Japan Expo 2009
Kita! Kita! Kita! KITA! JAPAN EXPO!
\(｡◕‿◕｡)/
I've been waiting for one year, and it was so much fun !
Japan Expo is the biggest festival of Japanese culture and entertainment in France and became lately the biggest in Europe, and the second Japanese festival outside Japan. It isn't surprizing since French holds the second largest communities of manga bookworms.
But there aren't only manga at all in the festival: musique, cosplay, games, martials arts and traditional culture take an importance place in the festival as well.
The festival took place in Parc des Expositions in Paris (as usual) and lasted 4 days. I bought tickets for 2 days only and choose the days mainly because of the concerts i was interested of.
DAY 1 (SATURDAY 4TH)
The run to Paris was so much pain. The ligne b was 'on-hold' for a while, then my cousin and i realized that the drivers was on strike later. We had to gone by a roundabout way to reach the ligne b which was the only subway line to reach our destination. The quay was saturated with people, and of course cosplayers within it.
After more than 1hour and half, we finally reach there. Well kind of, since there was the hyper long line-up which took abou 45minutes. Fortunally I took an umbrella so my skin wouldn't be burnt as hell.
The outside didn't changed much since i came last time (2 years ago). There were many more stands and activities points.
I first had a look round the festival. But it was too huge to visit all the place at once and too hot to walk too long (thought there was dozens of air conditionners up abover our heads. I mainly stayed in the stands looking for the goodies.
For example:
i want one of these pushies bags ♥
traditional thingies
posters & cds. lots of 동방신기 posters !
And of course for lucnh time, lunch box =D! Went 'outside' (well it is call outisde because there's grass and places to sit down, but it is actually inside the building), it was full of people. But still managed to find a place to sit. (It was unconfortable to sit with a dress >o<)
Au menu, mokona sandwich ( according to this awesome tutorial here) Easy to make! I modify the 'recipe' by using wholemeal bread instead of white bread. But the result is quite similar.
gyoza on a layer of tomotoes (+ soya fish): very light (since i steamed it) and yummy!
It was dissapointed that no one had made bento, when i looked around me =(. I thought I could have made a bento friend u__u
Move on.The afternoon, I did the tour of the rest of the building.
First, Naruto-Kana stand. Huge balloon Naruto, illustrations, paper konaha headband of the manga
Then Clamp's corner. Very nice place with illustrations. Can't stop fangirling over Mokona ^^
Fangirled over Chopper as well. He was so popular this year ! I saw pushies of him everywhere (but urgh expensive)!
Had a rest for awhile and spot some 'very alike' cosplayers. Chii (Chobits), Luffy, Zoro, Brook, Pandaman, Sogeking (One piece biased) and everyone from Ouran High school host club
Then, 5:40 PM, time for school food punishment concert ! I've waited for it all day actually ! I went like 10minutes in advance, but the place was crowded with 30-50 people already. I was a few meters from the stage, but it was better than nothing cause i took quite a lot of blurry pics !
earlier at the dedicaces.
Love this group, and very glad they come to Japan Expo. Their music are unique, Yumi-chan's voice calms my mind, as well as she excites me when she yells. Keyboard's Hasuo has his style of playing, he was so into it. I liked zooming at drums' Hidai but his movement were too fast to capture. Didin't took pictures much of bass's Yamasaki cause the spotlight was always behind him so the pictures came out very bad.
best shots 8D
he look like a korean D:
so far yet close
he's cool at playing bass 8)
Tracklist (songs i remember, not in order):
you may crawl [air feel, color swim 2007]- highly recommended ! + takkyu ishino remix - for the encore
sky step [air feel, color swim 2007]- nobody understood the title at first lol
futuristic imagination [2009]- my favorite song ♥
art line [air feel, color swim 2007]- cheerful song =)
flat [futuristic imagination 2009] - don't like much the chorus, but the versus are awesome (guitar especially)
flow [riff-rain 2008] - awesome song! and perf ♥
feeback [riff-rain 2008] - i need to find the lyrics of this nice song D:
killer [riff-rain 2008] - keyboard rocks!
pool [school food is good food 2007] - i didn't noticed this song until the concert, awesome!
+ one balladish song: not sure if it is 'turn', '曖昧に逸れる' or '遠くの箱の中'
They played for pretty much 40 minutes, plus the encore (thank you so much for playing one more song for us♥).
The time flyed so fast, i didn't noticed my fatigue until the concert ended. But I was sweating as heck and very thristy because of shouting/cheer up. Very memorable concert ♥
At last, captured the lapin crétin from Rayman (and me with it) before leaving the building at 7:00PM. Of course, the way back home was more painful nad it was such a niceeee day ^^.
DAY 2: http://vavanie.livejournal.com/8970.html