The weather has been iffy all weekend. Cloudy at times. Sunny at others, showing promise of more nice weather. And rain. Can’t forget the rain. We’ve experienced all of the above today. And yet, it wasn’t too bad.

We arrived by bicycle at Naruto’s Sports park. The park contains a few different fitness facilities, an arena for soccer, a baseball stadium, and a nice park area. Parking promised to be full, so bicycles were a better form of transportation and there would be a raffle for prizes, including new bikes, for anyone who came to the festival by bicycle.

After arriving, we waited in a line for 20 minutes to get tickets (free) to make chikuwa later in the afternoon. Chikuwa is a fish paste put on bamboo sticks, and then roasted until golden brown. But that would be later. First, it was off to find the free soup.

We found the soup line and started waiting. Luckily, we were close to the front of the line. The soup contains (if you look at the poster) lotus roots, sudachi (like small limes), shrimp, wakame (a local seaweed), red snapper fish, carrot, sweet potato, and daikon. They also had free rice balls, but we decided we’d just get the soup.

The soup was fantastic. All of the ingredients in the soup are local products. We really are lucky to live in a place like Naruto!

There were many different shops selling a variety of foods and drinks, including ramen, udon, yakisoba, burritos, and hamburgers.

Well, after our tummy’s were full (or at least mine was; my daughters decided to have big bowls of shaved ice, sudachi flavour, after this) we went for a walk around.

On stage there was some traditional singing going on.

The style of singing is called Enka. This particular singer was accompanied by a dancer.

We also saw some characters in costumes greeting visitors.

We looked around at the different sites and events, went to the raffle and won some lights (but not the bikes, boo-hoo) and then wandered over to the chikuwa area. After handing in our tickets, we were given a glove to wear to protect our hands and an uncooked chikuwa.

The charcoal was hot and this set-up was perfect for grilling. This is a good idea for doing shish kebabs at home. Simple, yet effective. Anyway, as you see the fish paste starts off white. You keep turning the bamboo stick and slowly but surely you wind up with a nice, browned chikuwa.

The taste was so much better than store-bought. We finished two of them there and brought one home.

Connected with the festival is a soccer game featuring Tokushima’s Vortis, our home-side soccer team. I hope they win, but unfortunately we decided to return home and not watch the game.

Next year, if you have time, come on down to the Uzumatsuri. We’ll sit, have some chikuwa, and chat. Looking forward to it!