In recent years, I've always made the journey up to New York for Sakura Matsuri at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. I wasn't sure if it was worth the trip this year, but then ~bluucircles offered to do Digimon Tamers cosplay with me there (her Jeri to my Takato), and I was totally on board, hahah.

So, that Friday night, I headed up to New York via the MegaBus, as always. I arrived around 10PM in Brooklyn and met up with bluucircles/Amanda and her boyfriend Yan, who I was staying with for the weekend. We grabbed some food at Chikurin, and went back to their place to eat. Yummm, cheap Japanese food. We spent the night watching a variety of shows/anime and video games.

On Saturday morning, Amanda and I got into our Tamers cosplays. I really love Tamers, and started rewatching the week before and got 3/4 of the way done, hahah. I was super happy when Amanda wanted to do these costumes, since it was something we thought about doing a while ago. And we could take stupidly-uguu couple-y shots at a beautiful location.

We headed over to the Gardens, a quick ride (for once) since it's right there in Brooklyn. However, when we got there, there was a huge line at the entrance and we ended up waiting like 45 minutes to pay and get in…. UGH! Finally, we were in and began the search for friends: a difficult feat in such a crowded space. A lot of people liked our costumes and took pics of us, which I wasn't totally expecting. And at least the blossoms were actually there this year (last year they were all destroyed by a rainstorm prior). 

We finally get in contact with ~Twin-Cosplay (Erika and Becky) in their Sailor Moon costumes. It was great getting a chance to hang out with them, since I haven't seen them for several months! We then had our super kawaii photoshoot with Blanko/~Sky-too-high which is always lots of fun.

More to come soon!

The three of us then ran into ~Mostflogged, *Love-Joker, *KitsuneDolly, *shadowhearts/SewThoughtful/KisaSteph (in their Homestuck matsuri costumes) and ThisCoolIRL, and just hung around for awhile taking photos and stuff. It was getting late in the day and the Gardens were starting to close. We were basically being shooed out, so we decided to all go get dinner at a nearby burger place. 

At the burger place, we had to sit outside, and although it was almost May, it was still chilly at night, so we were all freezing. Some funny shenanigans went on, including the extra-cold people staying warm by wearing a Santa suit that was procured from KisaSteph's car. A hilarious sight, indeed. I had a burger with an egg on it, which I haven't had in a long time, so it was extra good. I also had a marshmallow milkshake I shared with Mostflogged, but it turned out rather disappointing >.<

After dinner, we stopped by the puri-kura photobooth machine at the restaurant. It was so tiny and so zoomed in that you could barely fit four people. We were frantically running around trying to get everyone in (it didn't work too well, lol, but made for lots of fun). Amanda and I then parted ways from the rest of the group and headed back to her apartment, where we continued goofing around, watching anime and stuff until we went to bed.

Four people can fit in this small photobooth, right? Nope.

Sunday morning I began packing my stuff to go home. I was leaving earlier than I typically do, but meant I wasn't getting back late at night (which is good). So we just hung out a bit before I had to leave. By 11-ish, I said my goodbyes and headed into Manhattan for the bus back to Philly.

It was a really great weekend, and I'm glad I went and got to see my friends!