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Shiokazecon - Author's Notes - 2006 Notes started at 37,000 feet on the way to Chicago: Travel ironies from this second of three anime convention trips in as many weekends: the first trip was to the Nashville area,home of the Tennessee Titans of the NFL. The second trip was to Houston, the original home of the Titans when they were the Oilers of the American Football League. (If you believed the daily Chronicle, most of Houston was protesting the Houston Texans' decision not to select Reggie Bush in the NFL draft, but anime fans didn't care.) The Houston Astros baseball team was on the road, playing at Cincinnati, where the Great American Ballpark is a few blocks from where Ikasucon will be held in mid-July. And the author's connecting flights took him right over the Rosemont, Ill. hotel where Anime Central will be held, the convention which is planned for our third trip. . Shiokazecon was billed as a new event, but it might as well have been the second edition of the Kamikazecon convention that was held at the same location in 2005. We saw most of the same people who had been at the previous year's convention. Attendance was good, even with the competition of an international street festival downtown, a couple of blocks from the Hyatt hotel that housed the anime convention. Shiokazecon achieved the universal measurement of anime convention success, attracting so many fans that you had to wait for an elevator to get back to your room. The Hyatt in Houston that held the convention has 30 floors, one of the tallest hotels to hold an anime convention, and there are six or seven elevators to serve those floors. Fan activity led to an elevator rush hour that began around 10 a.m. on each of the convention's three days. The "other" convention at the start of the weekend in downtown Houston was a gathering of Texas librarians. Yes, there were a couple of Yomiko Readman costumers spotted during the weekend, but we don't know if they were invited to the library event. There must be something about anime conventions in Texas that leads Japanese rock and pop performers to cross the Pacific for concerts. Maybe Koda Kumi's good luck inspired others to duplicate her effort: she appeared at Ushicon in 2004 and Kamikazecon in 2005, and went on to become Japan's hottest musical performer last year. In 2006 it was the turn of High and Mighty Color. The sextet from Okinawa joined the Japanese groups that were surprised by the intense enthusiasm they received from American convention fans. It's important to note that the group is from Okinawa, because that southern Japanese Island seems to produce musical stars in the same way that Nashville is a home for country music talent (and weren't we driving through Nashville one week earlier?). One event we missed because of our early departure was the live concert of tunes from the "Voices for Peace" CD produced by artist Jan Scott-Frazier. He convinced many dub voice actors to sing on the album, a return to the musical stage experience that many of them have.  We needed to head to the airport for a late afternoon flight home, and of course, the departure was an hour late. Another actor provided us with a surprise. We didn't expect to see Taliesin Jaffe at Shiokazecon, but there he was at the dealer's room. Jaffe is spending a few months in Texas directing dub episodes for Funimation in the Fort Worth area, and he made the trip over to Houston for the convention. Jaffe's planning to eventually head back to California for more work there, but he's got a full plate in Texas, including some projects that he can't yet discuss. We spent most of the weekend in the dealer's room, the home for our photo sales booth for 2006. The convention staff gave us a choice of locations, and we shied away from the dealer's room before we realized that the secure location means we wouldn't have to completely rebuild our setup each day. We needed only to put up the lighting and backdrop once, then plug in the computer to everything at the beginning of each day. Apologies to those who had long waits for pictures. We had to watch the weight of our luggage to meet the 50-pound-per-bag airline limit, so we brought the lightest printer we had, which also was the slowest printer. Weight counts with airline travel: one of our bags weighed in at 50 pounds, down to the tenth, on the airline's scale, and the other one was 45 pounds. Thanks to the two convention volunteers who lugged and rolled the bags from the author's room to the elevators and then to the dealer's room when we arrived. Shiokazecon staff kept providing us with food during the weekend as well, treating us in a fashion that made us feel spoiled for once. Shiokazecon Main Page