Asian American Expo & Anime Impulse 2016
Words and Photos by GilbertKicking off the new year with some new coverage of a local event, formerly known as the Chinese American Expo, the Asian American Expo is hosted at the beginning of each year to celebrate the coming of the Lunar New Year Festival, with the goal recreating the New Year celebrations found across Asia at this time of the year. Food, shopping, entertainment and fun – these are all annual staples that can be found at each year’s event. In conjunction with this event the creators of the KTOWN Night Market and the OC Block Party, they introduced the first Anime Impulse event that happened side by side with the Asian American Expo. The Anime Convention-like setup was a really relaxed event with what appeared to have vendors and artist alley sharing the same space and people could buy various merchandise, prints of popular cosplayers, sit and enjoy some panels or presentations and just generally check out the sights aside from all the food from the other areas of the expo.Anime Impulse also brought out a fun line-up of Itasha cars. These are popular sight in japan as fans display their devotion to their fandom in the form of their vehicles.
Popular San-X character Rilakkuma was making an appearance there in the VIP area of the show.
The New Year's Scrolls are generally tied to a tree in hopes that they will come true
I hope this kid gets less homework too.
The street food is what the KTOWN Night Market / OC Block Party are known for so there's tons of food vendors from all varieties of food available for the attendees.
The other exhibit halls featured all sorts of merchandise from food to home goods.
Even Selfie Sticks were on sale. Why would someone need 3, I'm not sure.
Also I found this gem on my way out from the food court.
Basically it's a crisp waffle-like cake with a condensed milk filling as seen below.
