Rokkasho Salmon Festival

Greetings and salutations, true believers. Welcome to my post about the Salmon Festival in Rokkasho (just in case you missed the title...)

I drove up to the coast to visit with some fellow Canucks (Tom and Ashley from BC) and catch some fishes with my baaaare haaaaaands. Now, the salmon count was down this year, so it wasn't a 'salmon catch' per se, but it was a good time. As I was saying, I drove up to their place and met up with them Saturday night. Tom was working in the tourist booth helping English speaking folks get their bearings and had already done one round of catching with Charlotte earlier that day. So, when I got up there, it was time to prep the fishies and make up some dinner! Tim (my neighbouring JET) was also in town to visit with his friend Juliann, and Katie was in town as well. Quite the crew! Now, on to the fiiiiiish:

Here we have what will soon become delicious pesto salmon.

Tom was keeping the un-filleted fishies in the bathtub while we ran out for groceries... he then fashioned a filleting table out of a cutting board, plastic wrap and aluminum foil. MacGyver's got nothing on this guy. Haha.

Fish heads, fish heads...

Found a couple egg sacks and realized we had a momma fish full of roe. Tom kept the eggs for later, I'm not quite sure what became of them...

I helped by drinking my giant bottles of beeeer. Jet Set zippo added as a point of reference.

Pesto Salmon

Fried tofu!

Clockwise starting from the left: Ashely's hand, leg and arm, Junliann, Tim , Katie and Charlotte's purple knee. After playing in the water, Charlotte was decked out in Hulk inspired green shirt and purple pants combo. YEAAAAAH!

Different angle in Juliann's living room.

Tom and Ashley

Juliann has a takoyaki maker, so while we were chopping veggies and salmon and stuff, they were next door prepping the takoyaki batter and dicing up other stuff to put in it. Takoyaki is usually balls of batter, cooked with pieces of octopus (tako) inside. We decided to mix it up a little bit...

Ohhhh yeaaaaaah

Random stuffed armadillo!

After stuffing our faces, drinking and watching weird Japanese game shows and drama where the new school teacher in town is secretly the head of the yakuza... We called it a night and got a few hours sleep in preparation of the events of Sunday.

There were a few different things going on at the festival, in addition to the 'salmon' catch. There were horse-drawing races with both ponies and full sized horses and also dog fights... apparently the dogs are trained to pin the opponent, not tear out each others throats. I'm afraid I did not get close enough to see it for myself. There was a big building full of grills (in the same fashion of the Takko Beef and Garlic festival, where you can cook up your catch) with a stage at one end... there was a scary clown when I was in there... mind you, I think all clowns are scary... Anyway, on to the ponies!

Yaaaa ponies! They were wicked cute and seemed to pull a lot of weight...
Now to the main event! CATCHING FISH BY HAND!!! Now, just in case you thought I was going to be with a large group of people in a river or something, I'm sorry to disappoint. The fish are caught ahead of time and put in a big wading pool... similar to the ones around Winnipeg.

Waiting for the whistle...

On our marks...

Get seeeeet....

GO!

Almoooooost...

SUCCESS!

And another one!

Raaaaaaaor!!!

The rest of the day was spent wandering around the festival grounds with Ashley and Tom. We got our picture taken and put onto a button in the science display building after listening to a man talk about alternatives to nuclear power. He gave us a very good speech in English. After that we walked along the coast, braving the cool weather and rain.

I stopped at this statue on the highway on my way back to Shichinohe

Great visit! Those kids are a blast to hang out with. :D