Janet & myself decided to volunteer at the Bon Odori festival this year under Cheng Ni's group.

We arrived at Panasonic Sports Complex around 2:30pm and parked right inside, beside the tennis courts - i think.

We met up with Cheng Ni, Cheng Yi and Cadry and proceed to report ourselves in to Amy & Steven (our leads). Later Carmen, and a few other volunteers arrived.

Around 3:30pm, we had our Bento (lunch? dinner? ??) before getting our "assignments". Our group is assigned to distribute Uchiwa to guests. Due to limited amount of uchiwa, we were to only give 1 to each guest. The uchiwa's have a standard front; which is the Bon Odori 2007 logo. The other side is designed according to the sponsoring company. Among the companies were, Toyota, Honda, Sushi-King, Perodua, etc...

By 4:30pm, we have finished arranging the uchiwa bases at both Front and back entrances. By this time, a lot of participants (performers, helpers, etc) and guest have arrived and are waiting near our Uchiwa bases.

Most of the early birds were there to avoid the crowd and rush. One other important factor is parking - there are not much right outside the complex. If you arrive late; you need to prepare yourself for a very very long walk. Another advantage of being an early bird is being able to check out a lot of the activities and food stalls around the place before things get extremely busy and at times, chaotic!

Around 5pm, the guests were allowed into the complex and our uchiwa distribution project begins!

A few points to note:
1. Generally, the crowd were friendly and civilised; but some were very "aggressive" - grabbing more than 1 uchiwa without any respect for the volunteers or other guests.
2. There were a huge variety of guest - as young as newborns to great grandparents!
3. Attire are another very interesting mix - we have Japanese and non-Japanese dressed up in traditional & modern costumes! Some are very unique, but most are very CUTE!
4. Crowd handling - can be better as out of 4 entrances (defined by pillars), most guests were squeezing thru only 1!

We did this until around 8:30pm. During that time, I managed to take some photos of the arriving guests, food stalls and the main stage area. There were a lot of other photographers around, especially during the main dance event! Lighting was challenging -
extremely dark (most of the dance area) to extremely bright (spot lights).

After we finished distributing the uchiwa, our group managed to walk around the complex. We tried to buy food but the crowd was too big!

At around 9:30pm, the event was finishing and we started to leave. We travelled a short distance to a mamak near the Petronas station and had our "dinner".
Photos and videos via this tag: http://lancechee.multiply.com/tag/bon%20odori

Notes: Not much photos and creativity because my main objective was volunteering and photography was secondary. Please do leave some comments and links, especially in regards to Bon Odori 2007. Would love to see some other photographer and volunteers' photo and stories!