Penang Bon Odori Festival 2008 - Part 1

After working for more than two years in Penang, this would be my first time going to a Bon Odori festival ;p

Well, for the last two years it was raining and I really didn't want to crowd with so many people while getting all wet. Fortunate for me, the weather today was great - the afternoon was not too hot and there was plenty of wind, which made the whole climate pleasant :)

In Malaysia, Bon Odori is held anually, mainly in Selangor and Penang. It held at a smaller scale and those held in Japan and is more to introduce Japanese culture to Malaysia rather than focusing on the Buddhism aspect of the festival.

My friends and I arrived at Esplanade at around 6pm+ and people was starting to gather quickly.

There was a speech going on at that time...kind of peaked my interest since the speaker was doing it in English.

Well, silly me - I thought - when I found out who it was. Of course they would have invited the Chief Minister to officiate the festival ;p

Lots of people, mostly buying food. Others probably just wondering about looking for interesting things to see. There weren't that much of a variety in terms of Japanese food - but I guess it would suffice if you wanted just to snack while waiting for the Bon dance to begin.

Did I mention that there were lots of people?

If you don't like Japanese, no problemo. Just go for one of the local varieties. I even saw some Taiwanese specials - which made me wonder what they were doing there at a Japanese festival ;p

After getting some tako yaki, ramen, yakisoba and some drinks, we headed off to watch the performances going on in full swing at the field. The following are some pictures of the drum and dance performances. I'll let the pictures do most of the talking from here on ;)

This group was concluding their drum performance

Full of enthusiasm!

Next was a group of Japanese ladies performing some dances - don't ask me what dance cause I didn;t manage to catch it when the MC (emcee) announced it ;p - though it was a slow dance.


They later came out to offer a bow to the audience, who was very appreciative of their performance. I believe this lady is the head of the group that performed.

Right...I think this has been quite a long entry already. I was trying out some HD pictures and videos with my new camera, so will upload those tomorrow. And seeing that it's almost 2am now, it's probably a good idea that I hit the sack now and continue later.