Anime Conventions are a great excuse for traveling!

Recently returned from Kumoricon 2022 in Portland, Oregon which I thoroughly enjoyed, and it was my first time ever to visit the city of Portland or indeed the State of Oregon at all. My friends drove down from Seattle to hang out with me for the weekend and we had a blast exploring and dining out together....above and beyond the fun of the anime con itself. I'm glad I finally got to see the "AMV Editors" documentary Synched Together which had screened at Anime Boston 2022 and did pique my interest at the time, BUT, at AB they screened it Saturday night at 11pm and it was a chilly night in Boston and even though my hotel (Boston Sheraton) was the official convention hotel and just around the corner from the Hynes Convention Center, when 10:30pm rolled around, I found I just didn't have the motivation to get more fully dressed and go to the convention center. I was enjoying myself just fine sipping on local craft brews and watching anime on my iPad, which I continued to do until a little past midnight then I turned in and went to bed.

I traveled to Portland without my CPAP machine and that was in hindsight probably a mistake, as my sleep quality during the trip was marginal at best....my patterns reverted back to a familiar pattern of disconnected short hour to 2 hour long naps then waking to pee then lying back down for another nap, wash rinse repeat until breakfast. I know it is possible to travel with a CPAP machine but FAA regulations are fairly strict about doing so and I just need to study up on those. Likewise my next Anime Convention out of town trip is going to be heading up to Otafest in Calgary, Alberta, and is Western Canada's largest Anime convention. The AMV Contest manager Vlad featured in Synched Together , besides running the AMV Contest for SakuraCon in Seattle also runs it for Otafest in Calgary and for Animethon in Montreal, Quebec. I look forward to what he has in store for Otafest 2023.

I've been obsessively studying Google Street view for downtown Calgary and am very excited. The TELUS Convention Centre is right next to my hotel and the Light Rail line is right next to the Hyatt Regency on the other side of the convention center, and my hotel is across the street from the iconic Calgary (TV) Tower that I would very much like to go up and have a look from.

I think I will also be hitting up Otakon 2023 in Washington DC in late July as well. One of my High School best friends just moved his family from southwestern Germany to Crystal City only this year. It's still a bit early to buy an Otakon 2023 membership but the official hotels are available for booking and I snatched a room closer to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in downtown DC that unlike the Moxy DC has a hot breakfast served daily. I was willing to pay the little bit extra a night for that luxury. Sidebar, the breakfast buffet in Portland was HEAVEN. Yes, it was pricey, but no worse than the Boston Sheraton in the Back Bay area. I loved starting off every day in Portland with that hearty breakfast. I also loved the science-fiction like subdued lighting with motion sensors so every time I got up to pee it would give me just enough light to let me safely navigate the room but not so much light that I was temporarily blinded or had my circadian rhythms disturbed. They should install these standard in assisted living facilities and nursing homes, honestly. The elderly could really benefit from them.

With lessons learned from Otakon 2021, I will be endeavoring to fly out of Houston Hobby on Southwest Airlines straight to Reagan National (DCA) or with only 1 layover at most. It would make ground transportation that much easier for Otakon, since DCA has its own dedicated stop on the DC Metro Green Line....as does the Convention Center, so there's no reason to even switch trains. When I came for Otakon 2021, I went with what I knew and flew myself to Baltimore Washington International (BWI) airport, caught the AmTrak at BWI Station (the airport runs a shuttle bus constantly between the train station and the airport, just like Boston Logan) and rode that train in to central DC to Union Station, which itself is synched up with the DC Metro, where I jumped on the Red Line first then transferred to the Green Line and on up to the Convention Center. Since I always arrive a Day Early, I am always able to take advantage of Early Badge pick-up...and since hotels typically don't let you check in until at least 3 or 4pm, it's often a great way to kill time other than plopping down on a couch in the hotel lobby.

I looked at the schedule for this past Oni-Con 2022 which I had to skip to attend Kumoricon 2022 but I have to say I found Oni-Con to once again be a shadow of its former self, with its scheduling even more sparse than Delta H Con, which is a mere "hotel" convention. When Oni-Con lost its AMV Contest after 2019 (the San Antonio Cable Access station that had run it for them for years and years decided to end their involvement with Oni-Con) it really ripped the beating heart out of Oni-Con and that convention has never been the same sense. The pandemic of course made Oni-Con impossible in 2020 and they were only able to stage a 2 day "rump" Oni-Con in 2021....I attended and had fun, but one of the voice actors I wanted to see had a bad fall and injured their wrist & forearm quite badly and so they weren't going to be around for the Sunday afternoon event I'd planned to attend, so I just had a nice lunch out at a favorite seafood place along the Galveston Seawall and headed back home early, feeling sad. Oni-Con was back up to 3 total days for 2022 but with a schedule very sparse & thin and other things drastically scaled back. Oni-Con used to be my favorite convention ANYWHERE, and it was such an annual ritual for me from about 2011 through 2019...it was my favorite time of year, truly. But until it recovers more fully, I think I would rather return to Kumoricon than attend Oni-Con 2023. I do want to get back to Anime NYC eventually, but maybe 2023 is too soon for that...but on the other hand, my hotel in Portland was actually more expensive than my hotel in Midtown Manhattan!

My hope is my friends in Seattle are able to adjust their convention going so we can all hit up SakuraCon 2024 together that Spring; I'd even be up for another Mariners home baseball game no matter who they play. I'm kinda sad the Portland Trailblazers were on the road last weekend because my hotel was just a couple of blocks from their home court at the Moda Center! It would make my next Kumoricon if my Houston Rockets played the Portland Trail Blazers at home during Kumoricon one day.

All this to say that my devotion to the art form of Japanese Anime has given me some great reasons for domestic travel and I look forward to returning to Canada for the first time since my honeymoon in Montreal 20 years ago next year. My Ex and I had a wonderful time and if Montreal ever does finally get its Metro line extended out to Trudeau International Airport, my next Anime con will definitely be Animethon in downtown Montreal.