Last year, I went to watch the fireworks at Huis Ten Bosch during Dontaku. This year, I managed to resist the siren call of Huis Ten Bosch and actually go and see the festival (for a little while anyway).

Dontaku, as far as I know, is basically a series of parades. It takes place at Nakatsukawabata, Hakata and Tenjin. I basically went to see the one at Tenjin. Now, as a Singaporean, my main concern is food. And I would like to introduce you to this wonderfully delicious piece of goodness:

Hashimaki

This is called hashimaki and it’s basically okonomiyaki on a stick. What I want to know is, is there a restaurant/stand selling these? I would eat this on a regular basis and grow fat if I could.

Different flavours

 They had egg (egg on top of the hashimaki), Cheese, Onion and Mayo and uh, I can’t read the last one. I’m sure they’ll all good though

Grilling.

 Here’s my attempt at a surreptitious photo.

What a wonderful stall

However, I didn’t dare chance a shot when I saw the candied apples. They are the prettiest and most unique ringoame that I’ve ever seen.

Told you so.

Luckily, the stall owners allowed me to take close up photos. Of course, since they were so nice, I felt like I had to buy at least one (at least I managed to control myself :p)

So I bought Winnie the Pooh

 Let me tell you, after eating all that good food, including this delicious piece of squid:

The parade was sort of an anti-climax. Or perhaps I just have really weird priorities that have me place food over parades.

The adorable Kappa

Wait, there was a cute Kappa. I remember squealing over that. So what if he’s a rather vicious creature in the myths? He’s adorable here~

I really admire all the people who took time out to practice and perform. I know my school had a delegation, but I couldn’t catch them ):

Each parade had a little van following them (or was it leading? Or somewhere in the middle?), blaring music. The different vans were so adorable as well!

And that’s my Dontaku experience. And the end of my Golden Week posts(: The next post will be about my weekend trip to Singapore, and then I’ll be posting about my cousin’s time in Japan (she looks like a doll, it’s so fun to photographs of her!). After all the travel posts, or perhaps in between them, I’ll be posting information about Kyushu University (this is for all the MEXT scholars and people interested in Kyudai.)