Malaysia's Bon Odori 2012

don, don, don!

With the event as listed before ends for this month, I want to highlight about one of the most anticipating event of the month which is Malaysia's Bon Odori 2012 organized by the Japan Club of  Kuala Lumpur and the Embassy of Japan in Malaysia in cooperation with the Alumni Look East Policy Society (Kelab Alumni Dasar Pandang ke Timur by UM I guess...), Japan Graduates Association of Kuala Lumpur, The Japanese Chamber of Trade and Industry Malaysia, Selangor State Investment Center Berhad and Tourism Malaysia. (Phew, that's a lot of sponsors!).

As this is the first Bon Odori I'm participating, I'm pretty much prepared for everything, from borrowing a DSLR, planning for transportation, financial budgeting to buying a second-hand Yukata to make sure that I will enjoy the first Bon Odori in my life. (Achievement Unlocked!)

Exactly, here.

The event is held at Kompleks Sukan Negara, Shah Alam besides the Panasonic R&D building at 14 July. I was there around 4.30 p.m. before the gate was opened to public at 5.00 p.m. for preparation. That's actually pretty early as we want to avoid traffic and to book the picnic location. Fortunately, the location was quite good. Exactly under the big clock of the stadium and it's crowded like hell after 7.00 p.m.

About the food, it was awesome! Cheap yet delicious. I bought some daifuku, and a yakisoba plus a Pocari Sweat for dinner. There was a bunch of Japanese beer like Asahi but, y'know, I don't drink.
And, about the event, it's damn exciting! I was able to join 2 out of 3 parts of the Bon Odori dance. Oh, about the first part, I was busy taking picture. By the way, the dance was arranged in 4 songs, each song is played twice. I'm forgot about the name. Even though the dancing seems simple, but it's actually quite challenging to be follow but you'll get used and enjoy it after a while. At some point, I was trying to do a perfect dance round but after that, "LOL, what am I doing"

Here are some picture that I took. Mite kudasai!

LOL, he's tired.

I do saw some visitors are like holding their back from cosplaying. Yep, cosplaying is prohibited in this event, but instead they're like bringing some of the cosplaying props. No joke, seriously I saw one. And I also saw one person that wearing PapaKiki (Papa no Iukoto wo Kikinasai) t-shirt and Hatsune Miku GoodSmile Racing t-shirt (that t-shirt is costs around 200 MYR!). It looks like there's many anime fans around here, yeah, including me.

The event is ended successfully around 9.30 p.m. I do heard my friends says that this year attendance is twice than the last year, so, no wonder I'm having quite a rough time getting through the crowd to move around. Yes, the event is thrilling. I'm so tired that on the next day, I woke up at 12.00 p.m. It's unfortunate if you can't perticipate but worry not, the Bon Odori will also be held at Penang and Johor Bahru (so I can experience Bon Odori twice this year >w<). See you next year, Bon Odori!

Group photo!!!!