Anime Festival Asia Malaysia 2012

Day 0
Firstly, on Friday, it is Anime Festival Asia Malaysia (AFAMY) Day 0, which is the press preview event of AFAMY. The press preview basically is to introduce the special guests of AFAMY and also selling tickets for AFAMY. The tickets that are sold there are Festival access, Festival + Stage full access, Free standing concert ticket and VIP concert ticket. Tickets start selling from 8am if not mistaken, and the press preview starts at 6pm. I go there around 3pm with my friend and bought the tickets. When I arrive there, there was no queue at the ticketing booth at all. Quite lucky I guess, because I remember at the morning I saw photo posted by AFA, showing a long queue waiting to buy tickets. I bought 8 tickets for Saturday and 2 tickets for Sunday. 2 tickets on both day is for me and my friend, and the rest I help other friends to buy. All tickets are Festival + Stage full access. After buying the tickets, we went to Shikiya Restaurant to wait till the press preview time. At there, I also meet some new friends from a Facebook Anime Group. About 5pm, we go back to the stage and saw huge crowd out there. The ticketing booth having long queue and the front of the stage is full of people. Fortunately, I found an excellent spot to have a good view of the stage and take photo. 2 new friends I just met took out a drawing block and start drawing a fansign, as he just had art class before coming here. The fansign they draw attracts lots of photographer to take photo of them, and they even get interviewed. Around 6pm, the press preview starts, and the emcee of the press preview is Danny Choo and Ferlyn Yoshimi. They introduced the guests that come for AFAMY. The guests are celebrity cosplayer from Japan, KANAME☆ and celebrity cosplayer group, SP Cats from Korea. Other than that, japanese artist that will have concert in AFAMY are Aimi, Kalafina, Kurosaki Maon, Sea☆A, KOTOKO and FLOW. the photos of AFAMY 2012 Day 0 can be found in my Facebook album.

Day 1
On Saturday, I done preparing myself to AFAMY at about 5am. I actually didn't sleep for whole night, because the night before this I went home about 1.30am after yumcha with my friends. Then, after bath and watch some anime, it's already 3am. I wanted to sleep for few hours but at the end I could not sleep. Guess I'm too excited? *are you elementary school kids who are excited to go for picnic? Orz* On day 1, I did not drive there. The first reason is I not sure how much is the parking price at there, secondly I don't know where PWTC actually is. So, me and my friend decided to take LRT. I did some googling, and found out that from Sri Petaling LRT can straight away reach PWTC. Unfortunately, not long after we board the LRT, I heard news that LRT from Sentul to PWTC is not working, and we had to go down from Sultan Ismail station. After getting down from there, we actually wanted to take taxi to PWTC, but because there are too many people there waiting for taxi, so we decided to walk over there since it's still early. I use the GPS apps installed on my phone to get the direction to PWTC. We walked around 20 mins, 2km distance to reach there. On the way of walking, I pass by my mum's office and then I roughly know where PWTC is now. After we get into PWTC, we started to queue to get in the hall. The first thing to see when you get into the hall will be the Mirai Itasha. Damn feel like I'm typing some really long essay, because I really got many things to talk about. Guess I will just focus on some important part. The best part of Day 1 is the presentation of Culture Japan by Danny Choo. During the presentation, Danny shared his experience about how he get into his job and many stuffs, and he really inspired me a lot. He made me think that I can fulfill my dream to Japan too if I work hard on it. For photos of Day 1 will be available here

Day 2
On Sunday, although the LRT was already fixed when I return from PWTC, but today I decided to drive there, as I already roughly know where's the location of it, and my friend told me some parking nearly only cost RM3 per entry. Before starting the journey to there, I went to 7-11 and bought a pack of chocolate buns for breakfast (and I actually only had the buns for breakfast, lunch and dinner). I used my phone GPS again, and reach there easier than what I expected. The parking area I park my car is just RM2.80 per entry. This time, we are able to enter the hall before opening, because we help our friends who are having a booth in there to take some stuffs in there. Actually my aim of today is camp at the event stage, since yesterday already walked around all the booths and nothing really attracts me. I was in the event stage since 9.52am until 3pm+, when the last event ends, which is the cosplay competition. After that, I went out to the ticket counter and meet up with some RO friends that came for AFAMY. After walking around with them for awhile, they're going back, and I went back to my friend's booth to rest. My friend's booth is Malaysia Vocaloid Party (MVP). I slack around there until around 6pm+, then I help them to pack stuffs and ready to go back. Suddenly, for some reason, few of us who are packing stuffs in the booth are able to watch the concert! This was my first Japanese artist concert *although last year I watched Shimokawa Mikuni sang right in front of me, but that was just few songs, not concert!* The few of us are so excited and we're so hype since the beginning of the concert till the end. I've never imagine that I'm able to listen KOTOKO singing Shooting Star right in front of me. That was the Opening Theme of Onegai Sensei, one of the first few anime that makes me start to watch anime when I'm form 4. When FLOW 's turn, KOTOKO was just sitting 2 rows behind me! She was there until before FLOW's encore. I'm not really familiar with FLOW, as I didn't really listen to their songs. However, one song the sang was the cover of Siam Shade song, 1/3 no Junjou na Kanjou, the ending theme of Rurouni Kenshin! Kohshi Asakawa from FLOW said, last year when Japan faces earthquake and tsunami, he felt so hopeless that music can't do anything to help. However, soon he realized that music can help people to overcome their fear. Music is Power! After the concert ends, we went home, and AFAMY 2012 ends officially. The photos can be found here.

In AFAMY 2012, although I didn't bought anything, but I obtained many great things like experience, resolution and new friends. I get to know many new friends from AFAMY, friends from Malaysia Vocaloid Party, AniMaVox, friends of friend and some from Twitter. We all share the same interest, and it really feels great when you have comrade that share same interest. In my school and college friends, not many people are really interested in anime and stuffs, and some might even think I'm weird *well, I'm an otaku, I admit it and I'm proud to be one* Looking forward for the next anime event!

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