Festival Japan!

Saturday was the Japanese festival at Uwajimaya and I almost missed it! If I hadn't been at a friend's party Saturday night I wouldn't have driven by and seen all the booths setup, that prompted a visit to their website to find out what was up.

First stop upon arrival, taiyaki.







This is one of my all time favorite treats, taiyaki is made by placing cast iron molds with fish or round shapes on a griddle, pouring batter into them, let that cook most of the way, and add either the traditional asuki bean paste or vanilla custard on half the molds. Once this is done you flip the griddle cakes that don't have filling on them onto the ones that do, pop out and serve. The flavor of the cake is like a waffle, and with the custard inside it's just perfect, one of these days I'll even get brave enough to try the asuki.

Once I had my wonderfully warm taiyaki, I set to wandering around the booths at the festival and as always there were interesting and informational items on display, but it seemed like there were more information booths and fewer booths with wares for sale than in the past.

I did stop and watch the takoyaki guys for awhile though, I don't eat it but still think it's pretty. Actually I keep thinking about picking up one of the molds made for home use and just improvising my own fillings.





Wandering about I saw quite a few people dressed in Coz play including the soy sauce sample lady.


I would have been making way worse faces, she had some of the most insane shoes on.

There were even some people dressed in yukatas.



There were two stages, one did primarily martial arts oriented things, while that stage I was at for most of the day was more entertainment based. There were several Taiko groups that played one that I'd seen before and really liked was Monmouth Taiko.




Oh, and my knitting made the trip out as well.

Another group that I hadn't seen before was Takahashi Taiko, though I'm not 100% on their name. This group is kind of nuts, but they have great energy and are a lot of fun to watch.



The last thing I watched was the natto eating contest, natto is fermented soy beans so they're a little mushy and they have this really really stringy goop which kinda holds it all together. Now I imagine that if you are a fan of fermented foods, like sauerkraut that it wouldn't be all that bad, but this stuff smells nasty and I wont touch it. This is the only eating contest I've ever seen that the organizers are required to supply barf bags and have a minimum distance from the crowd due to the high probability of regurgitation. The MC for the event did note that of the previous day's contestants roughly half had needed to use the bags.





Luckily for us none of the contestants on Sunday needed the bags.

Uwajimaya No Haru No Matsuri!

Yay, today was the Spring Festival at Uwajimaya! It even rained for it, though it wasn't cold. Uwajimaya is the name of one of the larger Asian markets in the area, and they do celebrations and festivals throughout the year.


So first things first, get taiyaki, unfortunately this was the line for it.

Taiyaki is a warm dessert, made by heating 2 part fish shaped molds on a grilltop. Then you pour "waffle" batter into them, and let it cook a bit, before adding the filling. The traditional filling is Asuki bean paste, but I prefer the vanilla custard filling. Once the filling has been put on 1/2 of the mold, the other half is laid on top, and it's ready to serve. See, yum...
















Once I had a couple of taiyaki it was time to find a seat and watch the performances.

This was a group of Koto players, I liked it, but it was making my friends sleepy. One thought it needed a good backbeat to make it more interesting.












I was only able to stay for one other performance and lucky, it turned out to be the Taiko Drummers! If I remember right they were from Monmouth.