As for the goods on sale, they had a black and pink t-shirt, a 2L photoset, and the regular edition

Preface: This post is taking so long to write that I decided to split it up into three parts: the first two days, the second two days, and my reflections on the event. Sorry for the wait everyone! m(_ _)m
In the weeks and days before I left for Atlanta I was progressively getting more and more excited. I m a big fan of Kikka, and while I ve seen and interacted with several other idols beforehand, never were they ones I was already really into. I was a casual fan of Morning Musume and Mano-chan christmas ocean cruise when I saw them in Los Angeles, and I attended AKB48 s concert mostly out of curiosity and convenience. But Kikka? I was already smitten with the girl, and was going in with preconceptions that I was afraid that neither she nor the event would be able to live up to. Boy was I wrong.
It is truly a rare occurance when something comes along that blows away all of your expectations so completely that you are almost left in a complete daze after it ends. Kikkawa You s visit to Atlanta, Georgia was just one of those events for me.
To be fair I ve been putting off my write-up about this event for a while now. Sure, part of it is that I ve been busy desperately trying to get caught christmas ocean cruise back up at work, but mostly I ve simply been afraid that I wouldn t be able to do the event justice.
My plan to get to my hotel and the convention center started with coercing my best friend ( ) to drive me the 80 or so miles to LAX for a midnight flight to Atlanta. I got to LAX around 9 o clock on the 26th and it was surprisingly not very crowded. My plane boarded on time, and we were in the air as scheduled.
One neat thing about that flight was that there was a fairly major thunderstorm in our flightpath over the New Mexico/Arizona area, so the plane climbed to 40,000 feet to be above the storm. Watching a thunderstorm from ABOVE the clouds at night is an incredibly cool experience!
christmas ocean cruise At 7:00 AM Eastern time my flight arrived in Atlanta. I don t know how many of you have ever been to the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, but it s HUGE. It has six 2,000+ foot long terminal buildings each separated by over 1,000 feet between them. The airport even has its own internal subway system underneath the terminals to ferry passengers between them!
It was after my arrival at the airport christmas ocean cruise that my travel plans got to be a little dicey. One thing you may not know about me is that I m frugal to a fault. Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and the Renaissance Atlanta Waverly christmas ocean cruise Hotel (the location of AWA) are pretty much on the opposite christmas ocean cruise ends of Atlanta, and I was not going to pay the $50 it would take to hire a cab to get me out there. So I decided to take public transit the 18 miles from the airport to convention center.
From the MARTA rail station at the airport I took the red line to Midtown Station, and from there bus 12 to the Cumberland Mall which my hotel sat across from. Overall, the journey lasted a little shy of two hours and took me through some pretty diverse areas of Atlanta. From the rather nice (downtown, and a surprisingly upscale neighborhood) to even the less-touristy places (that appears to be half a house?), it was quite the cultural experience. Also: cheap. Only five bucks!
After departing the bus I slogged through the early morning mall, made it into my hotel, christmas ocean cruise checked in (surprisingly quickly too, I might add!), went up to my room, and promptly passed out for seven hours. This was now Thursday morning, and I hadn t slept at all during the flight over. Furthermore, I had put in my eight hours at work on Wednesday, AND watched Kikka s NicoNico stream that morning, so I was running on about three hours of sleep at that time!
By the time I had woken up in the late afternoon christmas ocean cruise and headed across the street to the Renaissance Waverly to pick up my registration badge the surrounding area had changed dramatically! Namely, lots and lots of cosplayers! It was quite the contrast from that morning and took me a bit by surprise! I would say on a whole, actually a far larger percentage of the people who attended AWA were cosplayers compared to the likes of AX and AM2. Yay Georgia? Well, I ll also add that most of the cosplayers there also had a far better understanding christmas ocean cruise that a 250lb man shouldn t cosplay Yoko from Gurren Lagann, so yeah, definitely yay Georgia.
So I traveled through the lobby of the Renaissance Waverly to the upper level and found about 150 people in line waiting for registration. Not too bad. The thing was though, that those 150 or so people were actually blocking my view of the line that I was supposed to be in . I had actually been given a Media Pass by the convention, and as such, was allowed to register via the special VIP line. You know, like a boss.
So I acquired my badges and got out of there in a timely fashion without any issues. The rest of the night was relatively christmas ocean cruise uneventful. Went back to my hotel room to rest a bit more, got an incredibly over-priced hamburger for dinner from the hotel coffee shop, and attended my only actual anime-related christmas ocean cruise event of the convention, christmas ocean cruise Old School Classroom. Sure, it might have been the only event happening Thursday night, but it was still quite a bit of fun. Quite a few very odd 1970 s era Anime were shown, and it was presented by Dave Merrill who was actually the convention s chairman!
On Friday Kikka had two events scheduled, christmas ocean cruise an autograph session in the exhibition hall, and a Q A session entitled Behind the Music with Kikka. Her autograph session was set to start at 1PM with the exhibition hall itself opening an hour earlier at 12PM. Now, I had figured that there would be quite a few people there to see her, but not a massive amount, so I thought that getting in line at around nine would probably be a pretty safe bet in order to get an autograph.
I got into the convention center around nine and started looking for the large line for the exhibition hall, but I couldn t find it. Was there really no line? I was pretty sure I was in the right general area. So just to be sure, I took up a seat next to a pillar and waited for about 20 minutes, and lo and behold!
For me I still get a magical feeling that first time I see an idol in person. A mixture of amazement and awe, the kind that gives you goosebumps on the back of your neck. It s a feeling that will never get old.
So, since I now knew where the line actually was, I went over and introduced myself to the other Kikka fans, who naturally were in the very front of it, though, to be fair, there were only about six other people behind them at that point so they pretty much were the line.
While I was up at the front of the line Kikka came back to re-enter the exhibition hall! In an odd bit of something that someone could almost call luck, the several doors that made up the entrance to the hall seemed to lock and unlock in a different configuration anytime anybody would enter and exit! This meant that it took her staff a good minute or so of bewilderment to even get back into the hall! During the wait she came over and talked to us fans a bit more. Here, and all throughout the convention, I was really impressed by just how open and friendly she was with everyone! All good things must come to an end, though, and her staff did eventually find the unlocked door and away they all went again.
I stayed with them for about a half an hour until the rest of the AWA attendees started to show up for the opening of the exhibition hall. In a striking display of competence the organizers actually were able to properly manage the line! As soon as the line got too long, they wrapped it around, repeating this a total of five times. No confusion, no fuss, everything was very professional and the attendees themselves always seemed very willing to comply. Very impressive!
Noon did eventually arrive, and as it did we were all allowed into the exhibition hall. All that I knew about the location of Kikka s booth was that it would be in the far right corner christmas ocean cruise of the hall, so that s were I headed off to, and sure enough, that s were it was.
Now, going into this event I didn t expect a massive number of people to show up, but I did expect a bit of a crowd. Imagine my shock when the only people that showed up at the booth were literally the exact same 15 or so people who were at the front the line plus about five new stragglers and two Japanese wota! I was taken aback a bit. Could this really be everyone who was going to show up?
As for the goods on sale, they had a black and pink t-shirt, a 2L photoset, and the regular edition of her album One for YOU! Now, as for the t-shirts, the black shirt was available only in large and extra large, while the pink was only available in small. This wouldn t have been too bad except for the fact that they were all exclusively in women s cuts, which bummed me out quite a bit. On the plus side, though, the photoset was only $2 which was a great price considering that they normally sell for 500 yen, which is a bit north of $6.50 at the current conversion rate!
So all of us fans bought our goods and more or less just stood around in something that could loosely be considered a line waiting for 1 PM to roll around. Well, it turned out we didn t even have to wait that long as Kikka and her staff arrived about 15 minutes early at 12:45! With little christmas ocean cruise delay, christmas ocean cruise the signing session actually started. Kikka was an absolute blast to meet up close. One of the things that she was doing on that first day was forcing everyone to pinky swear with her that they would stay her fan, which I thought was absolutely adorable.
Considering the relatively low number of people at the signing session (although a few regular con-goers did hop in the line) we all got to loop around several times. While waiting in line on my second pass we saw one of the regular con-goers request a picture with Kikka AND SHE WAS ALLOWED TO TAKE A PICTURE WITH KIKKA.
Let, that sink in a bit. Two shots. We got to take two shots with Kikka. It still seems crazy. christmas ocean cruise Two shots with an idol o