Akita, Japan (Part 2): Around the City

The next day we headed out to check out downtown Akita Center.  Since it was raining we stuck to indoor museums.  First up was the Kanto Festival Center.  We didn't have the chance to visit Akita during their famous Kanto Festival so we thought this was the next best thing.  This museum was so awesome!

Here is a display from inside the museum.

And here is another display, which depicts the lantern festival that is famous in this town.  The size/weight of the lantern (which hold lit candles by the way) depends on the age of the male.  The younger they are the smaller the pole with the lanterns.

The best part of this museum was that we got to actually try it out, minus the lit candles of course!  This part was so much fun and I really appreciate that the staff was so accommodating and really wanted us to have this experience, even if it meant tracking down an employee that spoke some English just to help us out.  It was fun and definitely a memorable experience.  And no, this is not easy!  And yes, this was heavy so I was surprised to know this would be the size for a child (maybe teen).

After the festival museum we headed down the street to Akarenga, which is an old brink building that doesn't look Japanese at all, and used to house the Akita Bank.  You can see inside how it would have looked as a bank.  Many things inside are still the original.

This is the original fireplace.

After the museums we decided to find lunch.  The night before we passed by this restaurant called Pamplemousse, which looked really cute when we walked by.  We didn't know what they served so we were pleasantly surprised when we walked in and found very quirky decor AND an English menu.

Talk about quirky, in a very good way...the bell to signal to the server that you were ready to order was a bike bell.

Ryan and I both ordered a drink because, well, they all sounded so wonderful that we couldn't imagine passing on these.  Mine was amazing banana milk!

I don't need all of this to feel like I had a healthy and delicious meal but I can certainly appreciate the care that goes into running a restaurant like this and the food they are striving to provide to their guests.

Here is the menu.  How cute?!?!  And there you can see the banana milk that I ordered.

I absolutely love this menu and I love that it was also in English so I could fully appreciate it.

After seeing this menu I definitely knew I wanted to come back with my sister and so we are planning a trip there the next time she comes to visit me.

And of course I love this idea!  This place was so cute and I am so glad we decided to eat there.

Now for the food...

I could't resist the cheese plate.  It was yummy!

Ryan had a crazy version of a croque monsieur or something similar.

And yes, I totally did this!  I could not resist and I didn't see any reason to skip out on trying this.  It was definitely worth it!  Of course I couldn't finish it all, but it was certainly fun trying!

We also went to an art museum but I don't have pictures of that because they didn't allow pictures to be taken inside.

The next day before we left we headed to Kubota Castle and the park where this is located in Akita.  It was a short walk from the hotel.  It was raining the day before so we avoided outdoor activities.  Thankfully it was nicer that next day so we could check out the castle.

The park itself is pretty large and there is a lot of space to walk around.

The park had plenty of beautiful scenery and the weather was pretty good so it was nice to walk around, especially before we would be sitting in the car for a 4-5 hour drive.

I love this picture of one of the gates into the castle area.

As expected there was a shrine by the castle.

Lots of paper cranes!  It's hard to tell but these are all origami paper cranes that are linked together.

Then we finally made it over to the castle tower.  I am definitely glad we were able to see this castle before heading home.

We climbed all the way to the top so we could check out the awesome views.  Way out in the distance from one of the sides we were able to see out to the water (on the west coast, looking towards Korea).

One last picture of the park.  Really peaceful and serene.  Not a lot of people were out.  It was late November but the weather was actually warmer than I would have expected, which was nice.

That's all for our Thanksgiving mini-vacation.  Akita was definitely a good choice and I am so glad we went.

QUESTIONS:  Have you ever been to a lantern festival?  How are your balancing skills?  What is your favorite kind of pancake?

Hirosaki Cherry Blossom Festival 2012

On May 3rd, Ryan and I celebrated our 3 year anniversary.

Check out how we celebrated:

We started Friday night with dinner at Marche.

Ryan started off with some soup, and then enjoyed a steak (sorry, not pictured).

I finally had the chance to try out the mushroom soup pot pie.  This was SO good.  It was cream of mushroom soup with a flaky crust on top.  I will definitely get this again.

We also ordered some garlic bread.  They make really yummy garlic bread.

Since it was a special occasion, I left some room to have dessert.  Well, I ate some, but I got full quickly.  It was really tasty, so it was hard to stop!

Then we went home and called it a night early on because on Saturday morning we woke up early to drive nearly 3 hours to see Hirosaki castle for the Cherry Blossom Festival.  This is the parks biggest festival and a claim to fame for the city (other than their amazing apples).

The drive wasn't bad at all, and as always, we enjoyed just spending time together in the car, singing songs and talking.  It makes the time fly by when you enjoy your company, which of course, I absolutely do!

Here are some shots from around the park and of the castle.  Unfortunately, recent major storms made things wet and blew many of the blossoms away.  I won't complain though because it was still beautiful and there was lots of yummy festival food to try.

I love that this many people rode to the park on bikes.

You can see that lots of petals were on the ground.

This festival was a lot bigger than the Chrysanthemum Festival.  There were tons, and I do mean tons, of food vendors, games and other amusements.

It's just so peaceful here, although there were a lot of people around, but I did still find something tranquil about strolling the castle grounds.

There is the castle tower in the background.

It's so beautiful!

This was taken out the window from inside the castle tower.

Here is a close up of the blossoms.

After walking around for a while, we decided to get some food.  Believe it or not, I managed to get 5 servings of fruits/veggies while at the fair.  Now, I won't lie, one was inside fried dough and the other was fried, but in the end, I ate 5-6 servings at a fair.  I am not sure how often that happens in the US.  In Japan, many vendors have foods with produce, either plain or cooked into dishes.  At this fair, I started off with a nice apple.  Hirosaki is the apple capital within Aomori, which is a leader in apple production in all of Japan.

Beer!

We had no idea what these were, but it was definitely one of the most popular treats at the festival.  It was like jellied with black on the outside.  I think it may be like shiritaki (devil's tongue yam), but I really have no idea.  I am almost certain though that it is all vegetarian.

They had corn, but I didn't have any, even though it looked really good.

Here was my second serving.  Check out the fruit!  The pineapple looked great, but I went with something else.

These are little dough balls (like a funnel cake) with banana in the middle.  So good!

They even had a haunted house.

More things on sticks.  They love things on sticks here.

These are churros.  We tried a strawberry one.  I must be getting ready for my upcoming trip to Spain!

Check out this chef, hard at work (until he posed for me) making food for a long line of festival goers.

This was my third veggie.  This is a nearly picked cucumber on a stick.  Yes, on a stick!

They had tons of veggies around, but I went with the cucumber.

I came close to getting one, but I passed.  These were candied strawberries.  I love that you can see that these are made fresh.  They may be candy, but you can actually watch them make the candy syrup and pour it on the fresh strawberries.

We almost watched the motorcycle guy ride in tiny circles in this little enclosed room, but the set up was a little too wobbly for us.

It's called the Wall of Death!

Next up for veggies...yes, I am totally counting this because in Japan, this counts!  They are handmade, fresh, so I give it a little more credit than some other fried potato treats.  This is a spiraled potato chip.

Then it started to rain, so we made our way back to the car.

On the way we stopped, and this is where I got more fruit.  This time it was in the form of juice, mostly because I can't resist anything with ginger, and in apple country, I knew this juice had to be good.  Oh yes, this was SO good!

Last up, and I can't even believe I could eat any more, we spotted these bean pancakes.  the reason we tried them was because they were filled with sweetened white bean paste, where as we have only seen/tried those filled with red bean paste.  Yum!

Then it was time to head home.  On the way we found this antique store and decided to make a stop and look around.  It was mostly American antiques, and not anything really Japanese.

Overall, I would say we had a really nice anniversary celebration.  I was glad we made it to the festival because we really didn't think we would make it this year.

Just a reminder: Don't forget to enter my cookbook GIVEAWAY!

QUESTIONS:  Do you have cherry blossoms near you?  Have you ever been to a cherry blossom festival?  What is your favorite fair/festival food?