somewhat normalizing

Hello ^w^ I'm back after a while. I swear, I'm not disappearing on purpose, I've just been going out for errands way too much. The Christmas season is fast approaching and I've been running more errands than I usually do.

Recently, it feels like things are slowly going back to the pre-pandemic area because I'm seeing so many kids around. In the market, in parks, in malls, and in public transportation. It's a bit concerning but I guess it's one of the steps to return to the former normal where kids got to get around with their parents. I'm still not in favor of it but it's what people want. And from just watching the kids going out, I see 2 visible outcomes. It's either they don't want to go back inside, or they just want to go back inside as soon as possible. Sadly, my little sister belongs to the latter group XD

Can't blame her though, she spent her entire high school life on an online set up so now she's more anti-social than I expected. I'm concerned when she starts the face-to-face classes because she might not manage.

Despite that, I convinced her to go to an anime convention with me ^w^ It was just a small-scale one. Something to test the waters before I start taking her to the big conventions that will start opening up next year.

So far, she can't handle the outside world for long. But she had fun UwU that was for sure.

So this was on the bus to the train station. The people on the bus made her hide for a while and she stayed like that til we reached the train station. It's her comfort blamket/ convention costume. It's the blanket of an anime character called Umaru-chan and she uses it all the time, the convention was no exception.

On the train... she hasn't experienced buying train tickets and getting on the main trains yet so just buying tickets really tired her out 😅 so I think I might get her the stored value card next time I take her anywhere so she doesn't end up like this again. I'm pretty sure that if it wasn't an anime convention, I wouldn't even succeed in getting her out of the house.

She was pretty preppy at the actual venue though. She couldn't stop looking at the cosplayers and at the merchandise that was up on display (mostly bootleg displays) I was planning to take her to the anime merch mall but... maybe when she gets more used to people and outside. As of now, I can see that human interaction either makes her tired or cranky.

Sadly, we didn't stick around for long since the number of people was really stressing her out. She enjoyed the event but I guess she was mentally shocked with the change of environment where she only had to handle 4 people and 2 dogs, then suddenly, the people around her went to 100+ (the number of convention-goers I estimated when we were there. So after 2 hours, I took her to the food places near there. So yeah, 2 hours of convention time then almost 3 hours of staying in this almost empty cafe so she could recharge for a bit.

The ramen was a take out from another store XD But yeah, 3 hours here while we waited for rush hour to end and for the people density to lower so it doesn't tire her out more. Sad to say, she doesn't hold back when I tell her to "Order anything she likes" So my wallet pretty much cried that day but hey, she came home happy and she knocked out as soon as she saw her bed XD

After this little social experiment on my sister and the limits of her introvert tendencies... I think I need to take her out more. Maybe on a once-a-month basis so she eases up to people again because she definitely needs to learn how to ease back into this new normal.

This is all from me for a now. The next time I return, let's see if I make a more... contentful article. For now, I'm just writing down my observations with my sister and with going outside because she's been cooped up indoors since the pandemic started so I was pretty curious how she'd handle outside now.