Kitaro at Genting

Sorry for missing in action last night, had something to talk about but I've something more important to deal with.

It was raining heavily when we head on the road at 5pm, MRR2 was moving slowly and we're a little worried that it would be jamming all the way up to Genting. The road was cleared say 15 mins on the road, to my relief.

Driving up to Genting isn't hard, it's much easier than I expected. Perhaps I've tasted the harsh terrains driving up and down Cameron Highlands, so Genting's road is just a piece of cake, heh.

Reached there around 6pm, which is just good timing. Collected the concert tickets and coupons, and headed to Coffee Terrace for dinner buffet.

The buffet dinner is a good one, lots of varieties to choose! You can get local dishes to other cuisines like West Asian, Japanese and Western. I naturally stick with Japanese as it comes with salmon and cuttlefish sashimi, yummy!

Headed to the Arena of Stars at 7:15pm. As usual I would have a peek of the CDs they're selling before the show starts. Bought this "Kojiki" album, CD + DVD, for RM 45.



The show started about 8:15pm.


Recognise this figure now?

Intro music was something usually unheard of, must be either his unreleased track or so.

Soon after some brief speech by the maestro the show went into a purely audio-visual experience, where the screens are showing images of the nature, accompanied by the celestial music performed by the band. The effect is good, I enjoyed it, so do the audiences.



However, somehow I did not felt that this concert is as good as the previous one I attended. He did plays some of his famous works like "Heaven and Earth" & "Silk Road", and the rest he plays some unfamiliar tunes and noisy ones.

I had a hard time to enjoy the overwhelming bass guitar performance. This supposed to be an instrumental concert, and yet the presence of bass guitar somewhat turn it into a rock concert, a hard rock concert.

I hated the bass guitar's noise as it covers all the treble & bass sounds, making other instruments inaudible. Worse is, this part continues for the rest of the concert 'til the every end, so I did not enjoyed it as much as I wanted to be.

"Matsuri" supposed to be a great song, but then too much influence of rock elements. The encore songs does not turn me on as well. Felt unease as I can't really accept this kind of music.



To be fair, Kitaro is no doubt a very talented musician. He plays wide range of instruments form keyboard, woodwinds, to percussions, and even guitar! The only instrument he did not touch on would be the strings.

Too bad.... this time I'm quite disappointed with the concert, it plays something that I cannot accept and ruined my experience. Luckily this doesn't ruined Kitaro's reputation on my book, so I will still be listening to his music.

Head back to the hotel soon after that, wanted to sleep early but ended up hooked in front of the TV watching All-England Badminton Open semi-final matches until 2am lol....

After breakfast headed downhill, but stop by at the temple to have a look. Some pics....

The symbolic pagoda.


Big Buddha statue.


The founder of Genting Highlands, the late Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong.


There're a lot of places to be explored in the temple, but we didn't go through every single of those interesting spots. Highly recommended for those going up to Genting to check up the temple, you can't miss it. It's free of charge too.

Well that pretty much summed up this time's Genting trip.