Early this month, my friends from one of my orgs in uni, UPM-OMAKE, invited me to attend the annual Bon Odori festival that was happening at Manila Japanese school. Because I've never experienced an actual Japanese festival, I immediately said yes. I had a bit of an idea of what it would be like, but that certainly didn't prepare me for what I saw. So many people in yukata and jinbei! This is such a weeb thing to say, but it really felt like we were in a J-drama of some sort, haha! I actually had to stop myself from squeeing like an idiot when people started doing the Bon Odori! We didn't join in though, because I thought it would be better to sit it out and watch from the sidelines. Truthfully, I wanted to just watch everyone and everything. I couldn't believe I was actually experiencing something I'd only seen on TV before, so I wanted to just take everything in. I only have a couple of regrets - one, not wearing a yukata, because all the girls who did were so pretty, and two, not being able to speak (or much less read) Nihongo well, because I wanted so much to talk to the people there. But all in all, it was an amazing experience, spent with amazing people.

Btw, special thanks to my OMAKE kouhai Nico for letting me use some of her photos! I got too caught up in the excitement that I kept forgetting that I had a camera with me, lol. Thank you, Nico! ♥