The Good Odori

Now, our weekends by default are notoriously meant for sleeping in to make up for the lack of adequate sleeping hours we don't get during the weekdays. But there are times when it's worth making the effort to get up early - like for a friend's wedding and food-hopping while on the way there.

This time it was for meeting up with the Klangites for a quick boardgaming session and for a bah kut teh breakfast. BKT (Klang or Kepong) has become a bit of a rarity for us...the last time we had bah kut teh in Klang was in February (and that was for dry bah kut teh) while Kepong BKT was when...Ethancya and Renzze was around.

It didn't help that while BKT breakfast was slotted to be at 8am, and at 2am Friday night (technically Saturday morning) we were growling for supper. But thankfully we weren't the only one to have slept late - 'Nic bedded down at 3am once he'd finished gaming at Cheras, while Ivan just arrived back home from Penang sometime 3.30am. Phew - breakfast ended up starting at 9am at our favourite spot: Teluk Pulai corner BKT shop.

Gaming session saw everyone (save us) showing heavy interest in Formula De. 'Nic intro'ed us the game using the Monaco map (there's plenty others including Sepang, but we think they're currently out of print?). Surprisingly enough we won the game leaving everyone else eating our dust when we decided to sprint throughout the way and we had rather good dice rolls. Ivan opted the Mad Max route of dangerously trying to bang every car near him in order to damage them and get them out of the race - only to end up with the status of DNF (did not finish) himself. Webchitect, whom showed the most interest in the game at first - claimed the game not so interesting by the end of it.

That's us in White-Green in the lead, followed by 'Nic, June and NJH.

After that we tried out Ivan's new Drakon set. Interesting. When 'Ward joined in Citadels was brought out. We'll let 'Nic handle the games report in detail, it'll give him something to do for his blog (will put up pictures on Flickr sometime later ya).

And come evening was time for our first Bon Odori.

Lad drove us down - only, as we were nearing Panasonic the lack of traffic and people gave us some cause of doubt as to if we were at the right place. Turns out that there's two places, and the Panasonic place we were suppose to be looking for is this one.

Panasonic Ha-air-Conditioning. Heh.

Parking, of course, was far and involved not only a bit of a walk (how thankful we were it was late evening in good weather) but some serious jaywalking. Now, we'll make it clear: when we jaywalk we don't normally think about the safety of others with us yeah. There might be a chance that our jaywalking might turn into jayrunning, and we won't have the time to inform that we're doing so. And since the you guys happen to cross in a group, much safer for you guys to do so.

Notes about the Bon Odori: the good thing about going with a group of friends is that each member of the group could go queue at different stalls before meeting back at a rendezvous point where the picnic would begin. We, unfortunately, decided to queue for takoyaki (we loves takoyaki!) - which had a long queue. Took bloody 40 minutes or so before we made our purchases (RM6 for 6), and the takoyaki had no filling. Gah, will have to head to Jusco one of these days. Thankfully everyone else did better than us and got loads of food to try.

Lesson learned: eat before coming to the Bon Odori festival.

While waiting for the Cultural Dance event (21:00 'Enjoy the Cultural Dance 3') we'd spent time enjoying the eyecandy. The Cultural Dance itself put us in mind of BodyJam, Japanese-Style! Simple, with big group participation. Only you have some mad people who, instead of walking in a direction, decided that sprinting was the only way to go, and that instead of clapping hands it's supposed to be whacking yer friends on the noggin' with the fan.

It's still a bit of a surprise to us that the festival finished at 9.30pm instead of dragging till near midnight. Well, good thing anyways, as we were still hungry (and parched, and sweaty, and sticky, and slightly tired...) after that and so the gang headed off to A&Ws near Summit (another first time for us) before calling it a night.

All in all, the Bon Odori was at least something different for us...now we won't have to experience it again for at least another 5 years.