Ebisu Festival, Nishinomiya and the Big Tuna

Silentjim — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 05:10:20 +0000

Every year, around January 10th there’s a festival held at the Ebisu branches of shinto shrines throughout Japan (well at least I think it’s throughout I’ve only ever been to the local one in Nishinomiya).

This is a 3 day festival where thousands and thousands of people queue up at the shrine to give money and pray, and also to buy, not sure what you call them, blessed “charms”? – essentially sticks with leaves on tied up with coloured ribbons and stuff (just googled it – “talismans”, or translated from the Japanese fukusasa -
lucky bamboo grass) that are blessed by the priests and bring good luck to businesses in the coming year (as seems to be traditional with these kinds of charms talismans, you bring back the previous years one and chuckit in a big pile before queuing up for the new one).

This festival is great fun and we go every year. One of the key attractions is a big tuna donated by local businesses which people queue up to stick ￥5 coins to, again, supposed to bring good luck I think.

Big Tuna

Another big attraction is the thousands of food stalls that line the streets and back streets leading up to the shrine. Never seen so much food! Every year we tuck into turkish kebabs, yakitori (chicken on sticks), karage (deep fried chicken – pronunced with a hard ‘g’) and sake from a wooden square cup.

This year I also tried squid on a stick – which I’ve been seeing around for years but never had the courage to try…pretty tasty!

Squid on a stick

For some reason aswell, this year nearly all the food stalls were rolling their food in fried eggs – pork on a stick wrapped in egg, chicken on a stick wrapped in egg, fried noodles wrapped. Must be the new trend.
For those that don’t know, Kansai is quite famous, food wise for takoyaki – which are balls of dough with octopus in, covered in mayonnaise and a brown sauce. Delicious. But of course there’s always the problem that octopusi (? – octopuses?) are quite large so you have to cut them up into small pieces, but how big should those pieces be??

Here’s a solution…

Takoyaki

Just use tiny octopusi and stick the whole thing in! (ok, sometimes one of the legs will poke through the ball, but hey, nothing in life is perfect)

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Post tags: Ebisu, Japanese Food and Drink, Matsuri, Takoyaki, Yakitori

Some Old Friends and Some Raw Chicken in Osaka

Silentjim — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 03:30:05 +0000

Last week I hooked up with some ex Japanese teachers of mine from London, in Osaka. Kyuchan who I haven`t seen for about 18months, and Tanaka sensei, who came back to Japan last year. A current student from EIC (in London) was also with Tanaka and Ashley.

We met up in Osaka and headed for a yakitori restaurant. It was great to catch up, and we laughed a lot, especially when the food arrived.
We (in hindsight) mistakenly let Tanaka order the food, we realised our mistake when it arrived.

Chicken Sashimi (Raw)

The chicken sashimi was something I`d heard about here, but never actually seen.
Raw chicken being a big no-no in most parts of the world, especially with English farming methods.
Eventually I plucked (clever huh?) up the courage and tried a slice. Not bad.
Edible in fact, although one slice was definitely enough.

Chicken Liver and Heart

Chicken Ovaries

The ovaries on the other hand, yes, ovaries, were too much for me.

Even when we thought they were testicles I couldn`t face them. Tanaka ate one (they have a yellowy liquid inside), said they were ok, in fact said they were just eggs.

Then we asked the waiter. Won`t be ordering that one again.

After that lot, we took the menu off of Tanaka, and ordered some food.

A good night, gonna go to Nagoya sometime to catch up with Tanaka in his hometown, drink lots of sake, and maybe a bit of karaoke!