Yet more sweeties.

Bleh, sorry for the no-post on Tuesday. Blame the combination of Fran and the national holiday. We went to Osaka Castle for the day (and it was lovely, thanks for asking) and got home pretty late so I wasn't in any position to blog. I meant to have this updated yesterday but work put the kibosh on that.



This weekend starting from early on Sunday I will be headed to Hiroshima with a backpack and a guidebook and the hope that I will be okay. Tuesday or late Monday I get back and there might be some site-fiddling accomplished then.



Until then please enjoy some more poctures of the confectionary conference.



So when last we spoke I had gone into the tent to look at the aesthetically magnificent world of Japan's sweets.



Well I still have some more pics of sweets to show you, lucky you!







These are what the Japanese people call "wagashi". Sweets to be eaten with tea as part of a tea ceremony. I particularly like the multi-coloured one in the middle.



More wagashi.



You have to love the chicken wagashi here don't you.



Later on there were some amazing cakes.





These I included because I really love the artwork on Japanese sweets.



Ge-ge-ge no Kitaro.



Ge-ge-ge no Kitaro dori-yaki.



Hyoku-manju. Awww aren’t they cute!?


We finished up but were unfortunately too late to get into the other major display in the convention. This was a shame as someone had told me about a chocolate replica of Himeji castle and I had not seen it. Disappointed I decided to fortify myself with another ice-cream, sort of.

What I actually had was dondurma, or Turkish ice-cream. This is like ice-cream in many respects but is enormously stretchy and almost had a rubbery quality to it. It’s quite nice and makes a better ice cream cornet since it doesn’t melt. The guy who served it to us was a real comedian too. We asked for two and he handed Fran one then used his ladle to quickly snatch the cone out of Fran’s hands, revealing a second, empty cone in her hand and with the dondurma and cone sticking to his ladle. He gave me the finished cone and then proceeded to arse about showing off to Fran with the dondurma demonstrating how sticky and stretchy it was. He got seriously on my nerves but Fran seemed pretty pleased with it all.

So overall not the best day out I’ve ever had in Japan but not horrible. I bought some unusual sweets and got a load of freebies and I met the Mayor of Osaka. I’ve had worse weekends.