Visited the Bon Odori on Saturday evening at the Esplanade. It started with loads of speeches (which I'm glad to have missed most of it coz we went there later than we originally wanted to). Saw a group of 16 drummers from Japan - they were pretty vocal with quite a lot of "nyah-aik", "ah", etc. Hmm... wanna know something? They kinda sounded like those anime's when they yelp or something like that. Then next up, there was the Bon Odori traditional dance thinghy - where some local Japanese women started by standing in a circle on stage while some others took their place around the stage (below on the grassland). The lead for the dance below on the field, was a really amusing little old Japanese lady who wore a mask over her right ear. The public were invited to join in if they wanted to do so.

The music starts and the dance begins. As time passed, more & more people joined in the dance. Some of the girls who went in looked so dead serious! They were trying to copy the steps and actions correctly, while it was obvious that the guys couldn't care if the steps were exact. Some of the guys even looked as if they were about to topple over. Gosh... It was real fun to just observe what was going on and exchange remarks with my friends over the whole thing.

We didn't stay until the end of the event though - we decided to go off and have dinner elsewhere coz the crowd is just getting kinda packed and starting to make us feel suffocated... missed out on seeing fireworks tho.