I was doing an internship for ICN gallery pass 3 days as the gallery got a booth in the annual Hyper Japan festival. ICN basically is a gallery concentrates on showcasing art works from Japan and probably some other oriental works, which is not far from my place, which me and Driv happened to walk pass and discovered an great exhibition was going on.

I was expecting some great fun from Hyper Japan since I love Japanese ‘stuff’ but then realize the festival is not something for me, as it is more of a ‘Otaku’ things such as manga, games, cosplay things going on. I felt tired to look at over-dressing up people, Japanese wannabes all around for three days. I did enjoy some cosplays though and learned to judge good or bad performing for a little bit. It happened 2 times that some older English people came up to me and asked what was all about that dressing up people, and while asking they explained that it was their first time to come to a Japanese cultural festival. I didn’t really know much about cosplay but still I tried my best to respond to these curious people, as they probably wouldn’t know where to find the answer as they didn’t even know the phrase “Cosplay”. So I tried to answer them, in my own simplest way: We call this dressing up thing as Cosplay, basically you just dress up and make yourself look like the character you choose to be, and they do this because they like the character so much they want to be like them.

I knew this is not really the correct definition but well, at least they know to search the word ‘Cosplay’ in the internet now. The job was easy enough, i handed out some nice postcard flyers from the gallery and tell people who we are and what we do. I met the Japanese curators of the ICN Hyper Japan show, which brought pop manga color prints done by 20 young Japanese artist to be sell in the expo, and we had a chat, I told her where am I from and she told me she happened to know a friend in Malaysia, whom she met last year curating exhibition together in Tokyo, his name is Juan. Oh wow, this is the second time in the recent that I met people who know some of my friend back in Malaysia, what an coincident and how great is that, I told her I knew Juan and I worked for him before, she wanted me to greet him (I have not do it yet but soon will when I got the chance to see him).

So 2 days in a row I had some nice Japanese lunch, after crazy long queue. I had Gyudon and Ebi fry the first day, and then Okonomiyaki with Tempura prawn on top (This is really tasty!) and a Temusu. I nearly spent money on a colorful wig and also a pair of car ear hair clip but now I am proud of myself that I resisted the desire for things that not necessary to own. I spent time to look at new and vintage kimonos and again think hard to have it or not, I didn’t get it in the end and yes again I thought I made a correct decision.

I was basically sick of the environment full of Japanese wannabes and I left the expo early everyday, I had of course imagined there might be many cool looking Japanese people around which could keep me excited but disappointedly no, this is kind of predictable though, cool kids don’t bother to go to an expo like this (haha)