35th Bon Odori 2011 Arigatou Malaysia

Last Saturday (not the yesterday Saturday), my housemate invited me to go Bon Odori Festival with her and her friends. Eventually, I ever heard of this festival before as my friend ever uploaded her photos of attending this event in facebook. But when I saw it was 35th celebration of Bon Odori festival in Malaysia, I was kinda shocked because when I was college student back in few years ago in KL, none of my friends ever told me or discuss about this event before. I wonder why.

Anyway, I was kinda excited and can't wait to tag along my baby (my Canon Ixus 130) to this event.

Basically, Bon Odori is a Japanese traditional dance and this traditional comes from Buddhism in China. It is celebrated as a reminder of the gratefulness one should feel toward one’s ancestors.

This event held at Panasonic Sports Complex, Shah Alam and seriously speaking, my housemate and I never been to Shah Alam before. But she attempted the risk of driving all along from Wangsa Maju to Shah Alam and all she can ever rely on was the direction printed from Google maps. Luckily the direction given is accurate, or else I can't think the worst part.

The event start at 7pm but by 5pm, the parking space is full and we had to park extremely far away. Once we enter, directly we hunt for foods instead of searching for seats. Guess all of us were too hungry that moment.

Variety of foods and drinks especially most are served in Japanese cuisine. Yummy yummy~

The crowd at 5.30 pm

The stage where the traditional dance is going to perform.

As we saw there are still more seats available, we went back to hunt for more foods. Looks like our motives on that evening was focus on foods, rather than the festival itself.

I had two ice-creams on that evening but I damn love the one on the left hand-side. It costs RM6 and it is very similar to the fish shaped ice-cream which sell in Sushi Tei, Suria Sabah that cost RM13. It is extremely expensive, right? I ever search for this kind of ice-cream in Kota Kinabalu but too bad, I unable to hunt any of them. Have any of you any idea where can I can this ice-cream in KL?

The crowd at 6.45 pm and immediately we try to find the best spot so that we able to watch the performance.

And there it begins...

Honestly to tell you that I am using a normal Canon compact camera, not those high and professional DSLR camera. So, this is what I able to capture during the performance.

Even the audience were dancing along

They are real Japanese little girls wearing yukata. Kawaii neh~

All I can said that this KL version of Bon Odori is not much happening compare to the one which I bumped into one of the blogger who post of this event too but it happens at Penang. However, if you got the chance, you should go at least once to expose the Japanese culture, art, dance and not forgeting the foods too. =P

Small Note: This week is my third week of study but tons of mock test and homework given. Sometimes, it makes me miss my previos working life. Done with this post and now I am going to do revision for my upcoming test. Have a great day everyone!

[Credit to: Japan-101.com, mp3japan.org]