Our Nation's Capital (Otakon 2025 PROLOGUE)

Moni's patriotic? adventure

Something very exciting is happening this weekend. Baby's first anime convention!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And it's not just any anime convention; it's Otakon, one of the biggest anime conventions on the east coast. In case you missed the memo, I'm from the total other side of the country in California, so you may be wondering why I would choose to have my first con experience in Washington DC. This is so that I can spend it with the one and only Selin AKA my waifu, and ON Selin's birthday no less! ᐠ( ᐛ )ᐟ

Of course, traveling across the country meant this would take a bit more planning than just any old convention visit (not to mention I am also moving to a new continent directly afterwards, but that's a story for another time), so our chronicle of events starts back in California. Packing was honestly super stressful... I literally quit my summer job the day before my flight, and I was working super long hours so I was using every sliver of free time to either rest from my 12 hour shifts or prepare for my trip in small increments, and I was starting to run out of time before I knew it. My room looked like about 500 natural disasters had gone through it, but I managed to fit everything I needed including my giant hachiware plush in my luggage and clean up (well enough) just in time rush to the airport.

Even hachi is stressed ( ;´ - `;)

I was sooo tired so I honestly just knocked out on the plane and woke up in Baltimore. I got there at like 5 AM and still had a bit more travel ahead of me, so I got on a bus over to the train station so I could take get to DC. When I was on waiting for my train, all the stress honestly just melted away. This was my first time on the east coast and seeing the scenery around the platform in the early morning fog and feeling the humidity on my skin made it really feel real and just different to everything I had known. I was so excited to be unlocking a new location all on my own aaaand to realize I was so close to seeing my BFF~~~

 

On the train with the super cute rilakkuma
pin my friend gave me as a goodbye 

Finally made it to DC! I was exhausted because the 5 hour flight didn't make for a very good night's sleep. Who would've guessed? But there was no time to sit around and dilly dally because I had one day to explore the city on my own and I was gonna make the most of it. Thankfully my hostel let me store my stuff in the lobby even though my check in time wasn't until the afternoon. First order of business: COFFEE!!!!!! I walked around for a bit and found this very cute Indonesian coffee shop with super interesting sounding drinks. I tried this espresso drink with coconut water and lemon it because I love refreshing espresso drinks like that, and... it wasn't that good... It was just waaaaayyy too sweet for my taste but I paid like 5 bucks for it and really needed the caffeine so I slowly forced it down which kind of tricked me into liking it a bit more. I also ate a scone because lamentably the only Indonesian related food item they had was a piece of toast that cost like 13 dollars !?!?!?! NUH UH

Anyway after charging myself up it was time to go speed run all the typical DC tourist attractions starting with the white house, which was actually... really tiny... I was shocked. I walked to the washington monument and saw the lincoln memorial from afar because this involved a lot more walking than I had expected and I was too lazy to get up close. The most important lesson I learned on this trip is that everything in the center of DC is really far apart, even if it looks like you're right next to it. I'd see something from afar that looks like it's a 10 minute walk away and it would take me like three times that to actually reach it. All this to say I never even got very close to the capitol, because while I was halfway there I realized the museums I wanted to see were finally open so I took a detour and never got back to it afterwards lolol.

The bulk of my day was spent in a single museum, the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. I got in there at 11 am and before I knew it, it was 3 PM!!!! I had so much fun in there though, there were super interesting exhibits and I learned a lot. What really got me though was the area for the national stamp collection. I'm not even properly into philately but I literally looked and read through every single thing publicly displayed there, which is apparently only like 4,000 specimens out of the millions in the collection. Good thing they didn't let me into the private stuff or I might've accidentally missed Otakon. I loved seeing stamps displayed on old postcards and marriage (+ divorce O_o) certificates, and this exhibition they had at the time on Russian local post stamps. All the international stamps they had were probably my favorite to see even though they made up a small part of everything that was on display. There was a table with a LOT of stamps that you could pick 6 of to take home with you which was so so cool!!!!! I miiiiight have snuck three more than that.... Please don't tell the government I'm not ready to throw away my life and live on the run yet ;-;

My national postal museum heist HAUL

Me and Mr. ZIP, but I call him Zippy since we're close ;D

Anyway, since I basically spent all of lunch time scouring the archives I was naturally starving AND exhausted when I came out of the museum. Plus I was able to check into my hostel now and put my bags in a locker where they'd be safer, so I headed back in the direction of the hostel. I stopped at this adorable cafe by the hostel and got a cappuccino and a spinach and cheese pastry for lunch. It wasn't super filling but I knew it would last me until dinner in not too long. It was finally time to check in... I was kind of nervous because the last time I'd stayed in a hostel was one time with my family when I was way younger, and even though we weren't sharing the room with any strangers, the place was super GROSS and I've been scarred ever since then. But I was very careful looking at photos and reading reviews before I booked this one and it did not disappoint!!!

It was a capsule hostel so the bed was curtained off for privacy but OMG... they were like super futuristic pods with purple lighting and a mirror and outlets and a digital clock embedded in the wall which I later found out was not actually a working clock and just a piece of paper with a random time on it, but hey it still added to the vibe. I felt like I was in one of those Japanese capsule hotel vlogs I used to watch and be so amazed at. It was also way more spacious than I expected. I was in a girls only room which I credit for being the reason it was so peaceful and quiet all the time when I was in there. I literally have no complaints except that the outlets randomly stopped working halfway through the trip so I had to sit in the lobby to charge my phone before bedtime. We even had a tiny balcony in the room and the lobby had a cafe in it and was just super nice to sit in.

It was making me sleepy (* ´ ﹃｀*)

I haven't even mentioned yet how awesome the DC metro was. The stations were all so nice and being the train nerd I am I was obviously looking forward to riding it. I won't take up another whole paragraph talking about it though because this is getting long T-T as usual... I hate to say it but the rest of my afternoon and evening wasn't spent doing anything very interesting. I know I know I said I had no time to waste and stuff but I was so exhausted even after my second coffee!!! I just went to a couple of stores to get some things I realized I was missing for the cosplays I had planned, and walked around to enjoy the city. There were sooo many cute buildings. For dinner I went back to the hostel because they were giving out free pizza that night! Lucky me~

Yes I got an extra slice. I spent the rest of my night after that chilling in my pod and gushing about how excited I was for Otakon and to see Selin tomorrow OMG. Ironically even though I was so tired it took me so long to fall asleep because I was too excited hehe. But I eventually managed.

 

Anyway stay tuned for part TWO wherein I will attempt to write about the rest of the four jampacked days in a single blog post. Wish me luck!