18 November 2015
Mystery fair and bad pho
A local festival in Hiroshima in the rain
It might sound like the record is broken, but its still raining.
Because of ongoing rain, I had to go back to the local covered shopping area.
First I had to do one of the bravest things ever, and put my still wet clothes back on. I have very few clean clothes left due to lack of washing machines in this hotel, and since I would be wandering around in the rain again I saw no point in getting everything I own saturated.
So I wandered back to the main street, and low and behold, its all packed out and theres some sort of religious festival where you have to eat things on sticks and buy plastic flowers on sticks.
There were quite litreally hundreds of temporary covered stalls, most selling food, but also various fun fair games, and a lot of stalls selling the plastic tributes to some kind of god things on sticks, just like I saw in Asakusa a couple of weeks back.
I still dont know what was going on, there was a panel of important men and people lined up to throw money into a big wine barrel, so its the important man make me buy plastic on stick and throw money in barrel fair.
We have a few places in Adelaide with the capsule machines where you put money in and get a prize, normally a Pokemon. Japan you can get a whole cactus garden.
Or a family of owls.
At first I thought these were the only stalls set up, I thought their location was very weird. Look at the people scurrying out of the rain, whilst under umbrellas.
But then I noticed both sides of every street for many blocks had similar things set up, on a Wednesday night.
This seems to be the centre of the attractions.
And heres the guys in blue jackets whos job is to glare at you until you put money in the barrel.
And now, my first actual bad meal. It wasnt bad as in I might be posioned, but it was a place that was quite fancy, and claimed to be authentic Vietnamese food.
Last nights Mapo Tofu was pretty good, so I rolled the dice once more.
This time, I got something absolutely flavourless, I am certain they just put hot water on some rice noodles, and added one piece of beef and some lettuce. There was no flavour to the broth at all, and the herbs you expect to get with pho were absent.
To top it off, one sliver of beef, and no sauces of any kind to add. Do not recommend.
I have had good pho in Shanghai and Seoul, so Japan has failed.