'Cover Dance Festival K-POP Roadshow 40120', held its Japanese audition on September 11th at Tokyo Shinkiba Studio Coast. Out of the 193 dance cover teams that applied through the homepage, 22 teams made it through the preliminaries, performing in front of 3,000 audience members and�KARA. Various participants from different backgrounds, from a 9 year old girl, a housewife with 3 kids to a 42 year old salaryman, competed in hopes of being selected as the winner. In addition to the usual idol groups like KARA and T-ara, there were also covers of under represented genres of Korean music from UV's "Itaewon Freedom" to Park Hyun Bin's "Shabang Shabang". KARA's Gyuri stated, "I was touched by the amount of effort put in by the dance teams... I knew that there were a lot of Japanese fans that were interested in K-POP, but I didn't know the interest level was to the extent of people wanting to actually go to Korea or students dreaming of studying abroad there". The PD in charge of the Japanese auditions, Kim Hyun Chul, remarked, "Through the Japanese audition, we were surprised by the different genders and different age groups of K-POP fans and at all the organized K-POP dance cover teams with their own set of fans" and that "If we look at Japan, where K-POP has reached a certain stage, instead of other countries where K-POP has yet to penetrate, we will be able to confirm the true nature of K-POP's status and the direction it must head towards". 'Cover dance Festival K-POP Roadshow 40120' is an entertainment-documentary program which will air its first episode on September 22nd through MBC. Source + Photo: Osen via Nate