Looking to meet more anime people in my area

[Ampersand]

 Hope this is the right place for this... it appeared to be.

 I am a mostly normal guy who watches anime as a side thing, hidden from my friends and family. I want to go to kumoricon, but I can't, since I will be in Seattle the next 2 weeks.

 I'm interested in meeting people with the similar interest as me in my area. I live in Gresham, Oregon, about a block from MountHood. Anime is kind of a hidden enjoyment for me, and I wouldn't mind meeting more people to enjoy it with. MountHood has a club I believe, but when I tried to engage them they seemed overwhelmingly odd. I don't play many video games, but I own a lot of them, mostly atlus games, but I never play them, and would like to get friends to help me with that. Most my friends right now are drinking friends and exercise friends, which are nice in their respected places but looking for more.

I'm www.myspace.com/jessedictor, or ManuelBezzel on Aim and Smokespeaker@hotmail.com on MSN. Or the regular e-mail, Saddy@mailpanda.com. I will be in Seattle the next 2 weeks, so contact with me may be hard until after that hump, though I will be around today and tomorrow morning.

[Wanganator]

That's cool but too bad I live in Seattle going to school there. It's quite hard to find people with the same taste as you. I've tried the anime club at my school but they seem to be more into magic the gathering and keeps to their own circle of friends. I've shown up regularly to watch the anime that they play. for a year now I don't think they know my name, But there's definately people out there! quite the underground subculture.

[Ampersand]

I know a handful of people, but they are either to weird or to young for me to actually hang out with. I'm 23, and the new wave of anime crowd seems to be younger. I know some through my friends cousins, and my friend's kids. ZzZzZzZzZzZz.

[alicebentley]

I wish I could be more encouraging on the topic, but I found it pretty much impossible to start up a new anime group in the area that I live in. We're only a couple of hours away from Seattle, where there are quite a lot of anime fans, but I found that it just takes too long to get there and back and have enough time to watch something.

I've tried flyers at the school, free showings on my equipment at the library, notices in the local paper - nothing worked. I did start up a conversation with another anime fan, but our tastes diveregd pretty radically, and there were almost no times that our schedules would combine.

After a year or so I stopped trying, now I just hang out on message boards and buy more DVDs to watch at home.

[Wanganator]

This is how the secluded life starts and thus Hikikomoris are born! I sorta gave up looking for people with similiar tastes. It's probably better to just hang out in message boards and maybe you'll find someone that shares the same taste and thus meeting up somewhere. Sounds extreme. my goal is to go to convention and meet new people, but at Sakura con, I had a few friends with me, so we tended to stick together. Because of them I stayed a bit reclusive. but this time, I'll know nobody at kumoricon, thus it'll force me to reach out and make friends. I hope my shyness won't get in the way ^^;

[Ampersand]

Message boards are the worst in my opinion, it brings out the worst in people. Especially because I hate arguments that don't have a logical base, or people who try to say they are being logical but have clearly not.

 I don't know what a hikikomori is =P.

 I guess theres always next year (Someone tried to contact me on aim, but i missed it =P).