Having a Blast at Tokyo, OK: The Everyone Guide for First-Timers, Families, Neurospicies, and Everyone Else

My first experience with anime was a Christian cartoon marketed alternately as “Superbook” and “The Flying House.” If you’re unfamiliar with these early 1980s gems of Japanese animation, Fundie Fridays has an excellent piece about them on their YouTube channel. But suffice it to say, my cartoon-loving kid self was instantly taken with the animation style, and I watched the show religiously (pun intended) because I just couldn’t get enough. I’d felt the same about Hello Kitty when she showed up — there was just something super cool about the round, adorable animation style. 

Sadly, I missed out on “Sailor Moon” and “Pokémon” when they first arrived in the United States. Not because I was too old — my young adult husband and I were massive fans of “Spongebob Squarepants” when it first came out — but because we weren’t in the target demographic, we just missed them somehow in between restaurant jobs, college, and college-style partying. 

And then one day, about 15 years later, I was hanging out looking for something to watch with my then-six-year-old son Arthur when we stumbled onto a little anime called “Sword Art Online” and were instantly hooked. Pretty soon, we were both checking out manga at the library and obsessing over our favorite manga and anime together. 

Now that he’s 17, his list of favorites is much longer than mine, although we’ve had a blast bonding over anime like “Death Wish,” “Danganronpa,” “Chainsaw Man,” and more recently, “Lazarus,” even bringing Arthur’s other two siblings in on the action. And one of our favorite places to share in our mutual love of Japanese animation is the artist formerly known as Tokyo in Tulsa, Oklahoma’s outstanding pop culture convention now called Tokyo, OK. 

In a world where third spaces for kids and teens to hang out in are getting harder to come by and a generation of kids who missed years of social interaction during the pandemic, Tokyo, OK and the world of cosplay, anime, and pop culture this convention serves as a doorway to offer a fantastic place for kids and adults who enjoy these things to get out and meet other folks who share their interests. 

Whether you’ve never attended TOK in the past or you just want to be ultra-prepared for the 2025 convention, here’s a fairly comprehensive breakdown of everything you need to know to have an amazing time with a little help from Tokyo, OK representative Zac Murphy. 

What to expect at Tokyo, OK

The first thing to know about TOK is that it’s the largest anime and pop culture convention in Oklahoma. It’s moved around a bit through the years but seems to have finally found a perfect location at the Marriott Tulsa Southern Hills and Ruffin Event Center. You’ll know you’re in the right place immediately by all the incredible cosplays you see milling about the parking lot and front entrance. 

The three-day convention is a gathering place for fans of pop culture, anime, and gaming. And it’s not just for anime fans — here, you’ll see all kinds of amazing cosplays, merch, and just general fandom fun for everything from sci-fi and fantasy shows to classic American cartoons. The event, which has been going on in one form or another for close to 20 years now, offers a family-friendly space for fans of just about everything to geek out over their shared love of pop culture. And there’s so much here that not once in our family’s years of covering the event for TulsaKids have we ever had a chance to see and experience everything (which, of course, gives us just one more reason to come back the next year — as if we needed one!). 

One thing I really love about TOK and all conventions, for that matter, is the way these events give folks who might be a little neurospicy a place and opportunity to connect with others. This is huge for my family where every member has either anxiety, autism, ADHD, or some combination thereof. 

At conventions like TOK, I’ve seen kids who struggle with social anxiety or just the kind of general awkwardness from, say, missing two years of class time during a pandemic, come all the way out of their shells. The kid who struggles with striking up a conversation in class has no trouble complimenting another person’s cosplay. I’ve seen a passing comment about someone’s button or shirt like “Oh my gosh, I LOVE that object show!” turn into two kids absolutely mind-melding right there in the hallway before exchanging contact information. 

The fandom world is a world full of friendly folks, a vibrant community full of creative, fun, and kind-hearted individuals, many of whom tend to be just a little bit quirky in all of the best ways. And that’s why I just can’t wait to get immersed back in that culture with my own trio of quirky neurospicy creatives each year. 

What is there to do at TOK?

1. Marvel at all of the cosplays

The first thing on our to-do list every year is simply to just walk around and take in all of the incredible cosplays. If you don’t know much about cosplay culture, it truly is a convergence of fandom, creativity, and true artistic expression. You’ll see folks who just put something together with what they had on hand and full-blown professional cosplayers who spend months or even years perfecting their cosplays by learning how to sew, embroider, carve, and engage in all kinds of artisan skills they incorporate into their craft. 

You’ll see all kinds of beautiful, elaborate, and even hilarious cosplays milling around the convention — and not just anime cosplays. You’ll see loads of superheroes — I feel like I should start a Deadpool BINGO card for all the Deadpools I’ve seen: Deadpool Pikachu, Deadpool barbecue dad, sparkly pink Deadpool, dark Deadpools, dolphin Deadpool, and enough regular old normie Deadpools to start a Deadpool choir. You’ll see loads of cartoon characters, video game characters, TV throwback characters, all kinds of creative cosplays. 

You’ll definitely want to snap some photos — but please don’t do it without asking their permission first! It’s important to remember that many cosplayers are minors and don’t want their photo shared, while some folks just aren’t comfortable with having their photos shared online by a stranger. If they don’t, just tell them you understand and hope they have a great time!

The vast majority of folks will be more than happy to snap a pic and don’t mind posing with other attendees, though, so definitely don’t be afraid to ask! I also like to ask if they have a social media tag they want me to share since some cosplayers appreciate the chance to drive traffic to their content. 

2. Play some tabletop games together

As in years past at Tokyo, OK, the convention features a game room just for tabletop gaming where you can check out games from the game library, grab a table, and spend as long as you want playing. You’ll also find tables with games in progress full of friendly groups who usually don’t mind making room for a few more friends.

This is a great place to hang out with some new folks or just take a break from all the convention walking and relax while checking out some new tabletop games you’ve not yet had a chance to try. 

Tokyo, OK also has events going on all weekend in the tabletop gaming room including events for Battletech, Warhammer, Mahjong, Magic the Gathering, Naruto deck-building, and more. 

3. Play some console games together

As a video game loving family, the console gaming room at Tokyo, OK is one of our family’s favorite things to do each year. At last year’s convention, my kids had an absolute blast battling each other at Spider Heck and Super Smash Bros. Personally, I’m all about checking out first-person shooters like Call of Duty while (importantly) not having to fight my children over the Xbox at home. 

Like the tabletop gaming room, the console gaming area features events all weekend long including VR gaming for a few hours each day as well as tournaments for Street Fighter, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Mario Kart 8, Tekken8, and more.  

4. Check out some panels and events

The panels and other scheduled events are one of my favorite parts of Tokyo, OK each year. You can download the TOK event schedule online to check out the full lineup and learn more about each event, and this is really hard for our family because we want to go to everything. I definitely recommend taking the time to read through them all carefully, because there’s almost certainly going to be something your family is into going on every day of the convention. 

In years past, we’ve had the chance to check out cosplay panels, play games, and listen to voice actors. Last year, the kids and I got caught up in an absolutely hilarious game of Mafia that had us laughing so hard our sides hurt. 

I mean, just look at this sampling of super cool events from this year’s lineup just on Friday alone:

• Service dogs at cons (Friday 2:30 p.m.)
• Sewing patterns 101 (Friday 2:30 p.m.)
• Cosplay photography 101 with local Tulsa photographer David Lackey (Friday at 3 p.m.)
• Exploring dungeons with friends (a “Delicious in Dungeons anime event) (Friday at 4:30)
• Sewing machines: Do not be afraid (Friday at 4:30)
• What cosplay judges are looking for (Friday at 4:30)
• Mad lib theater (Friday at 8 p.m.)
• K-pop and J-pop party (Friday at 10 p.m.)

See what I mean? As Zac Murphy told me, “We have more panels this year and have partnered with Clary Sage and the Philbrook for Educational Programming.”

 There are also meetups for specific fandoms throughout the weekend. You can find out more about these on the TOK Discord server. 

5. Shop for the best fan merch

If you love quality pop culture fan merch and you hate that everything that looks cool online ends up being AI slop or Temu garbage, you will absolutely love shopping at TOK. Here, you’ll find lots of vendors, artisans, and artists — mostly small businesses who depend on conventions to help them earn a living. 

Even if you’re like us and you don’t have a lot of cash to burn at convention time, TOK is a great place to connect with the vendors you want to spend your money on when the holiday season rolls around. 

A lot of the vendors are also very understanding about what it’s like to be a kid or teen at a convention and want to take something cool home with you but not have a lot of dough, and increasingly over the past few years I’ve noticed that more and more vendors are offering small items like stickers, small plushies, or cute little handmade bracelets for anywhere from $1 to $10 with these kiddos in mind. If you’re on a budget but you can spare a small allowance for each kid, I recommend telling them how much you have to spend and then letting them shop around the vendors a few times before they make a final decision. 

6. Watch (or enter) a contest

Tokyo OK has a bunch of contents for creative-minded folks to challenge themselves with. The Saturday night cosplay event is an absolute can’t miss event and serves as the high point for the weekend. There’s also an anime music video (AMV) competition, a HobbyTown-sponsored model-building event, a miniature painting competition, an amateur art contest, and an IDOL contest where competitors dance or lip sync. 

Zac reiterated, “This year we have new contests! We have an expanded Model Building Contest, Mini Painting, an updated Idol Fest, and Cosplay Props!

7. Meet some voice actors or animators

Every year, the convention hosts a long list of voice actors, animators, professional cosplayers, and other talent, and many will hold meet and greets at some point during the weekend. This is always a big deal for two of my kids who are huge art fans and love creating their own animations. 

8. Make some new friends

One thing to know about TOK is that there are loads of open spaces with and without seating throughout the convention where folks tend to gather, so it’s really not too hard to make new friends around there. 

Zac Murphy told me that through the years, Tokyo, OK has grown into a generational event where parents, kids, and even grandparents connect with new friends each year. “We now regularly have family members bring their kids or even grandparents to the event to show off their cosplay or to introduce their families to their internet friends, and we think that is what really drives our attendees.”

A lot of the cosplayers bring trinkets and stickers to share with folks they engage with, and one of my kids has started bringing their own little gifts to share with new friends their age that they meet as an entree to conversation. If they seem to be connecting, my kiddo has a stack of cards with their contact information — a strategy Zac says is fairly common. “They continue to connect with these new friends on Discord, Facebook…when it’s time for TOK, that’s when the little awkward person inside of us seems to disappear and we come out of our shells.”

Getting your crew ready for Tokyo, OK

Whether it’s your first time attending a convention or you’re completely new at this, here are a few things you can do to help make the most of your weekend.

1. Dress comfortably

We love to get into the spirit of things whether we’re visiting the Castle’s Halloween village or dressing up for a Dungeons and Dragons one-shot. But even when we’re dressing in cosplay for TOK, we always try to make sure everyone either has something comfortable to wear into the convention or handy for a quick change in case the cosplay starts to get uncomfortable. You can easily get in your 10,000 steps at Tokyo OK, and having a good pair of shoes on hand goes a long way in making sure everyone has a good time. 

2. Plan your schedule and set expectations

As a family with neurodiversity on deck, we find that constantly setting expectations for what our schedule will include and where we will be throughout the weekend helps ensure everyone knows what to expect and has a better time. If tummies get growly, knowing that we’re planning to eat in just an hour can go a long way in keeping everyone happy. 

I ask my family to check out the schedule and mark out which events they absolutely don’t want to miss so we can create a schedule together or decide when we might want to split up. 

Now that my kids are teens, I let them venture off a bit without me at convention time — only, of course, after going over the TOK convention rules and my own expectations for them. We also make sure everyone’s phone is fully charged and alarms are set for the next family meeting time. We also set a designated meetup spot in case everyone should become separated for any reason without phone service because you can’t be too careful. I also ask for my kids to check in with me regularly in our family group chat.

You will see loads of teens here without their folks, and that’s totally fine as long as they are respectful of others. As Zac Murphy advised, “Just be aware of their surroundings, remember their manners and please don’t run. We do have attendees with limited mobility and we want to make sure that no one gets a scraped knee or a bruised body.”

Although it should go without saying that there’s always some risk in letting your teens out of your sight, the event team puts in a ton of work to maintain a safe environment for all attendees. As Zac told me, “We try our best to ensure that any children or adults for that matter feel safe at our event.”

3. Talk about safety

I’ll never forget a few years back at a convention that was spread across several locations downtown and we ran into a pair of young teenage girls walking down a fairly empty downtown street in what had to be miserably uncomfortable cosplay. Both of their phones had died, and they had gotten themselves lost just walking around downtown. 

I quickly mommed up and asked them to stick with us, giving them one of the personal alarms I carried with me since I didn’t have a charger to help them out. But the experience has haunted me ever since because I realized that these kids had probably planned ahead and still made a couple of very understandable teenager mistakes that could have gotten them into an unsafe situation. 

If you’ve been following my blog for any amount of time, you know safety is a huge concern for our family. I’ve written a lot about having open conversations with kids and teens about digital safety, and I think it’s important to go over this one more time before every convention so your kids don’t accidentally give too much personal information away. 

It’s also a good idea to cover where they can and can’t go and what to do if they run into trouble. If teens do have any issues when you’re not around, make sure they know how to look for and connect with TOK staff, who are trained to help. 

I also make sure my kids know not to leave the grounds and take a moment to confirm that their phone ringers or vibration is on so they don’t miss my call if there’s an emergency since my kids are kind of notorious for not picking up. I also check their charge personally and make sure they’ve got the map downloaded because our family tends to be just a bit directionally challenged. 

4. Pack everything you need

If you’re planning to spend the whole weekend at TOK or even just a long day, a backpack full of the right items can go a heckuva long way in making sure everyone has an amazing time. 

Here’s what’s in my bag for keeping our neurodivergent crew comfy, happy, and well-cared for:

• Sanitizer
• Band-aids and Neosporin (TOK blisters go hard)
• Water bottles for everyone — there will be water stations around the convention and hydration is necessary
• Emergency granola bars
• Noise-canceling headphones for my neurospicy kiddo with noise sensitivity
• Sunglasses for light sensitivity
• Fidgets for focus during panels
• Charger and power bank
• Ibuprofen, Claritin, and Pepto tabs
• Small bills
• Menstrual hygiene products
• A drawing pad and manga

If you or a family member plans on wearing a cosplay, you might also consider:

• Duct tape
• Safety pins
• Small sewing kit
• Extra deodorant
• Extra cosplay makeup
• Bobby pins

5. Locate the quiet zones

Even if you don’t have little ones or a neurospicy crew, quiet zones can be a lifeline when your group has become overstimulated from a long afternoon of trekking around the con. Depending on the time of day (and which events are scheduled at the time), the gaming rooms do tend to have a handful of quiet spots, and plenty of folks can find gaming console time makes for a decent respite. 

Zac Murphy tells me there is also a dedicated quiet zone this year as part of TOK’s continued effort to make the event more accessible: “We do offer a quiet space in the Ruffin Event Center located in the forest room, which is open till 7 p.m.”

A Few Final Thoughts

You don’t have to do everything — you know your crew and what their tolerance for a big, crowded event is. Three hours of quality fun on separate days followed by an evening of decompression at home can be way better for some folks than three hours of fun followed by six hours of exhaustion and overstimulation. 

Our family can have a blast hanging out at the convention, but a few of us need to completely decompress afterward for at least a day — think quiet, dark, cool spaces without any pressure to interact. And that’s totally fine — as their mom, I make sure to consider their downtime as I’m planning for our weekend at TOK. 

Encourage honest self-advocacy where kids can let you know how they’re feeling without fear that you’ll be frustrated because they really wanted to go to the convention but now need a time out.

Here are a few more tips:

• Don’t be afraid to come early, take a nap, and then come back
• Plan to come for a short time every day if you need to
• Be sure to plan something for everyone (even parents)
• Make sure everyone understands that plans can change
• Write your phone number on younger kids or kids who don’t communicate well verbally in case you get separated
• Go on Sunday afternoon if heavy crowds are tough for your crew
• Schedule time to eat (there will be some food at the convention)
• Create a visual schedule if it’s helpful
• Stay hydrated!

And one final reminder from our TOK buddy Zac: “Always smart to make sure you have water or electrolytes, a charged phone, and an open mind!”

The convention runs from July 11 – 13, 2025 at Marriott Southern Hills. You can pick up weekend badges or day passes on the TOK registration site, and passes are available for shopping or gaming only. 

Do you have any favorite tips for convention attendance or amazing memories you’d like to share from TOK years past? Let me know in the comments and I will add it to my next Tokyo, OK post! I hope to see you at TOK this year, but either way, have a beautiful week in your little nebula!