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Bon Odori 2008

July 15, 2008

Went to my first Bon Odori Festival on Saturday. I’ve reading it for years, mainly through Silencer‘s blog, so when i heard about it on the radio on Friday, i made sure i didn’t miss it this time round. Bon Odori is actually the Japanese Hungry Ghost Festival, but here in Malaysia it’s more of a cultural festival to expose all thing Japanese to Malaysians. This is the 32nd Bon Odori held in KL.

We reached Matsushita Stadium quite early but already we had to park far away.

The crowd there was still in but streaming in at about 4.30pm. Everyone gets a plastic fan, sponsored by various Japanese corporations. Very useful.
field

The one side of the field was lined with stalls selling Japanese foodstuff (and local stuff passed off as Japanese). These are some of the stalls – that Yokomoni is an excellent tasting ice-cream from a cute dispenser.
jap ice cream

We bought one – chocolate of course. RM5. Very refreshing.
choc ice

We went through all the stalls… lots of variety. Like chocolate strawberries…
choc strawberries

Something that looked like kaya balls…
kaya balls

Sushi King even brought their conveyor belt here. Note the sponsor on my kid’s fan…
sushi king

Assortment of fried snacks. I thought they were mostly quite expensive, but my wife insisted that they were selling at cost price (!).
all types snacks

Of course, no running away from sushi. Quite a few stalls were selling it.
sushi

We bought this fried chicken meat on a stick for RM3. Very tasty.
fried chicken on a stick

My kids loved this mushroom cheese sausage from the Jusco stall. RM5. They also had jalapeno flavor. Very Japanese…?

mushroom chicken sausage

Of all people to meet there, we bumped into Pat‘s sister, Patricia. Boyfriend works for some Jap company.

This stall was quite popular with a long line of folks. They had lots of imported ice-cream flavors.
all types of ice cream

We bought the Hershey’s cookies and cream…
hershey1

(mmm… yummy)
hershey2

…and the Ghana black choc one…
ghana1

Taste almost the same as the regular Ghana choc bars we bought.
ghana2

Walking around i kinda notice there are a lot of Japanese expats here in Malaysia. You can see lots of them here, especially the girls in their yukatas.
jap girls

It’s easy to tell Japanese girls from the non-Japanese ones. These are Japanese…
jap girls 3

So are these…
jap girls 2

These two NOT Japanese. They were speaking Cantonese.
not jap girls

I’m not so sure about these though…
not so sure

After eating, we walked across the field to the grandstand, this is the stage for the performances.
the stage

After waiting for a bit, the performances were about to start. These are the drummers…
drummers

and here comes the dancers!
performers

The stage was a bit far to capture the dance on our camera, but they were very good.
performance

By now the field was packed like a political rally (!). It was quite a sight to see almost everyone on the field dancing and moving together with the performers.
packed

This was the guest performers by local students doing some fan dance. At first they were quite organized, but after like 5 minutes, they started to get kelam kabut… good try tho 🙂
red and white

We didn’t stay for the 3 other performances, so we left about 8.30pm. We’ll be back next year…

[tags]bon odori, malaysia, japan, japanese[/tags]

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