Hey folks! I'm back from Leicester, online temporarily during the interim period before I jet off to exotic Georgia, in order to hunt pheasant and discuss fine literature with the native people.

It was an absolute blast from start to finish. Went down with Canada's own WhiteAsh001 and arrived at the university at around 4:30, in order to attend the opening ceremony and deliver a brief speech. I was only recognised by a handful of people when I first showed up, but as soon as they called me down in the opening the place kinda erupted.

Then I gave a two hour Q&A/screening in the bar that involved berating a random 5Ds fan as Kaiba, conversing with an amazing Naruto cosplayer (who allowed me to wear his orange ninja jumpsuit thingy), and just fielding random questions such as "What is your favourite cheese?"

The second screening also went very well. It was supposed to be around two hours, but I started early and finished about an hour and a half later (people still stuck around!). I showed a few of the newer episodes, but then the laptop we were using died so I decided to recite Episode 42 from memory on the spot. There was a giant Kuriboh cosplayer who showed up and stood to one side of the audience for about three hours. That's some dedication. Surprised he didn't explode, as Kuriboh are wont to do.

We attended a fursuit/cosplay panel which was a quieter affair, but still cool. The person who was supposed to do the cosplay panel didn't show up, so WhiteAsh took to the stage and managed to make it an equally intimate and interesting conversation between cosplayers regarding their experiences with dressing up and making costumes. It couldn't have gone better.

Speaking of cosplayers, they are incredibly helpful in a pinch. WhiteAsh's purse strap broke, and she just ran up to a gaggle of ninjas and they agreed to sew it back together. While drunk. One thing led to another, and I ended up signing one of their Gundam DVD box sets with the words "Good luck selling this bullcrap! LittleKuriboh" and we all of us dubbed the heroic sewing-no-jutsu ninja the Crazy Jelly Pork Pie Pokemon Lady.

I think I must have signed about a hundred Kuriboh cards while I was at the con, and my signature kept changing, so I guess I should really work on a more distinctive autograph.

I met a lot of really wonderful people, it was truly an unforgettable experience. Thanks go out to all the Toms - particularly our drummer, SoyKing, the Yu-Gi-Oh cosplayers, the event staff (especially FreeSaiyan), Andy and Kirstie (we really gotta hang some more), the two Narutos who randomly hugged me at around midnight, and just everybody who came and had a great time. I'm really sorry if I've left anybody out, but really, there were so many excellent folks there, I'd be hard pressed to get 'em all. It'd be like trying to complete my Pokedex. You're all shiny, by the way.

I can't wait till next year.

ALCON NO JUTSU~!