Day 1 at WCS2012

Hello guys! Getting to make my post earlier today since the welcome dinner ended at 8pm. Click on to get more info!
PS: Remember to check out the live streams if you are able to get them~

Random food photo time! Honestly this hotel is the best at the food choices. At any 1 day, there are at least 3-4 different restaurants in the restaurant which you can choose to have breakfast at. On certain days, you can even have 6 choices! So the one you see here is basically a full Japanese buffet, complete with even 3 different types of fish! Really delicious stuff and look forward to trying a different place tomorrow.

 First stop Comiket! Or not.... Well, honestly totally expected, but I had wanted to just catch a view of how the place looked like. As you can see from the photos, the place was totally crowded. I can easily estimate at least 5,000 people from what I could see, though there was probably more in the areas where I could see. I finally experienced first hand how prim and proper our Japanese friends are. Even though there was that many people there, all the people were still very orderly queuing up and patiently waiting to get in. The crew had no problems nicely queuing up everyone to let them in in batches.

 Well in the end we didnt get into the place, but there was a Lawson's shop selling some Lucky Star drinks and giving out posters and stuff along with the drinks should you buy multiple drinks. I got myself a Lucky Star folder as a keepsake lol.

 Here's Tokyo Big Sight where the Comiket was held by the way. Maybe another time!

 In the end, we decided to go to Akihabara to quickly grab some stuff since I had a couple of hours to kill. In the end I bought a few more cards before heading back to the hotel. Thought I was abit late though so I brought a rushed lunch from the convenience store. Honestly awesome lol~ (Thats almond bean curd inside the cup just that I finished it before I  realised I should take photos lol)

So what happens next is my boring stint in the hotel lobby where I basically helped to check in everyone, get their card keys and brief all the asia players I was responsible for when they arrived, so Konami staff for a day lol? Was here from like 1.30-5.30pm, nothing exciting here. Well, dinner time starts at 5.30pm, get ready for an influx of photos! (Probably what you are here for compared to reading my stuff lol)

 Event hall is filled with people! All the players & distributors & staff & whatever else were all in the room getting ready for dinner!

 Our Taiwan players and distributors! Taiwan is the only asia (excluding japan) country sending a player to join the junior tournament. Main reason being Taiwan is the only country which has that many younger players.

 Malaysia distributors along with Malaysia rep do a quick pose

 And our Thailand translator and the representative! Didnt notice he had his eyes closed though...

 

 Dinner is served! Pretty wide mix with some Chinese, Japanese, Western food all mixed into 1 buffet line

 During dinner, our judge team is announced! Its a mixture of Japanese and TCG judges this time round. Head judge is Ander Bowling! Seems abit weird that the head judge is a TCG judge considering we are in Japan, hmmmm...

 Our Taiwan junior player collecting his goodies!

 And here we are, a group photo of all the players for the junior tournament that is held concurrently tomorrow.

 And a very squashed photo of all the main tournament players! Its that squashed cause over 20 photographers all squeezed to the front trying to get a shot.

Time for some goodies! Here is a quick shot of the stuff included for everyone who were there, including a tote bag, pen and score sheet, deck box and even a booklet introducing all the players who are here and their various interview answers! Honestly I really like the box, i think it looks great and I see myself using it for various stuff, and its better quality then the ones we got a couple of years back.

The booklet is also really great, I hope to scan this up eventually if i have the time. Basically it has a nice photo of all the players with name, age, country and their interview questions put there. I originally had a gripe that the questions were printed in japanese while they provided a translation in english which seemed weird. Then I realised theres a good chance the goodie bags will also be given tomorrow since they are printed in Japanese. Gonna try and get more since it really looks not bad.

 And what you have been waiting for, the goodies for all the players! (Excluding the t-shirt). Yes, you saw that correctly, 2 playmats! However in return there was no special deck protectors this time round which is a shame. I would personally prefer just the usual 1 mat and 1 sleeves. Then a enlarged Hope/Utopia and common parallel versions of Monster Reborn and Dark Hole (Somehow noted being sold in Akihabara at 9,000 yen for the set) completed the exclusives this time round. The rest of the stuff were all not bad, but basically merchandise you can purchase from either TCG or OCG side, though mainly OCG.
(Interesting note, the boxes were being sold at like half the price by some TCG players since they cant use it. Though most OCG players kept their Dolkka and Excalibur tins lol)

 Mat no 1. The CNo or Chaos Numbers mat! Looks not bad, though abit boring as usual considering the monsters themselves are not exactly exciting.

Mat no 2, what I call the 10th anniversary mat! Mat is adorned by what looks like a crazily alternate art version of Dark Magician and Blue Eyes White Dragon. Some people thought Blue Eyes was the SIN version till they noticed it actually had gold hair, and totally nobody knew that was meant to be Dark Magician. Even now its not really confirmed, though its probably the only explanation. Maybe this is the champion card that will appear tomorrow???? *Drum roll...* To be continued!

Anyway dinner ended at 8 and some of the players gathered around the lobby looking for friends. We had quite a few good laughs mixing among the players. To be honest, you TCG readers have some of the weirdest / unique (However you wanna take it) players around and Jarel here takes the cake lol. Honestly entertained alot by him as everyone talked and did trading.

Now I wish I could end my post here as intended and be asleep before midnight as originally planned, but there were some issues like how our Philippines rep flight got delayed till he arrived in Japan at 9.30pm so he arrived in the hotel at close to 11pm. Then between briefing him and blog posting took me till midnight.

Further on, we had a little discussion at a nearby cafe at midnight! I was invited out along with Thailand's translator to just have a drink and talk about ygo stuff so I decided what the heck and went along. Quite alot of cool info was discussed though that is the extent of what i can say. In the end we talked till 2am and I am back here in the lobby finishing up my blog post till 2.40am! LOL

Well anyway I am finally done here and I am off to bed. Have an early morning tomorrow to meet at the hotel lobby at 7.30am. My job is far from done since I have to help do attendance taking for the asia personnel (Turning into half a staff here. I want pay! LOL) and of course will still have to look after the players tomorrow. Oh well, I promise to still update the blog, though I may start typing rubbish here if I am still up this late tomorrow night sleep typing. Tomorrow should be an exciting day with lots of stuff to see. I hope for side events where I can win a mat for myself lol! Stay tuned everyone~