2013 Towada Yosakoi Yume Matsuri

Towada Yosakoi Yume Matsuri 2013 とわだYosakoi夢まつり
Date: September 29, 2013
Location: Around Kanchogai Street　官庁街通り周辺
Update: There are 3 "stages":
1) the parade route goes along Kanchogai Dori from the east end of the hospital to City hall,
2) in front of Sakura Hiroba (where the big horse shoe statue, fountain and public restroom facilities are)
3) in Chuo Koen (Central Park) just south of Sakura Hiroba.
(See map in Japanese here http://www.towada.or.jp/yosakoi/2013place.pdf).
From 10:00-13:00 performances will be along the parade route and in Chuo Koen. From 13:00 on performances are in front of Sakura Hiroba and in Chuo Koen.
Description: Lots of groups performing yosakoi--an energetic choreographed dance for large groups featuring the use of lots of props (fans, small wooden handheld clappers called naruko, umbrellas, etc.) and on-the-spot costume changes

Guide to the B-1 Grand Prix in Towada

(Updated with pictures and information from the Saturday, September 7 event.)

Hokkaido/Tohoku B-1 Local Gourmet Grand Prix in Towada
2013 北海道・東北B-1グランプリin十和田
Website | Flyer |  Map (all in Japanese)
Date: September 7- 8, 2013
Time: 10:00-16:00
Location: Around Kanchogai Street　官庁街通り周辺
Admission: "Event Tickets", a book of ten 100yen coupons (i.e. 1000yen total value) can be used towards the purchase of food. You cannot pay for food with cash. Event Tickets can be purchased in advance online, or in various supermarkets, bars/restaurants, shops, etc. around Towada. (See website (Japanese) for complete list of places selling tickets.) Tickets can also be purchased on site during the event.


Parking: There are 5 free parking lots near the venue as well as a few paid parking lots. The free parking lots have a total capacity of a little over 900 cars, so they are likely to fill up fast. (See map at the bottom of the post for locations--indicated by P1~P5.) You can also park at the Towada Aeon Supercenter and take a free shuttle bus to the venue.

Food Stalls:
Kanchogai Street　(官庁街通り会場）

 

1. Yokote Yakisoba (Yokote City, Akita Prefecture) 4 tickets (400yen)
Yakisoba (fried noodles) with a sunny-side up egg on top.

2. Nayoro Nikomi Genghis Khan (Nayoro City, Hokkaido) 5 tickets (500yen)
Sukiyaki-style stewed thinly sliced lamb, vegetables and udon noodles.

3. Iwate-Machi Cabbage Shio Yaki Udon (Iwate Town, Iwate Prefecture) 3 tickets (300yen)
Fried udon noodles with cabbage, flavoured with olive oil and a salt-based sauce.

4. Aomori Shouga Miso Oden (Aomori City, Aomori Prefecture) 3 tickets (300yen)
Ginger and miso oden (daikon radish, fried fish cakes, boiled eggs, etc. stewed in broth)
5. Ichinoseki Harami Yaki (Ichinoseki City, Iwate Prefecture) 3 tickets (300yen)
Grilled chicken harami (tender meat around the diaphragm)
6. Kuroishi Tsuyu Yakisoba (Kuroishi City, Aomori Prefecture) 4 tickets (400yen)
Yakisoba in broth

7. Kamikita Croquette (Kamikita City, Iwate Prefecture) 3 tickets (300yen)
Sato imo (taro yam), Japanese "black" beef (from black-haired cattle), and asparagus mixed together into a patty, breaded and deep-fried.
8. Yamagata Imo-Ni Curry Udon (Yamagata City, Yamagata Prefecture) 4 tickets (400yen)
Stewed curry potatoes (and other vegetables) and udon noodles.
9.  Koufu Tori Motsu-Ni (Koufu City, Yamanashi Prefecture*) 4 tickets (400yen)
*Guest group from outside of Tohoku/Hokkaido
Flavoured and stewed chicken motsu (offal/guts)

10. Kuji Mamebu Jiru (Kuji City, Iwate Prefecture) 3 tickets (300yen)
Niboshi (dried infant sardines/anchovies) and kombu seaweed and soy-sauce based broth with gobou (burdock root), carrots, fried tofu, and flour dumplings with walnuts and kurozato (a type of raw sugar, Japanese "black" sugar)

11. Otaru Ankake Yakisoba (Otaru City, Hokkaido) 4 tickets (400yen)
Yakisoba topped with vegetables and seafood and ankake sauce (a kind of thick, flavourful sauce).

12. Honjou Ham Fry (Yuri Honjou City, Akita Prefecture) 3 tickets (300yen)
Breaded and deep-fried ham.
13. Ishimaki Yakisoba (Ishimaki City, Miyagi Prefecture) 3 tickets (300yen)
Ishimaki Yakisoba uses a special type of twice-steamed yakisoba noodle that is brown even before cooking.

Shoutengai （商店街会場）

14. Towada Barayaki (Towada City, Aomori Prefecture) 3 tickets (300yen)
Grilled onions and beef bara (belly meat) with a special sauce.

15. Kahoku Tsumetai Niku Soba (Kahoku Town, Yamagata Prefecture) 3 tickets (300yen)
 Chilled soba (buckwheat) noodles and chicken in a chicken and soy-sauce based broth.
16. Toyoma Abura-Fu Donburi (Toyoma City, Miyagi Prefecture) 3 tickets (300yen)
Abura-fu (deep fried bean curd formed into a stick) on rice.
17. Namie Yakisoba (Namie Town, Fukushima Prefecture) 4 tickets (400yen)
Thick yakisoba noodles with bean sprouts, pork and special sauce.
18. Omagari Natto Jiru (Daisen City, Akita Prefecture) 3 tickets (300yen)
Natto (fermented soy beans) miso soup topped with onsen tamago (hot spring egg--i.e. a very softly boiled egg) and okoge (literally the crispy/burnt rice you sometimes get at the bottom of a rice cooker, but in this case it's made to be crispy but not browned/burnt).
19. Ohoutsuku Kitami Shio Yakisoba (Kitami City, Hokkaido) 5 tickets (500yen)
Sea salt yakisoba with onions and scallops--all local Hokkaido ingredients.

20. Oga Shottsuru Yakisoba (Oga City, Akita Prefecture) 4 tickets (400yen)
Shottsuru (fish-based soy sauce) yakisoba with crab claws, shrimp, squid.

21. Hachinohe Senbei Jiru (Hachinohe City, Aomori Prefecture) 3 tickets (300yen)
Vegetable and meat soup with senbei (a type of Japanese cracker).

Towada Barayaki Kids Park (十和田バラ焼キッズパーク会場)

Three local Towada elementary schools present their own versions of barayaki (3 tickets (300yen)). Takashizu ES (left) uses Aomori beef, Shoyo ES (center) uses garlic pork instead of beef, and Sanbongi ES (right) uses onions that they planted and grew themselves at Sanbongi Nogyo (Agricultural) High School.

Sanbongi ES barayaki

Leftover Tickets:
You can use any leftover tickets at a variety of shops, restaurants, bars etc. in Towada including Sakura 156 (the souvenir shop inside Art Station Towada), most grocery stores, and even Eagle Bowl (bowling). A complete list (Japanese only) of participating locations can be found here.

How to Vote:

voting station

Put your chopstick(s) into the ballot box of the group you liked best--consider the personality/performance of the group as well as the actual taste of the food.

Only brown chopsticks can be used to vote. White chopsticks (e.g. from Towada Barayaki or Koufu Tori Motsu-Ni) cannot be used.

Even if you buy from more than one stand, you can only use one set of chopsticks to vote.

Each individual chopstick can be used to vote separately, i.e. you can vote for two different groups with one chopstick each or give the pair of chopsticks to a single group.

Suggestions to get the most of the event:
 - Be patient. Expect to spend a lot of time waiting in line.

- Go from west to east. To see everything, start from the west (around stall number 10) and head east (towards stall number 1), swing by the Towada Barayaki Kids and Towada Market and then go a little north to the Shoutengai venue. Be warned that the Kanchogai Street stalls (numbers 1-13) tend to have longer lines (on average 30-40min?) than the Shoutengai venue (numbers 14-21), where waiting times were from 5-20min.

 In particular the Koufu Tori Motsu-Ni (stall number 9) has extremely long line-ups--at one point it was a 150min (2.5hr) wait! You can see below, this is towards the end of the line (approx. 2hr wait from here). The stall itself is located about where the third tree from the left is (with the white flag).

 The stall is finally in sight ahead (the blag flags on the right), but it's still about an hour's wait from here. The people standing on the left side are in the front of the line from the above picture (the 2hr+ wait). You can see that it still's a fairly long line on the right, too.

 

- Plan ahead. Decide what you want to eat, look at the map and plot out a course ahead of time.

- Divide & conquer. If you're going with friends or family, make a list of what people want to eat, assign people to go to different booths, and set up a place to meet once everyone has got their food. (Or tell everyone to look for you in the motsu-ni line if you decide to get some, because they can probably get 2-3 dishes and you'll still be in line.) This way you can reduce the amount of time spent waiting in line and share food so you can try more types. A lot of the dishes are fairly hearty--lots of yakisoba (fried noodles) and fried things, so if you try to eat everything by yourself you'll probably get full by the second or third dish.

- Bring drinks/sweets. Most of the food is salty/savoury so you will probably get thirsty and/or start to crave sweets. There are drink stands, but it will cost about 150yen for a bottle.

tea mascot next to drink stand

The vending machines in the Chuo Kominkan (central community center), inside the library, and near the public restrooms (by the big horseshoe statue) on the park side are probably cheaper but they might sell out fairly quickly. There are Lawson, Mini-Stop and Circle K convenience stores within walking distance (see map) but it's nice to be able eat your B-1 dishes with drinks and have dessert on hand rather than having to go out to get it afterward. There's also an excellent patisserie/cafe called Shiroi Mori nearby if you want to sit down and have some tea/coffee and cakes afterward (the banana milk tea is a favourite among local ALTs).

Director Hayao Miyazaki's retirement press conference

Studio Ghibli held a press conference regarding Director Hayao Miyazaki's retirement today, Friday, September 6, 2013 at 2:00pm (JST). Miyazaki himself, as well as Studio Ghibli President Koji Hoshino and producer Toshio Suzuki were in attendance to answer questions from various press members. The event was live streamed on the Niconico video service with options for either (the original) Japanese audio or English audio translation.

(Edit: Kotaku has a nice and concise summary of the actual reason Miyazaki gave for retiring and mentions some other points that came up during the press conference that slipped my mind.)

I was lucky to be able to watch the press conference (I chose the English audio option) but it went on a lot longer than I expected. I thought it would be about thirty minutes but it went on for a little over an hour and a half! Here are some thoughts and tidbits from the conference.

(Disclaimer: After the first twenty minutes or so, I started cooking while listening so my recollection may not be exact.)

I really want to read Miyazaki's official retirement press release/statement! 
All the press members received an official statement written by Miyazaki explaining his reasons for retiring and future plans. Hopefully one of the many news groups present will publish the document in its entirety online--an English translation would be nice too. (Edit: You can read the official press statement here in Japanese. If another site doesn't put up an English translation within the next day or two, I will probably try to make my own (very rough) translation.)

Get the hint already! He doesn't want to give specifics about his future plans.
 There were a lot of variations on the question: "Can you tell us what exactly you plan/want to do during your retirement?" And pretty much every time he explained that although he had some things he wanted to do, he didn't want to set up any expectations (in case he might fail) and therefore preferred not to give specifics. You'd think that after the first or even second time people would get the hint and stop asking the same question and use their (and everyone else's) time more constructively by asking more different questions.

Miyazaki's idea of R&R is probably rather a-typical
Although he (apparently) wrote in his retirement statement that he was planning on "taking a break" (or something along those lines), when asked if he was really going to be resting and relaxing, Miyazaki said that his idea of resting might not be the same as other people's. For him, sometimes doing "work" (i.e. drawing) is relaxing while taking a nap is conversely tiring. Aspects of the "job" like doing paperwork/desk work, giving instructions to people, being in meetings, etc. are tiring for him, but the actual "work"--that is to say, the art/drawing is not. So chances are, we will still be seeing (or at least hearing about) artistic works from Miyazaki, even if they're not feature or even short animated films.

More reasons to visit the Mitaka Ghibli Museum!
One thing he did say about his future plans, however, was that he would like to continue to be involved with the Mitaka Ghibli Museum. In particular, he said he wanted to fix up/update some of the exhibits since some of the drawings were starting to fade.

Unfortunately, when asked, he wouldn't commit to doing any more short films for the Ghibli Museum theatre. (Because now that he is retired, he is "free.") But on the bright side he didn't exactly say that he definitely wouldn't (at least that was my sense)--just that he wouldn't make any commitments to doing so.

He also said (jokingly) that he might even be an exhibit himself one day. Can you imagine if he made an appearance (or appearances) at the Ghibli Museum? They'd had to hold a (domestic and international) random lottery to distribute tickets because absolutely everyone would want to go.

Future of Studio Ghibli
As one reporter commented, Studio Ghibli was made to produce films by Miyazaki and Takahata Isao. Miyazaki is retiring this year at age 72. Takahata is 78 and is expected to retire after the release of Kaguya Hime no Monogatari (The Story of Princess Kaguya). So what will happen to Studio Ghibli? Producer Suzuki didn't give any details, but he did say that there is a film in the works for potential release next summer.

After that, both Suzuki and Miyazaki said that the future of the Studio would depend on the current young(er) staff. If they have a strong vision and stories that they really want to tell, Studio Ghibli might be able to continue a while longer. And Suzuki indicated that he would be willing to carry on a little longer since he is still (a bit) younger--at 65 years old--than Miyazaki and Takahata. 

The Ghibli Blog wrote this past April that Disney would acquire Studio Ghibli in 2014, with Ghibli retaining its autonomy in Japan, but neither President Hoshino nor Suzuki mentioned that--and no one from the press asked about it either (as far as I can recall). So I guess we'll just have to see what happens after the November 23, 2013 release of Kaguya Hime.

The movie that left the strongest impression on Miyazaki
I read somewhere that Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises) is the first movie where Miyazaki himself cried while watching it, so I was surprised that when asked he named Howl no Ugoku Shiro (Howl's Moving Castle) as the movie that he had the strongest "image" (impression) of. Unfortunately, for the life of me, I can't remember what his reasons were for choosing Howl out of all his works. @_@

France vs Italy
Miyazaki has used Italy as a setting for a number of his films and when asked (by an Italian press representative?), he said that he really likes Italy--the food, the beautiful women... =P But when asked how he felt about France (by a French press representative), he had to admit that he likes Italian food better than French food. Apparently when he recently went to France (this past winter?) he was constantly served foie gras, which was a bit too much for him.

A "mom and pop" operation
Apparently Miyazaki doesn't think of himself as an internationally-renowned director. He doesn't have a particular message that he wants to impart to global audiences either. To him, his work is like working at a small mom-and-pop factory, just producing things that he likes and that convey the feelings and thoughts he wants to convey at that time. Suzuki also agreed that at Studio Ghibli they try not to look back too much on past works/accomplishments or to pay much too much attention to outside expectations. They just keep looking forward trying to make new movies.

When asked about his thoughts on "Cool Japan"--the campaign to harness the "soft power" of Japanese culture by promoting it overseas--Miyazaki basically said he didn't know anything about the campaign and didn't really care about it. A big ouch! for the Japanese government, I'm sure.

A bit of a troglodyte*
(*Troglodyte is my description--not Miyazaki's) Miyazaki admitted that he doesn't really watch recent movies or TV, particularly when he is working on a film. At the most he listens to a little radio in the morning and skims through the newspaper--which is why he didn't know anything about the "Cool Japan" campaign.
 
I really admire Miyazaki's wife
For the past ten years(?) or so, Miyazaki has basically stopped eating out. Every day he eats a solid breakfast, brings a bento (packed lunch) made by his wife to work, and eats dinner at home with his wife. When he told his wife about his plan to retire, apparently he also told that he still wanted a bento every day--to which she (jokingly?) replied that most people don't have to keep making bentos at their age and that shouldn't she also become "free" with his retirement. (I was cooking at this point in the Q&A, and I'd briefly switched to Japanese audio, so I'm not sure how accurate my recollection and/or interpretation of his words are.)

Having basically become a housewife myself since getting married, I can say that preparing/cooking three meals a day is not easy. This past week, with even just a small increase in hours for my part-time work--combined with daily festival taiko (Japanese drum) practice--I had to resort to buying sushi from the supermarket for dinner one night, and my husband even had to make do with cup noodles one day when I had a party in the evening and didn't have time to prepare dinner for him beforehand. So the fact that she has faithfully made him three meals a day for ten years is mind-blowing-ly amazing to me.

There was a lot more (as I said, the Q&A session was just over an hour and a half long!) but these are the points that stuck out the most to me. If I remember something later or find a good article about the conference--or the translated text from the official press release--I will try to update this post.