Yokohama Day Two

So today was the fire/light festival thing, with over three thousand lights placed about the place.

I don't know whether my photographs will really do it justice, but it was really awesome.  The best thing was just sitting in the pitch black for half an hour, listening to all the people walking around, sometimes there was some music in the background, generally being quite peaceful.  Then laughing at the kids setting themselves on fire, or falling down the stairs.  That was fun as well.

One of my aimms while in Japan has been to eat a few different things.  Yakiniku, which is like indoor barbecue, takoyaki, which is octopus  in a spherical batter type thing (it's quite tasty, but only in small doses), sushi, (I've managed to not eat sushi at all, and am waiting to go to a proper sushi place to try the real stuff) and okonomiyaki.  Today I fulfilled my okonomiyaki dreams!  It's pretty nice actually.  Pictures below.

Generally larking around here is nice; especially when you have  a local guide, even if she is indecisive about most things!

Yokohama has been quite interesting so far.  It's far more expensive than the part of Tokyo I was in before, and the people seem to be a little more focused and less receptive to idle chit-chat than their tokyo counterparts.  I don't know whether this is because I'm looking in the 'wrong' places, or whether this is a general trend.  The people working in train stations and whatnot are all amazing, they're without fault.  This  adds to my feeling that most people have a well trained facade that they can produce when needed.  The service sector here is unbelievable.

Ok so these things are cooked doughy, fish shaped snacks filled with a number of different things.  Some are filled with purple potatoe, tasting vaguely fishy (or maybe that's my imagination), some are filled with a creamy cheesy thing, (the one I had) and are quite nice.  Some are filled with a purple bean paste and are distinctly average tasting.  They're a national obsession here though, you can buy them almost everywhere.  They're not always prepared in front of you like here though, as always the process is quite intricate and delicate.

Ok so onto the fire festival/bamboo candle pictures.

Each light is a piece of bamboo that's been cut at an angle, filled with water and had a candle placed inside.  The raised back reflects the light forward creating the illusion of the bamboo emitting light.

There's an old story that goes - an old man was walking in a bamboo grove when he saw one of the bamboo giving off light, so he cut it down and found a princess.  The bamboo gave off a bright light, and this festival is all about celebrating that.

I thought the bamboo looked like stars, they shimmer like stars too.  unfortunately I couldn't really get the right picture to show this off, and people, strangely, bought torches with them.  It felt kind of odd to be in darkness then have someone with a torch walk past.  They spoiled the illusion for themselves by having a torch.

And explain this, people took photographs with flash...  Why?  Why do this?  It makes no sense.

This is another one of those photographs that took bloody ages to get right.  So many attempts...

But I think this is the best one to show what it actually felt like.  Save the best to last I guess...

After the walk we sat down and I tried some warm bamboo sake.  It was foul.  I've tried a few different types of sake now, and they're  all awful.

The process of creating sake requires two steps, the first is to break the rice down into sugars that can be fermented, and the second actually creates the alcohol.  Interestingly the Japanese drink both stages of this process, and the first stage creates an extremely sweet sugary drink that's kind of like a pulpy slosh.  This is also quite horrendous.

Onto the okonomiyaki!  There's a hot plate in the middle of the table, and you choose your food from a menu, it's prepared backstage then bought out.  The substantial ingredient is cabbage, with egg and oil to hold it all together.  Luckily there's so much oil and egg that you can't taste the cabbage.  There's usually a meat or other interesting vegetable added to mask the taste of the cabbage.

It's actually really nice.

So we're both really hungry by this stage...

I don't think a word was uttered while it cooked.  It all smells amazing, and it look amazing too.

I'm getting hungry just looking at it.

So the guy comes and flips the thing over.  And we have to wait again for it to cook all over!  Bastard!


So eventually when someone deems it cooked he comes and covers it in a barbecue kind of sauce.


The sauce is really nice too.  You have the option of mayonaise if you really want it, but I think that's just crazy talk.

Expert cutting skills on display.

So they cover it in sauce and leave you be.

By this time the heat from the grill was basically cooking us as well as the cabbage, but the long wait staring at the food really prepares you to eat it!

The final artistic shot of the meal.

It was a good day, with a few new and interesting things done.

Two days worth of pictures uploaded!  Whew!

I'm off to try conveyor belt sushi now!




Ciao for now!