A convention I never miss since it's in my own home state. This year AnimeNEXT moved to a new location just a bit south of the Secaucus area to the Garden State Expo Center in Somerset, New Jersey. It was a gorgeous location and definately quite a bit more roomy than Secaucus due to the growth the con has been experiencing over the last few years.

We headed up on thursday evening and after bringing all the bags into our room, we checked out the hotel, the Doubletree Somerset, very nice. We picked up our badges at the Expo Center which is a little walk down a covered path from the hotel. Then we headed out for a delicious dinner at IHOP. Who doesn't like IHOP?

Things got rolling on friday, got into Sun-Sun from Bleach for a little while before I set up in artist alley to set up my cyberlox and tentacles and Candy Pieces I create. Did a little photoshoot early in the day before it started raining...and rain it did for most of the weekend. Which ended up being a bummer just because the different aspects of the con, the video rooms, main events, were outside of the hotel. And for food, we did a lot of ordering in for our meals. Pizza and chinese delivery were really good and fast. There was also a buffet in the hotel. And there were restaurants in all the con hotels.

Well, the tentacles I had sold out within a few hours on friday. Thanks everyone for making them a success! And I took turns with Studio Kitsu and Effycrush with their awesome products as well. Effycrush has these adorable knit creatures! SO CUTE! Kitsu makes a lot of anime related goodies and makes awesome The World Ends with You pins!

Saturday the weather cleared up a bit, I spent the day as Hiei from YuYu Hakusho with Yesod as Kurama. We enjoyed some poolside fun. See video below. And don't worry, the costumes and wigs are just fine. We washed them when we got home. :) Yay for using washable fabrics! The water was warm too! Manned the artist alley table a bit more before getting some dinner and going to watch the Masquerade. Then later that night, I did some hentai dubbing. lol!

Sunday we wandered around a bit more, looked at stuff in the dealers room and packed up. Of course, Sunday was an absolutely beautiful day. We said goodbye to friends and headed home. Another fun year at AnimeNEXT!

AnimeNEXT 2009 Highlights
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