A couple of weekends ago we went to Japantown and stumbled through the Sakura Festival! This is where you can drink beer, watch traditional dance, and most importantly, eat your own weight in various things ending in "-yaki"! First we picked the longest line we could find. Alex asked the girl in front of us "Is this the line for takoyaki?" and she said "I'm not sure!". THAT'S HOW FUN IT IS! People will stand in line forever for random fried things if they have a beer in their hand. We had to wait about 45 minutes for these tasty doughy octopus bites, but it was totally worth it and made WAY more entertaining by the awesome multi-ethnic cover band on stage (performing such hits as Christina Aguilera's "Ain't No Other Man" and Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" - how cultural!)

Alex had never experienced the awesomeness of Hawaiian shave ice with red bean paste in the center, and I'd never had it with ice cream, so we went all out and got one with both. Here it is, roughly the size of Alex's head.

# posted by Pete Ellison @ 8:34 AM