motoki-O

Otakon is decidedly on the big and crowded side when it comes to anime conventions in general, but our registration lines do move quickly. The convention center is still in setup mode until Friday morning, but on Thursday night we open up the registration lobby so that people who registered in advance can pick up their badges early, get a good night's sleep, and go straight to Friday early morning events without having to wait in line. Historically we've opened the registration lobby around 5pm on Thursday and 8:30am on Friday through Sunday. (This year's hours haven't yet been announce

If you don't mind making a long train ride back and forth, there's a Wegmans at the mall in Hunt Valley, which is at the northern terminus of the Light Rail system, about an hour's ride north of the convention center. It's a food paradise, and they carry a wide selection of both unsweetened and sweetened Ito En teas, as well as other cool stuff from around the world. So, depending on when you're arriving, you can take a few hours to ride up there, stock up, and be all set for the weekend.

I don't mean to pick on you, pixelseed, but as you've just said 'Okaton' twice, I'd like to take a moment to remind everyone that the name of the convention (and the correct spelling of our official email addresses) is "Otakon", like in the logo at the top of the page. If you actually typed 'okaton.org' when composing your email, the email never got to us. Okaton is a charming little ghost town in central South Dakota that I had the pleasure of visiting this past spring while on a trip to Mount Rushmore. There is a gas station and a shed-sized post office. The view right after turn

I've got a friend who wants to drive in, but doesn't want to pay for parking downtown. I'd heard that the park-n-ride lots along the Light Rail line will let you park for free; when I called the MTA they told me that it's fine 'as long as you call the MTA Police to let them know what your plans are'. =0 Does anyone here have any experience with leaving their car at an MTA park-n-ride lot for the entire weekend? Does it really work, and were there any problems?

Aresef- Do you remember if the exchange offices at Narita had better rates for USD travelers cheques than USD cash?

Do you think you could upload this mix as a zip or something? I've tried every browser on every computer in my house and I can't get it to not download inline, and then time out halfway. ;_;

It's from Sky Girls. I've never seen it, but Wikipedia has an article on it. I know this because I found out soon after posting this thread that American Cosplay Paradise ( http://www.acparadise.com ) allows registered users to tag their cosplay gallery photos with the series of origin. Needless to say, the Otakon 08 gallery is almost completely indexed, and the series index at the top of each page in that gallery is just shocking. =0 There's a good chance that if you saw a cosplay at Otakon, these guys have a picture of it, and someone has tagged that picture with the name of the ser

After the convention rolls around, I find that there are a lot of costumes out there that I don't recognize for one reason or another. I'd like to start this as a place where people can feel free to post links to costumes that they like, but also don't know the origins of, so that you helpful people out there can clue us in. ^^; Here's one to start; I took a picture of them with my cell phone, but Ollie's version is better: http://orobouros.net/2008/otakon2008/conve...65353_4327.html

4 was D. Gray-man and 6 was Hellsing. 6 (Hellsing) ran out first, then 9 (FMA) and 7 (Lucky Star).

I'm pretty sure that Kat, our Publications chief, is taking a well-deserved break from the Ota-madness, so I'll go ahead and start this thread on her behalf. The Publications section is in charge of producing just about everything that gets printed by Otakon. We write and compile the articles in the program book and gather event descriptions for the pocket guide. We design the layout of the program book, the pocket guide, the errata sheet, and the bag those things come in. We design the badges and the wristbands. We make the signs marking the entrance to each room and we make the sign

I agree that if recycling bins were all over the BCC, then people would use them, and not just like in the real world where the recycling bin is full of trash and the trash bin is full of cans and bottles. ; My concern is that the BCC might want a monopoly on waste collection, and wouldn't let themselves or others operate recycling bins alongside the trash cans. In addition to that, though, we are in dire need of either more frequent trash pickups or multiple huge trash cans instead of the little ones we had this year. I remember putting a glass bottle on the ground next to an overflow

*GASP* your one of them!!!! shun the non-believer!...shuuuuuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnnnna *ahem* For those of you playing along at home, Pepero (sometimes referred to as the above "Korean Pocky") *isn't* Pocky. Pepero is a remarkably Pocky-like confection, manufactured by the Korean candy company Lotte since 1983. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepero Pocky, on the other hand, is an even more remarkably Pocky-like confection, manufactured by the Japanese candy company Glico since 1965. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocky I don't mean to knock Pepero, since it's just

Actually, the term is "per se", not "per say". It's one of those weird Latin phrases, meaning 'in and of itself'; 'intrinsically'. ^^; Right now, I can think of one word in particular that seems to be misspelled online more than it's spelled correctly: definitely - misspelled as definately, definitly, etc. It's not a typo (like 'teh') or a colloquialism (like 'prolly' or 'lulz'), so there's no plausible reason why someone who otherwise knows how to spell would spell it that way.

Clarification to my earlier post: the 89c/$1+ ranges are for the 'full size' boxes of Pocky. I have indeed seen the 'small size' chocolate Pocky boxes for lower amounts. Quick guide: Thai Pocky: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/28/62849778_18949f2324.jpg Japanese Pocky: http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/products/pocky.jpg French Pocky (manufactured by LU, the makers of those sinfully delicious "Le Petit

Note that Thai Pocky (the kind that generally sells for 89 cents or less) is made with slightly different ingredients, and has a vaguely coconutty taste to it. Japanese Pocky (the kind that's generally over $1) doesn't have the coconut ingredients, which results in a different flavor. Aramark sells the Japanese kind. So if you've recently been on a budget diet of Thai Pocky, the $5 box you got from the concession stand may well have stood out in your... mouth. =0

That's right. The only ramune allowed to be sold inside the BCC is ~$5 a bottle from the convention center concession tables. >_< Price list in Otterbein Lobby in 2006: http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/4933/img0386kr1.jpg Seriously, bring your own j-snacks and j-drinks. We cannot emphasize this enough.

WOAH!!! What time will the fireworks be?!?! After the game ends. The game is scheduled to start at 7:05pm, and baseball games are notoriously variable in length.

Yeah, it's on the second floor of the Pratt Street Pavilion. If you get on the Skywalk from the Renaissance, it's the first thing on your left once you get to the Harborplace side. =D Mmm burger.

Just to clarify: The Constellation was decommissioned in 1955. This ceremony is for the commissioning of a newly-built destroyer. The ceremony will not take place in the Inner Harbor. It will be at the Baltimore cruise terminal, two miles southeast of downtown. The crowds attending the commissioning ceremony will not be within eyeshot of the convention center, though we may see them flock to the tourist areas downtown before and after the ceremony itself.

Just a reminder that the Sterett won't be in the Inner Harbor for the commissioning. The ceremony will take place at the Baltimore cruise ship terminal (link), about two miles southeast of the convention center. The Constellation will actually be undocked from its usual Inner Harbor mooring and then sailed out around Fort McHenry and under the 95 bridge in order to meet the Sterett at the terminal. So don't expect to just walk out of the BCC and run into the whole naval celebration immediately; you'll probably need to take a car if you want to see it. However, the commissioning

I'm speculating about going to Japan the next time I have a couple of solid free weeks, which would probably be the second half of December. (I've been to Japan once before, but that was a night in Osaka on a missed connection when I was 8, so it doesn't really count.) Is that time of year kosher for any sane person to be flying to and/or going around Japan? Are places like the Ghibli Museum and the 'streets' of Shibuya/Harajuku/etc still interesting to visit? Living in upstate New York and going to school in Cleveland has desensitized me toward most kinds of winter weather shenanigans, bu

I've never seen a Yotsuba badge before. 4chan baggage notwithstanding, I get a huge kick out of the series on its own merits and it's my favorite manga by far. It'd be a great choice for the kids, too.

Speaking of which, does anyone know if the Superfresh ever ran out of food (or certain kinds of food) during either of the past couple of Otakon weekends? I never got the chance to pop over there myself, but I might need to hit it in the future and it'd be good to know if I should only bother hitting it on Thursday.

Well, if Otakon already has a cafe, perhaps it might not be such a stretch to have a maid cafe somewhere inside the convention center! ...though now that I think about it, trying to get Aramark to run a maid cafe would likely cause irreparable harm to everyone involved. ...though I'm sure certain people wouldn't mind such things happening to either Aramark or maid cafe fans. o_o;