Bon Odori Festival 2011 @ Esplanade, Penang

Last Saturday, I went to Penang for its annual Bon Odori Festival.

Bon Odori is celebrated as similar to Chinese’s Cheng Beng in Japan and in Malaysia, it is like a Japanese cultural day to gather all Japanese culture lover.

Thanks to my friends who informed me about this event. All of them learn Japanese while I’m the only French. =.=

The festival is celebrated at Esplanade.

We arrived at about 6pm and the field is already full with people. Many people wearing traditional Japanese clothes like Yukata.

There are many stalls selling Japanese food. We have to buy coupon to buy food, like canteen day. I forgot what I ate, but it looked like this.

Also there are games for people to have fun.

 

We gathered around the center stage to watch performance. Children, teenagers, ladies and gentlemen... they did drum performances and also different dances. All of them were so energetic and performed very hard to welcome all. I’m sure they all enjoyed doing performance too.

Let's see some photos I took.

The festival was ended with an about-10-minutes fireworks display. We left the field before the celebration end to find Penang food to fill our hungry stomach. Luckily we left, or else we won’t know those photo-lovers and photographers were already standby from far to shoot the fireworks display together with the Queen Victoria Memorial Clock Tower.

Although I’m not really into Japanese culture, this event is still a happy and great experience to me =)