220516 - Auditions x Matsuri

#100happydays: Day 15

I opened my email on Thursday and found this waiting for me - long story short I DID IT, I made auditions! I know I said that it was likely that everyone who auditioned would make it through into either professional or amateur groupings, but even with that in mind seeing this was a huge joy. 

I told mum about this and it seems that I kind of have her support about this, as long as it doesn't interfere with my studies and grades - I've promised that I'll do my absolute best to juggle everything.

I can't wait to start training next week, I'm super nervous but here's hoping it all goes well!


101 Things I Think About: Day 15
I went to the Super Japan Matsuri with Panda and a few friends from EDIT to check this festival out - we'd heard about this and requested for media passes to cover the event, and we were really excited to see what this festival had promised to deliver.

Well, we were sorely disappointed. The event had promised a night full of fun, with good street food and fun traditional games - something along the lines of transforming the place into the "streets of Asakusa", if I read one advertorial right.

All this gave us pretty high expectations of the event - I mean we were really looking forward to having a taste of an authentic Japanese festival as promised. How could anyone not, honestly, after reading through everything the festival said it would have?

I was personally most excited about seeing the traditional games that we would get to play, like:

Shateki - you have a gun, and you're supposed to shoot pellets at the prize you want and knock it off the shelf to win it.

Yoyo-tsuri, where you're supposed to fish balloons out of the water with metal hooks tied to paper (it's tougher than it sounds, but really really fun).

Katanuki - these are pieces of hard candy, and you're supposed to use a pin to pop the images out of the candy without breaking it (it's really quite difficult!).

Senbonbiki - this was touted as a sure-win game of sorts, as you'd win whatever was on the end of the string you pulled (it's counted as a sure-win game because you're bound to win something, no matter how small it is).

Wanage - you're supposed to throw hoops at the prize you want, and if you manage to put the hoop completely over the object you win it!

All that, and this wasn't even including the food. Sweet lord, we had so many things we wanted to eat - a friend of mine was waxing lyrical about the takoyaki that he was dying to eat, and I really wanted to try sweets (and was positive I'd murder someone if I didn't get some dango at the festival).

I've been craving dango since ever - honestly I don't think there's ever been a time since I didn't want dango.

Can you blame us for having these kinds of images in mind when it came to the festival, honestly?

The great many of us who had seen festivals via anime series would have had much higher expectations of the event, mostly because we had seen how much fun the characters had at such festivals. Just about every anime series has had a summer festival episode, and many of us (I'll admit I was one of this group) would be hankering for our own anime-character-at-summer-festival moment. 

But this was the reality of the festival:

About 12 stalls for food and games, and about 12 thousand (and steadily rising) people crammed into one little space and queueing up for food and games in the sweltering heat. Was it any wonder that the Facebook page for this event was flooded with angry reviews?

The truth is, I was extremely disappointed with the event - it wasn't what we all expected, and it sure as hell wasn't had been promised because where on earth were the "streets of Asakusa"? It was incredibly hot there, and we were all sweating so much that I felt even worse for those who actually made the extra effort to turn up in cosplay and yukata. The event was so quiet, which was weird because we felt that a festival should be loud and noisy and cheerful and festive, of all things, and the quietness of the place felt odd because music would have added to the general atmosphere of a festival.

(I didn't get my dango either, and now my dango craving's tenfold. Ugh.)

All that having been said, the organisers really were trying their best, and I don't think we should be too hard on them - they genuinely hadn't expected such an overwhelming crowd (come on, a 12k crowd is obviously too much for 12 little stalls to handle).

I definitely feel that they should have prepared for a huge crowd in the first place, though, because if they'd listened to online chatter they'd have realised that the Super Japan Matsuri was the thing that everyone was talking about. Another mistake as pointed out by many disappointed people was that they shouldn't have put "Super" in the festival name, because it led to many high hopes and expectations that they ultimately couldn't deliver on.

However, they really did try their best with the setting up of this festival, so I feel that for all our disappointment we should cut them some slack - yes, this festival was a huge fail and I'm not denying it, but this was their first time setting this up AND they made it free-for-all as well because they wanted the event to be accessible to anyone who wanted to go. I think that was pretty cool on their part, even if they'd ended up seriously underestimating the sheer number of people who'd had their ears perked up at the mere mention of anything Japanese-related. 

Today's the last day of the festival (it runs till 10pm, though I highly doubt they'll be able to keep their services running for that long), so yes do go check it out if you're still curious. Just keep this as a warning to keep your expectations very, very low because I'm not kidding when I say it's just 12 stalls, and I have no idea how crowded it's going to be.

One thing I can assure you is that it's likely to be nowhere near the chaos that we had on Friday night, though - the crowd then was immensely scary.