On the author's ride back to the airport on Sunday evening, the talkative, 64-year-old van driver told how he had encountered convention fans during the afternoon - driving them to and from the airport, and at a fast-food restaurant near the convention hotel. The van driver said he was impressed by how polite the anime fans were, and he liked the costumes that were worn by the kids at the restaurant.

Sakura Con still has that "hey kids, let's put on a show" feeling. Lots of enthusiastic volunteers, but a shortage of bad attitudes. The author was left with the impression that the group that operates this convention is more interested in getting things done than in being in charge of something and telling someone else to do the work. Everyone involved with the event did a lot of hands-on pitching in. The gripe session after the event ended early when there was a shortage of complaints.

And Sakura Con sure did grow.

In 2000, it was a tiny event in a cramped motel. In 2001, it was a larger event in a larger hotel - and it still nearly got cramped because of the big increase in attendance. Memberships jumped from just under 900 in 2000 to just over 1,500 in 2001. Almost as many people registered in advance this year as attended the entire event last year. And the attendance cap that had been announced in advance had to be imposed, with around 50 people turned away on Saturday.

The 2000 Sakura Con had a tiny dealers' room and only one brief line when the event opened. The 2001 event nearly tripled the size of that room, and there was a line to get in for most of saturday. Like many events, the convention decided to limit the number of people inside, and let one fan in for each fan who left. The author was told that was to keep things from getting too crowded, and it looked as if there was room to move about for most of the weekend.

With the increase in attendance, convention organizers decided to head off any further capacity problems and arranged for a larger facility in the future. Sakura Con has a three-year contract with the Hilton hotel at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, and they have their dates set for those next three years - April 26-28, 2002; April 4-6, 2003; and April 23-25, 2004.

The convention got lucky with its guests. They brought in Lia Sargent during the Cartoon Network run of The Big O, for which she wrote the English-language script. They attracted Hiroki Hayashi just as he was finishing the first version of his CG 3-D Magical Witchcraft series, a show that could change the look of anime from flat to fully textured. Hayashi's tenure as the Tenchi-Muyo director might have been the inspiration for the large number of Tenchi costumers, but there also were more Card Captor Sakura costumers than usual. There were even two plug-suited Ayanami Reis spotted on the same day (but apparently not a single Asuka all weekend).

Here's the "best laid plans go stray" story of the weekend: the costume contest organizers decided to line up the participants outside of the "dome" that was used for the main events hall. As the rehearsal ended, the participants were ushered outside into the parking lot where there was plenty of room. And plenty of cold wind. To a muttered chorus of "It's freezing," the costumer waited for the show to begin, keeping a wary eye on the approaching dark clouds.

Someone on the convention staff shouted a promise that "It will not rain!" A half-hour later the skies opened. The convention staff had to rush the costumers around the dome and into a hotel hallway to keep them from being drenched. It looked a lot like the scenes in the Japanese sci-fi films where the white-gloved police officers are directing terrified civilians away from the city where the monsters will attack.

It says a lot about the costumers that they weren't discouraged by the rain. The show did go on, and every one of the entrants appeared on stage. There was only one more snafu, when the guests of honor who were recruited as judges disagreed with the way the awards were being presented.

No "disaster" references this time; there was no sign of the earthquake that had rocked the area a couple of months earler. However, the Puget Sound weather reverted to its usual pattern and there was lots of rain on Saturday and Sunday. But the rain cleared enough to allow the author a glance at Seattle's attractive downtown, the lighted Space Needle gleaming in the dark.