2009 The World Air Guitar Championships didn't receive a lot of coverage this year in Japan. Probably because the title went to Sylvain Quimene of France who performed under the name Gunther Love (below). There was some interest on the Japan side, however since it their champion this year was a woman for the first time. Mei "May" Kudo scored 16.4 points to register an eleventh place finish. Since only the top 10 went on to appear a second time, she missed out on a repeat performance. 26 year old Kudo works for toy maker Takara Tomy in their PR department and used to be a presenter on local TV in her hometown Aomori. She thinks she finally won the Japanese heats because she compensates for being short by trying to be more dynamic than anyone else. Her introduction to air guitar was through her employer who were looking for a way to promote their new "Air Guitar PRO" toy. There's another 2008 clip of her on YouTube performing in front of Kiddyland in Harajuku. At her first attempt, she place eighth in the Japanese qualifiers but wasn't happy with that outcome and tried again the following year, placing 2nd. She was planning on giving up after that but was encouraged to give it another go this year and went on to claim the title. Kudo says it was inspiring to go to Finland and find an audience of 10,000 people and she also enjoyed meeting the other competitors. She remains undecided whether to give it a shot next year.