And so the sun has set on yet another Expo. My arm aches, my wrist is sore and I'm sleepy as hell, and I wouldn't have it any other way! It's been another amazing weekend, so I think I'll talk about it in a bit more detail.

Once again my jouney was affected by engineering works, but this time, it was in my favour. It was the rail service that gets me to London that was being worked on, but because of this, the trains not only showed up a little earlier than usual, but also skipped most of the stations on the way! Since the engineering works on the Jubilee Line and the DLR didn't affect the route to the ExCeL Centre this time, it meant I got there even quicker than usual! Now why can't it ALWAYS be like that?

As it turned out, it's a good thing I did arrive there earlier than expected, as it took quite a while to actually get into the Expo itself. I swear it must have taken about an hour to get in, and this was in the Fast Track queue as well..... But I did get in eventually, so I started as I normally did- getting familiar with my surroundings. I then started spending my hard earned money. That day I ended up buying both volumes of Code Geass, the Lucky Star OVA (which surprised me, as I honestly didn't know that had been released in the West yet!), the complete box set of Rozen Maiden, volume 1 of Hayate The Combat Butler, the latest issue of Megami magazine, a new Genki Gear T-shirt and a japanese copy of the PC game Ys: The Oath In Felghana. I don't know if I can get it working, and even if I could, it'd all be in Japanese, but it did come with a huge collection of music CDs from the game. Since the Ys series has some truly amazing music in it, that alone made it worth the money! I also got volume 1 of .hack// SIGN in the goodie bag I got for pre ordering my ticket, so that was quite a result too. I spent most of the day with and and their friends, as they were once again there! At round 1:30, we went to the Namco Bandai booth, as top voice actors Troy Baker and Mike McFarland would be giving autographs at 2 o'clock. Since I knew there would be a long line to see them, I felt the best thing to do would be to get there early. My intuition was proved right, as we ended up first in line! I got Troy to sign my copy of Tales Of Vesperia (as he was, of course, the voice of Yuri in that game), so I was pretty happy about that!

Sunday was..... surreal. I got to the ExCeL centre at about 8:45 in the morning, so I wasn't too far down in the line to get in. This time I had a go of a few of the games there, including Tales Of Symphonia: Dawn Of The New World and Scribblenauts. I also had a look at- though not actually play- some of the other games at the show, including Bayonetta, Tekken 6 and Avatar: The Video Game- the last of which was in 3D, and looked amazing! Of course, I spent more money as well. This time I bought a Shining Wind art book, a copy of CosMode magazine, A copy of Cosplay Fever (A book showing off pictures from the UK cosplay scene), Luminous Arc 2 on the DS, the OST to Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero? (which was only 50p. Pretty good value for money if you ask me, Dood.), volume 5 of the Death Note anime, volume 1 of Clannad After Story (Like the Lucky Star OVA, that was another one I didn't know had a western release!), volume 2 of Hayate The Combat Butler, volume 1 of Gurren Lagann and the complete series of both He Is My Master and Shakugan No Shana. Phew! I also attended a Q & A panel with Troy Baker and Mike McFarland as well. It was a good panel, actually. Troy talked about his work in video games and how he'd love to reprise his role as Yuri in the upcoming Tales Of Vesperia movie, while Mike spoke about what it's like to be a director. After the panel was over, I sadly decided it was time to leave. And so it's all over for another year.......

Pictures will, as usual, come shortly. However, it looks like a lot of them came out quite badly, as they look pretty grainy. My pictures from Sunday look a little bit better, but some still look quite bad. I wonder if I must have done something to my camera without realising it? So be warned for a lot of bad picture quality with these photos.....

On a seperate note, I've decided that I won't be doing any more of my Tales Of The Abyss Rangers parodies, at least for now. Both of the pieces that I've done have only had around 20 or so views between them, and I don't want to spend a lot of time and effort into doing something only a tiny amount of people will read. Maybe if they become more popular over time, I may reconsider, but for now, I won't be doing anymore. Sorry about that....