Surf and Turf

Konnichiwa!

In Japan there seems to be a festival just about every weekend for various things. Could be flowers blooming like the Cherry Blossoms, a Japanese Holiday, or just because it's so darn cold and they make some cool things out of ice for the annual ice festival. Dennis and I have been to two festivals so far while living in Japan and both have been amazing in their ways.

Beef and Garlic Festival. 

The first festival we went to was the Beef and Garlic Festival in Takko Japan. Takko is the largest distributor of Garlic in the country. The town is actually sister cities with Gilbert, California and another city in Italy which are two other garlic capitols of their regions. I think beef and garlic are two of my favorite things to eat so I could not wait to go. We went with a huge group from Den's squadron which made the day even better. We caravaned out there and knew we had arrived when we saw garlic shaped light bulbs. When we parked at the festival their were also garlic headed scare crows. Duh! We had to take a picture with those little guys. At the festival you pick out your beef from several different cuts and buy this amazing garlic sauce to cook it in. Once you have gotten all your goodies you take it to one of the many grills outside and cook up some of the scrumptious garlic flavored beef. The whole grilling outside made me feel like I was at an SEC football game tailgating with a bunch of my new Japanese friends. We even were allowed to bring our own cooler with some adult beverages and let's just say we had an amazing time with all our friends.

My Salmon Catch

He was a big one 

The second festival that we attended was the Salmon Festival in Oirase. This is another food festival but the interesting part of this one is you had to catch your own food. At this festival there were the standard food booths with beer and meat on a stick. They even had a local Indian food vendor selling curry and nan....yum!  But the main event was the salmon catching. The salmon which were caught earlier in the week are all in a small pool about mid calf deep. When the announcers say to go everyone gets into the water and try's to catch a salmon with their bare hands. There is a time limit and you don't want to be caught empty handed so you are determined to catch a salmon. It is harder than you think especially when you're wearing super cool kitchen gloves and the salmon slip right through your hands.  Once you have caught your fish the Japanese men in the pool hand you a bag and you exit the pool to get in line to have your fish fileted. While I was watching my fish's head get cut off I made a puppy lip sad face and all the Japanese men just laughed at me. I felt bad for that poor little bugger. But at least we know that his death was not in disgrace. We grilled and baked up Salmon for the next week or so.

Den's Catch! 

Both festivals were great and really got you out in the Japanese culture. We are looking forward to attending more in the years to come. On a side note, I am a working woman now! (Dennis is so happy) I had my first subbing gig at the elementary school on base. It was fun to be working with the kiddos again....definitely makes me miss teaching music full time.

I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season! For those of you coming to Maui at the end of December I can't wait to see you there. It's getting a little too chilly in Misawa and I will need to escape the never ending snow :)