Japanese festival
So I’m starting to feel more like the living again. My flu/cold has receded to the thick flegm stage, oh joy. Other than the congestion, I’m feeling pretty good. Well enough that we were out to the dog park the other night to let the puglettes romp in the ocean and out today at the Japanese festival.
Every year they have a weekend event held just a few blocks away from us to celebrate Japanese culture. It’s relatively small, basically a little local park with booths and tents set up everywhere. There is also a stage set up, and various dances, and martial arts performances. We mostly enjoyed the food. Well, I did, Wolfe was in one of his finicky moods. Thats fine, left more octopus balls for me! They were good! It was really interesting to watch them make them as were standing in line. I’ve eaten lots of different type ‘balls’ in chinese soups before of a similar type, and now I know how they make them en masse. They had special grill forms of half balls, they would fill them with the pureed goop. Then when they were partially cooked they would rotate them around to coat the bottom and create a perfect ball. Lovely gooey texture with bits of tasty chewy octopus, topped with a bit of tangy sauce and seaweed sprinkles. Good, very good. I think I was japanese in a previous life.
There wasn’t much of a line up for most of the other foods, though we did enjoy some sushi and I had my favorite in summer for japanese food - cold noodles with a vinegarette sauce with cooked egg and various veggies and other things jullieted on top. We watched some Karate black belts perform some excersizes and some kata, but weren’t really wowed. They were allright, but nothing spectacular. Made me have some pride in the students I trained with when I was studying martial arts with Wolfe, our school was very good in many ways, I wish I was still able to train. We walked home through the area of town known as little Tokyo, but it’s sad, there are very few japanese stores and restaurants still in that area, it has mostly been taken over by the skid row crowd. We did pass by a place selling sushi grade frozen seafood at good prices, which we will have to visit again.
It’s been overcast on and off today, but still so hot and muggy, we’re supposed to have rain soon, and I’m looking forward to it, everything feels thirsty. Speaking of which I’m going to relax with some iced tea now.
XO
L