turn a corner. So far I haven't run into anyone. Far in the distance, the outline of a human steps out of an office and... throws its hands up in the air in confusion. I do an undertaker point at this outline and start aggressively stomping towards Matt, who last saw me march triumphantly out of a 20 person round-table goodbye on a hot Californian July afternoon.
"YOU."
"What is this? How did you get here? What are you doing here?"
"I came here to find YOU!"
It's unbelievable how perfectly it went down. It was stupid movie convenient. I did my Bayesian duties but there were still walls of unknowns.
I spent a little under four hours there. He showed me a campus waterfront park I didn't know about and told me a story about his advisor avoiding campus for the past semester (something about a butter knife and an undergrad. Ah, to have been a young Romanian political dissident...) After we went back to the building Matt stopped by his office and I witnessed the biggest sperg-out I've seen in a long time from his office mate, who suddenly stood up and evacuated the room. A few hours of math talk followed, some of which was immediately useful. People who I can talk to and learn from. Utterly missing on the east side.
But Matt had committments at 1600, so the operation ended. I passed along an invite for him to come downtown tomorrow and jumped on the light rail. I threw my laptop bag into the hotel and headed to the new con center in my civvies to scope it out and where I suspect I can find one of the crew... precisely where I found him. Tyler is at Retro Saikou buying game soundtracks. I think he's wrong about what game he thinks he's looking at but I don't have the heart to tell him (lest old wounds reopen...)
Around this time, Ivo sends his first response ever to the convention group chat. I have sort of given up trying to reach out, because I think he is moving on from our little group... It's possible that we put him too much through the wringer. I feel particularly guilty for that, given the long drives over multiple Christmases, which were certainly a burden no one deserved. But he's asking if we have dinner plans, and it occurs to Clay that perhaps he is avoiding the hotel room but not the complete social call. We missed the connection, at any rate. [Maddie ended up bringing him to the room later!] CaptainErsatz at Bandcamp dot com joins the party for a while. A dumb elevator encounter while waiting for people put me in the orbit of people who do not like me, but I did my best to stay civil. Except that I gave Laura one of my many surplus fridge magnets from her rival school and she was disgusted to even touch it. She begrudgingly admitted that our cheese is good (it is!) [I gave her at least two more magnets during subsequent encounters]. Once we get to the con center again, the first true Con Cryptid is spotted...
Brett in the flesh. She is going by her middle name now, which I missed, and generally she seemed tired of name changes and whatever life cycles have been her way. (If you see this, please let me know what name you would like to go by!) She was happy to see us but was with a new crew. I've suspected trouble for a while but I don't know if I'm inventing ghosts. If Clay is present, am I supposed to maneuver the group away from possible encounters with her erstwhile twin?
Brett has a Nirvana tattoo now and I am horrified at the thought that it might be my fault. She said it wasn't. I'm not so sure.
Everyone is in bed by 0100 and I'm bouncing off the walls like it's noon still. No one will go back out with me so OYASUMI NASAI, I'm out to crawl like a viper through these suburban streets, and see what I can see. No real encounters and it turns out that the 2AM rave is extremely lame. When they dropped nightcore Bananarama, I had to bail. Menchi is playing mancala in the Sheraton lobby with his spam musubi game pieces.
Bed.
Saturday 30 March : Day 2
Maddie is hanging out with her crew and mostly doing her own thing. My group has decided that today is K-On! day.
Clay and I run down to Pike's Place to grab piroshky while Tyler is experiencing his predicted jetlag collapse. I grab one for myself, And Tyler Too. It's Saturday morning so... yep, Le Panier has a line around the block. No macarons this year.
PIROSHKY COUNT 2024: 1
I've made a fashion error and the tights I bought are not for plus-sized women. They're OGRE sized. Circumference scales quickly enough with radius that for some reason these fucking things go up to my neck when held out from the packaging, so um. Christ. Back in the box.
My solution: combine the long black under armor I have with the black thighhighs I have for Frederica, and fabric tape them together into pseudo-tights. This is ghetto as shit but it works pretty well, given the alternatives. Everyone's in their outfits and their plastic exercise shorts-style skirts look anemic. When I put mine on, I'm immediately offered a duplicate of theirs that's on standby upstairs.
Nah, I'm sticking with mine. All I can do at this point is plow ahead the way I think I should and see if anyone follows. By the end of the weekend they're looking for costumes like mine in their size. We need to get one of the real school bags too [East Boy? I thought for sure that was a bootleg name until Bri independently dropped the brand name]. If I'm going to keep goofing off this way, I'm going to do it right.
So I'm suited up into Yui, guitar bag on my back, and it's time to cruise the con hall. Four of us in a line in the same outfit awakened something primal in the scene, and we got stopped for multiple pictures by people who love K-On. It was like jumping back to 2014. But after a few hours my shoulder hurts. and my feet hurt. For once I'm the one to suggest stopping for a breather in the room. Only then does anyone realize I've been carrying the heavy guitar on my back the whole time, and not an empty guitar case.
"Yui doesn't get to take a day off."
1600, on the way out of the building: Another con cryptid spotted.
At 1700 I need to head back to the hotel; Matt is on his way to see the room and the chaos of the convention center. I see him opening the door and I see his hesitation when four dudes in matching skirts and t-shirts approach him. There's a litmus test I'm dying to administer and would never attempt unless I was confident in advance that he'd pass.
[This line has been censored by order of the State Committee for Publishing]
He's laughing hard so it's good. I like this guy.
We spend some time in the room telling him what we've been getting up to at cons over the years. Between the K-On! banner and the iM@S one he shows interest in the former, but he does ask about the 765 gals.
“Matt: "What show are these girls from?"
“Lars: "That one's for advanced users."
We propose to badge swap him in, but things end up way easier than that.
Before we go I toss him my Takane happi so he'll be in URBAN CAMO. God is on my side––we keep running into every possible person we know at the con, and it seems like we must know everyone in the area. One of the locals has gone home sick, so there's a spare badge to borrow for a few hours, and we don't have to play any sketchy games. We walk around the full two con center loop and he's sold on coming next time. We cruise the giant staircase and run into.. Rocky and Bullwinkle. The conversation on Rocky's side was bubbly and I mostly missed it due to focusing on Bullwinkle and what might be going on there. She's happy and cheery and then seems to evaporate. It's weird, this is the one of the pair that has actually been to my parents' house, so long ago it seems. Once our group walks away I quietly ask Lars if we were supposed to avoid that collision, but his reaction was mine: oh, wait, hmm, oops. Clay has stayed mum about it.
It's been a few hours and Matt needs to go, but on our weave back to the hotel something happens. A plump Japanese guy with the full 2015 765PRO glowstick ammo belt comes RUSHING across two lanes of traffic shouting
"TAKANE HAPPI, TAKANE HAPPI!"
He rushes up to Matt and starts SPEWING with the most intense spaghetti drop possible, searching for English he knows but that the sprint across the street knocked loose, and sweating multiple versions of expensive and translucent P cards everywhere. All directed at Matt, who we guide through the convo.
After the P leaves, Matt is dumbfounded. This is getting jumped into a gang.
Matt: "What was THAT?"
Lars: "That was an Advanced User."
The rebirth of an old convention joke: taking a picture of people asking for a picture and then asking them if they want a copy.
Somewhere in the night the last of the stringbean quartet; I was being civil with him until now and he asked me for an 18+ wrist band for his friend. Something raised my suspicions and I declined.
"You've been giving them out to other people."
"No, I haven't."
He tells me I’m a liar so I left and wrote the entire gaggle off forever. Blame what you want on me.
2502, hours later. The Captain is smashing back drinks and beginning to SPEW about music theory and why jazz needs to be appreciated for its sustained diminished seventh chord progressions. I've never seen this guy drink much before so he must have a breakpoint past which he becomes activated. This is clearly the end so Clay and I head downstairs to "get something", which means getting out of costumes. Tyler messages me on LINE:
"Am I too late to seek out refuge or was my delayed response damnation to this conversation"
He's normally fine but the good Captain killed the end of the night. Nota bene: there's an Ersatz curfew.
"Oh hey! It's Steve Buscemi! I like your costume! Say the line!"
"I don't actually know what this is referencing, I'm just dressed like this because my daughter wanted me to."
"YEAH, HE SAID IT!!! Thanks man!!!"
"... I'll take it!”
On his way to the rave, the QUIZZLER runs into me on the escalator and tries being #CoolStoneFace at me in emulation of years gone past. He drunkenly knocks my phone out of my hand and doesn't notice (but I catch it so I let him keep going.) Ms. Bishop is with him, dressed as the same character as him, and they head off to the rave. As I go down the escalator he shouts at me
Q: "NOT GOING TO THE RAVE?"
R : "IF IT COULDA, IT WOULDA!"
He smiles as I recede out of view. Those two have been together each time I've seen them in the past two years.
Sunday 31 March : Day 3
There's not a ton to say about the final day. Plenty of wandering but no real aim. Nothing much that telegraphs into a narrative. After we packed and checked our bags I poked Bri (who has a car in valet parking) about dumping a bag with them since my suitcase is more or less destroyed (they helped us out, and without it things would have been very bad.)
It's Easter! I've been eating well all weekend! There's Rocky again, with an Easter basket! She gives me an egg with a small Sour Patch Kids packet in it, and that's right up my alley, so I open it and pop one in my mouth and IMMEDIATELY realize that these are STRANGE people who would feel NO QUALM about giving out LEGAL WEED CANDIES to a friend on EASTER and I quietly walk over to a trash can and spit it out. The contact with pure sugar sends that prickly feeling into my head anyway. This is stupid.
At some point in our wanderings we pass the NEW PIROSHKY STAND, so
PIROSHKY COUNT 2024: 2 MACARON COUNT 2024 : 0
Since I was down a bag now, I carried Maddie's. And it was heavy. And it broke. So in the end I had to Hulk out on the way back too, and by the time we made it to the ferry terminal I am beat and furiously missing Thursday night's milkshake.
Ivo wanders by in the ferry terminal. He came all that way on his walk to Uwajimaya to say bye to us?
Thus ends the convention log. The connecing foot ferry ends early on Easter so my mom is there to pick us up. We head home and eat dinner with my sister and her fiancé. At this point I'm sliding back into full time thoughts about code and writing and I'm anxious to get back to work and face my enemy down.
Monday 01 April : Day +1
I do not want to wake up. I do not want to drive back.
Tons of traffic stops, lanes ending in nowheresville, fat trucks going 10 miles under the speed limit until we get to a straightaway passing zone and they start going 20 over. Just past the Cascades, and about halfway, I see that I have a text from my boss telling me he's driving to Seattle.
"Does it make sense to meet somewhere? Drive safe."
Sorry, I'm bee-lining home. What a tiring trip. If it had been possible I would have asked someone to take over, but the second half is just a straight line for three hours. We made it back just before 4pm, unpacked the car. Maddie made lattes and I think I wandered like a zombie through some proofreading. It's time to fight.
05.03.2024
Revised 05.22.2026