Sometime at the beginning of May...

Our build up to AX2001 began about two months before the actual event, when Risa-chan and I realized that there was a lot to organize before we went. Our brief discussion somehow lead to a 5 hour meeting with everyone involved - it was to be the first of many such epic gatherings...

About an hour into this first meeting, during the discussion of how we would set up the booth - we hit our first big hurdle - with 5 Japanese people and 1 Aussie in the room, none of us could visualize how big a space we wanted or how to lay it out as the measurements we'd received were all in feet and inches...dammit USA when will you get with the metric system! We struggled on with a rough idea and planned a fantastic booth set-up - which we then abandoned as it worked out we would have needed about twice the number of people to run it than were actually going...so we scaled down stuff considerably - yeah I know that your image of ANIMAXIS is that we are a huge group of people frantically typing away at our computers 24/7 - but the truth is we can barely fill a large karaoke room...by the end of this meeting we'd managed to divide up the bulk of the jobs and then promptly forgot all about it for a month.

June?

The rush was then on. Risa-chan waded through a pile of documents so huge that she deserves a Honorary Doctorate in Obtaining a Californian Sellers Permit and Dealing with State Tax Law, our merchandising boys Mojojojo and Karaoke-man should have designed the Tardis with the amount of stuff they managed to pack into four crates for shipping over ("It's just like working out a jigsaw puzzle" claimed Mojojojo), Nori-kun learned a completely new computer programming language to design the basic membership sign-up - and a few English phrases along the way, Ogi-bo, the man who was to become our AX leader and substitute Dad, learned not to join a company before they head off to a major anime event, the gorgeous people who agreed to help us out at the expo (1 coming from Japan, 1 from Canada and 3 from LA) learned that slavery has not been completely abolished - and that us kids at ANIMAXIS do possess super-human strength. And as for me - well let's just say for starters that my simultaneous interpreting skills have gone thru the roof! These however are just some of the subjects that we were enlightened about at the AX Gakko.

Last week in June

The week before we left was an experience in insanity itself - Risa-chan and I rushed to throw as many products on-line to sate the appetite of our hungry overseas and Japanese customers who would be deprived of new stuff for two weeks while we would be in the States.

The merchandising boys were processing orders at an unbelievable speed and did so much overtime that Mojojojo's daughter actually forgot who he was...

Ogi-bo designed a fab flyer so fast that I was proof-reading it as it went out the door (which is the excuse for 1 spelling mistake, 1 spacing error and 1 grammar blunder that I later discovered on it).

Mahjong-kun our puter guru and his fearless sidekick broke records in printing out the product cards.

Nori-kun, being the little multi-tasker that he is, was perfecting the sign-up program, re-designing Dream Network's Japanese site and still managing to rescue us every time our computers flipped out.

Chiba-san (we miss you!) our assistant extraordinaire remained calm and collected and checked that we didn't completely mess up what we were putting online.

Papa-san made sure that I took enough ciggie breaks and checked that everyone was eating at least one meal a day.

The Accounting Dept prepared themselves for sorting out the financial mess we were leaving in our wake and the slaves slaved like they never had before...

Of course there had to be one major dilemma beforehand and for us it was a flu epidemic. Only two of us were spared - Ogi-bo, whose desk at the time was WAY over the other side of the office, and me who imposed a two metre quarantine rule and would only accept stuff to check via e-mail. Of course with all the farewell parties and dinners (my friends are a close bunch - I was only going away for two weeks after all) and the chain-smoking from stress and exhaustion I was probably not a good host for the flu germies anyway...

Our biggest concern was for Risa-chan, who was still running a very high temperature on the day we left and it was touch and go as to whether she could go. Fortunately she is such a legend that she battled on and boarded the plane. Which was darn lucky as our contingency plan for covering for her if she couldn't go revolved around having me cloned...

Saturday June 30 We all banded together on the Saturday to sort out the final details and ship as many of the orders as we could before we left - yes your package could have been packed by the President & CEO of Dream Network himself!

Sunday July 1

Sunday was when we had time to get our own stuff together (is it naughty to pack dirty clothes if you've had no time to wash 'em?) and say goodbye to our loved ones we were leaving behind.