ParaPara is like Hello Kitty and the Lucky Stars started a happy happy line dance school. People are very serious about this dancing, they form teams and compete. People dress up in costumes from their favorite Anime, run around the convention gathering the similarly costumed, and then stage impromptu performances of the parapara associated with that Anime. The opening of "Lucky Star" is a popularly imitated parapara, but teams often build their own based on whatever songs are popular at the time.
Other activites you will see at the typical Anime con include panels on every subject, however distantly related to Anime it might be. If you can stretch a string from Anime to your subject, have some sort of authority about it, and are willing to talk about it for free, you can probably hold a panel about it at an Anime con. At some point during the con, there will be a Cosplay contest. This is where people put on the finest costumes they have made emulating various Anime characters and show them off. Beware those last-minute costumes. There will be "serious" cosplayers present who will know if your outfit varies by the slightest jot from that of your character. Most everyone else will love any serious attempt to approximate a character, so don't dispair. Some cosplayers even form groups and roleplay portions of the Anime from which their character is derived for the contests. In between panels, cosplay, contests, viewing Anime in the movie rooms, and dancing there is shopping, fighting with polls topped by thick foam padding, and random roaming. Oh yeah, and zombies.
You don't even have to sleep at the con. Though things slow down at night, there's always the video rooms, the gamer room, and J-pop. A cafe in the convention center sold drinks and snacks pretty much all hours, too. If all that doesn't keep you busy, there's always sitting around waiting for elevators and more shopping, but if you really want to find out about what goes on, volunteer. We discovered this opportunity for the first time with A-kon 21 and had a blast. It can also help your budget, as most conventions give various freebies in return for your time and work. For example, at A-kon 21, for just 16 hours of volunteering, you could receive a free full weekend pass. If you volunteer for something like security, gamers room, or J-pop after hours, you can be free to do everything the con has to offer. For a few more hours, you can even get space in a crash room and some freebie food. I stayed in one of the girls-only crash rooms the first night, and it was just fine.
One comment I have to make about con going. Shower. No, seriously, I find I can not say this enough. A-kon is a particularly harsh example as the high Texas heat and humidity conspired to make it next to impossible to keep the larger convention areas cool. Showering twice per day is prefered at conventions whenever possible. If your costume is heavy or furry, absolutely shower twice per day minimum, and did you know they sell industrial strength deoderants? Look into that, please. Maybe some powder, too.
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