Hofu Shrine Festival and Yakiniku

Last weekend, our friend Ted invited us to go "find" a Shrine Festival that was occurring in the city of Hofu, about 2 hours away. We're all cheap, so Ted set his GPS to take us a route without tolls (it would have been about $25 bucks each way to take the highway). So we took some windy mountain roads and wound up in Hofu where we struggled to find the festival. It was a pretty large city and the address system in Japan is horrible, so the GPS couldn't find the exact place the festival was supposed to be taking place. Thankfully, Joel and his mad iPhone skills found it and we were able to walk around and see the sights. It was really fun and really different!!!

Ted is super tall. :) To the left, you can see the paper streamers that were up all over town.

The street vendor food here is quite different. Joel ate a bar-b-cued squid head, yum! I ate the tentacles... a tad chewy but the sauce was tasty. You just can't think too much about the ways things look and what it is you're actually eating, LOL.

These stairs were the only way to the Shrine.Talk about steep!

The Tengmangu Shrine of Hofu.

Not sure what these cards say, but there were a lot of them hanging on this wall.

The view of the city from the Shrine.

Scenic walkway,

So picturesque.

This looks familiar! Is that guy making a hamburger?!

The hamburger was good... but different. It had lettuce, tomato and an egg on top. The vendor put about 3 sauces on it, but around the patty itself, not on it. So you got an oozy bite of sauce with each bite.

They were storing the parade mini-shrines in the parking garage where we parked. I like the Mazda advertisement, LOL.

We didn't stay long enough to watch the parade, but at least we got to see the "floats".

After the festival, Joel and I went out for some Yakiniku style food at an AMAZING restaurant in downtown Iwakuni. We met up with 3 other couples on base then took taxis into town. For 2 hours, we had all we could eat and drink, then we went back to our friend's apartment to play Catch Phrase. We had SO much fun!!!  

Technically, the dinner out was a belated birthday celebration for Nick and myself. They are Texas fans, can you tell?

We had a room to ourselves with 2 tables full of food! There's a little button you hit to let the servers know we want something. It feels rude, but most restaurants here work on the button system instead of servers constantly coming to the table to check on you.

We are about to get stuffed.

They give you a bunch of raw meat and veggies (not pictured) to grill over a charcoal fire in the middle of the table.

Grilling this garlic bread was the BEST. And it's typical to have edamame beans as a snack on the table at most restaurants.

We will definitely keep coming back to this place!