Snow Festival

 The things in the center, the things on the sticks, are whole fish that are being grilled. People buy them and then eat them like they were a lollipop or a Popsicle.

 This woman is making takoyaki. The first part tako means octopus and the second part yaki means fried or broiled and sometimes baked. Takoyaki are little balls of batter that are fried in a pan with hemispherical cooking chambers, maybe three centimeters in diameter. As the batter solidifies, a piece of octopus is placed in the middle. In the picture the woman has already added the octopus and is putting more batter on top.

 Here the woman is separating the pieces and turning them over with chopsticks. The extra batter around the outside of the individual cooking indentations gives enough extra volume that the finished product is a small sphere. Once they are cooked, six of the little balls are placed in an open-topped container and they are covered with a soy based sauce, pieces of ginger, and seaweed. As those of you who know me will know, I will not touch them. In the picture you can see the pieces of octopus in a plastic container behind the spray bottle which contains oil tht is sprayed on the pans to keep the takoyaki from sticking.

 We decided that it was time to leave. The crowd had grown considerable and it was time to my friend Tony who had kindly volunteered to pick us up and take us shopping before driving us back to the campus.

 As we returned to the main road, I discovered two statues standing in the snow.

 When we neared the train stations, we found that someone had made a snow sculpture on the sidewalk. I got home around 9:30 happy, tired, well provisioned, and ready for bed.

The next morning I got up and found that we had had another blizzard. I guess this one was in honor of the Snow Festival.