Azabu Juban Matsuri

The Azabu Juban Matsuri is our local festival.  It has the elements of a festival anywhere, local food, stages for performances and lots of people.  Rick and I went last night about 6pm hoping that it would be cooler.  The weather is still mushi atsui.  Dinner was part of the adventure.  Rick loves eating the street food here, it reminds him of his mission.  You could tell where the good food was because the lines were very long.  We opted for one of Rick’s favorites, yaki-soba.  Fried noodles with pieces of cabbage and very sour red cabbage pickles.  It was so good, I love Japanese food.There are no places designated for eating so we walked up a side street where there were less people and a there was good breeze.  Afterwards, we had snowcones.  There are many flavor options and the interesting thing is that the Japanese pour sweetened condensed milk on after the flavored syrup.  After eating we ventured back into the crowd and moved slowly in the direction of one of the stages.  It was easy to find by following the sounds of the Taiko drums.  There were several drummers taking turns with the recorded music.  The audience was in the center of the square doing traditional Japanese dances.  The next stage had rappers and the final stage was again the audience doing traditional Japanese dances.  It was a another great cultural experience

The streets were very crowded and an endless sea of black heads with a random gaijin (foreigner) every once in awhile.  There were parts where we were hardly moving at all.  Everyone was hot and everyone had one of the free fans that were being distributed through the crowd.  I wish I had photos but my camera is not working so well.