Nara Festival 2010

Remember the post on the Okonomiyaki Recipe? I was meant to blog about the Nara Festival but completely forgot about it until today, when i was looking through my unused blog photos folder. Sorry for the late post, but here you go.

Candles placed all around the Nara Park for the highlight of the festival

The Canberra Nara Festival celebrates the strong Sister City relationship shared between Canberra and Nara (Japan) and this year, the event took place on the 18th September. The festival offers a variety of things to do and there is always something for everyone. There were mochi pounding and calligraphy demonstrations and things that people could get involved into such as kite flying, origami making, calligraphy, massage trials and some Japanese performances to enjoy. The highlight of the event is obviously seeing all the 2000+ candles lit by the end of the event - unfortunately, i wasn't able to stay long enough to see it! (sucked...)

Seeing little kids 'fishing' for colourful water balloons definitely brought back glimpses of my childhood; felt like getting one, but i didn't =P. 

Being a food fan, i had my attention mostly drawn to the food at the festival...and being a mochi lover, one of my must-do things was to not miss the mochi pounding demonstration. In a nutshell, the mochi is placed in a big mortar and pounded with wooden mallets until it reaches the right consistency. The mochi is then made into smaller pieces and eaten with a sweet peanut mixture, red bean paste or nori & shoyu (savoury).

I think i wasn't too fond of the nori & shoyu mochi...i prefer my mochi to be sweet

There were various flavours of mochi and daifuku available for sale and i ended up getting the Sakuramochi, since i don't get to have that very often. Sakura mochi is a pink mochi filled with red bean paste and wrapped with a salted sakura leaf.

The Okonomiyaki was not good and that's why i shared an Okonomiyaki recipe here in my blog! They had put to much batter and too little ingredients. It was like eating an overly thick pancake that was dry and not sweet. The Takoyaki, on the other hand, was delicious (and pipping hot!). No wonder there was a long queue not long after i got mine.

The gyoza tasted good and authentic but some of them were a bit burnt on the edges. Other than that...oishii~ 

It was an afternoon well spent, immersing in the Japanese culture and enjoying some of its delicacies. Sadly i had to leave early and missed out on the main highlight of the Nara Festival. Next year, perhaps?