A very foody day

So yesterday I watched others make delicious smelling Serbian food, which I wasn't allowed to eat :( I also half helped make brownies, which again I was banned from eating! 

Sausage and cheese filled keflice

Making vanilice

All of this was so that the L-cafe would have something to sell at their stall today, at this sort of Japanese festival thingy.  

Selling our 'foreign' foods and drinks

 There was some biscuits which were sold as English biscuits, but had a giant Scottish flag on the packet. I had spent a long time the day previous trying to explain the difference between England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland, and then the UK and Great Britain. I think I ended up confusing myself more than clarifying anything for them. 

These ( kuri manju) were delicious!

I also 'helped' with this traditional Chinese tea ceremony 

Mochi

It gets seriously sticky 

 So mochi is one of my favourite things in Japan, I had googled what it was made from before, and the internet had informed that it was made of rice, but I never imagine this was how it was made... 

The rice is put into this wooden structure, and then attacked with giant wooden hammers. They let the bystanders have a go at hammering the rice (pictured left). And then the real men took over (right). It was pretty impressive to watch as some of them were fairly old, yet they swung the hammers with great force when the younger men had struggle to even lift the hammers out of the googey rice. 

Taking it in turns to slam the hammers down

 After the rice is thoroughly pummelled, it is rolled in what I imagine to be flour, and bean paste is added to its centre.  

They were even lovely enough to hand us all one of these warm, freshly made, squishy beauties. 

Kaba (Hippo) car

With the bean paste, the mochi is normally sweet, but here (below) this gentleman is BBQing the mochi having dipped it in a salt sauce. It tasted very different, but equally delicious.

Having eat loads, it was decided that it would be a good idea to go clothes shopping. As the clothes shops as soooo far away on bikes, we managed to build up our appetite again. 

Hiroshima style okonomiyaki

Osaka style okonomiyaki

We decided to go for okonomiyaki, which is a Japanese savoury pancake/omelette. I had previously tried Hiroshima style okonomiyaki, which includes noodles. But today's version was Osaka style which meant it was not noodle filled. The wonderful thing about okonomiyaki is that you can have pretty much anything you want in it. In fact its name is derived from the word okonomi, meaning "what you like" or "what you want", and yaki meaning "grilled" or "cooked". At this particular place the okonomiyaki was prepared in front of you, on the griddle built into your table! Once it is cooked, the heat is turned down, meaning that your food stays hot. Then you are free to add whatever you want, mayonnaise, sesame seeds, more sauce (I don't know what kind of sauce it is, only that it is tasty), nori (dried seaweed) etc. 

Bonus:

So whilst adventuring today we ended up getting lost and finding an underground bikepark, where people can leave their bikes for extended period of time whilst they go by train to wherever they need to be. But to get down into this place, at first glance there was only stairs, not easy to manoeuvre with a bike. But on second glance we noticed that there  was a slope on one side for you to role your bike down, whilst you took the stairs. Obviously, however, it is not as easy to push your bike back up such a steep hill, and the Japanese being the ingenious people they are had put in a mini escalator just for bikes! Maybe this fascinated me more than it should have, but essentially when the machine sensed your bikes presence the conveyor belt turned on. Then, in theory, you put your brakes on, and walk up next to your bike with minimal effort. However the guy pictured below decided to sit on his as it went up, it sounds more impressive than it was, and I think he was just showing off, but he repeatedly almost fell off, much to my amusement!