Ebisko

This eve I tarried awhile at the Ebisko festival with a young lady from my rooms, Miss S. Ebisko is a festival for commerce and prosperity. Here businesspeople and shopowners purchase a rake from the many rake-laden stalls (as pictured above right) with which to rake in the money and their good fortunes. The town was packed with people wielding bamboo rakes of huge proportions, bedecked with the kawaii-ist of spoils, such as koi kites, paper fish-tails and gilded paper boxes. The main street, Chuo-dorii, and the little night-district lanes, were decorated with red lanterns, and light ropes looped from shop to shop, strung out with knotted white paper and heads of wheat.

Chuo-dorii was lined with many foodstalls selling tentacles on skewers, octopus balls and cakes. I nibbled on hashimaki (vego okonomiyaki on a stick and stuffed with pink and orange ginger) and eyed the Hello Kitty and Miffy lollipops which looked like tiny glass figurines on sticks. Little kiddies played games, such as "Flick the Live Goldfish into a Papercup to Win a Big Bag of More Goldfish", which prompted strange visions to take shape of goldfish being flicked further afield, wriggling down the collars of passing businessmen or flipping into the sticky mire of Hello Kitty candyfloss.

I seized a bag of hot cakes stuffed with custard, which is perfect for a chilly night. The cakes came in different designs - koi fish, Hello Kitty (severed heads thereof), Miffy heads, and Disney heads. Disney is very popular here (which I cannot understand, considering most anime is so much better) and, quite frankly, I lament this fact and don`t like Disney one little bit. Therefore it was with a rush of intense satisfaction that I munched into Donald Duck`s head and fed on his custard brains. Simply marvellous!

Miss S and I bought some festive fare for December days - sugared almonds and dried strawberries - then we snuck into a PrintStation to get our photos taken in wintery and spOOky settings, and adorned them further with electronic designs of snowflakes and leaping rabbits and pale ghosties. How modern! Now I intend to make my way home stickily, with a red Kitty toffee-apple in hand. I love festive Japan!