Our first Hello Hokkaido! food, music and travel festival ran from 18 to 27 November. During the short week, we tasted the best of Hokkaido food, listened to Japanese pop and traditional music, learned about sake and planned our trip to Japan’s northern prefecture.
Here are some of the highlights.
At The Forum, yatai stalls sold Japanese street food……such as gigantic crabs.…cooked and served right in front of our eyes.We ate our fill of bento topped with juicy fish roe.and grilled seafood. Gochisousama deshita.What we can’t finish, we brought home, such as instant noodles from Santouka Ramen…and snacks. Lots of snacks.
Inside the convention centre, stalls selling Hokkaido handicrafts, food products and sake stall lined the walkway.
Here, we added some (Hokkaido) spice into our lives.and bought Hokkaido beauty creams.At the sake bar, the sake sommelier explains the different types of Japanese sake and wine.There’re even sake workshops where we tasted some yummy Hokkaido sake. It’s drier and more refreshing because of the hard water used in the brewing.
Besides shopping, we were treated to entertainers from Hokkaido who performed during the weekends.
J-pop idol Mashiro Ayano (left) sang her hits.The energetic girls from MILCS Honmono danced and sang their way into our hearts.Tsugaru Shamisen player Niya brought traditional Japanese music to the stage.
See you in the next edition of Hello Hokkaido! Sayonara.
